Jordan Tozzi â14 and his brother are experts in fantasy football leaguesâand theyâre happy to help you win yours.
For Jordan Tozzi, fall Sundays are all about food and fantasy football.
At his childhood home, parents Mike and Chris Tozzi (third-generation owners of Tozziâs on 12th, a popular Italian restaurant in Canton) spend the morning preparing the familyâs Sunday feast.
Downstairs, huddled away from the kitchen hustle and bustle, Tozzi and his older brother, Michael, systematically search the internet for information as another frantic NFL football Sunday approaches. The brothers, major players in the fantasy football craze, must assemble their lineups and player rankings for loyal followers who depend on advice from the Tozzisâ fantasy sports website, , to position themselves for success each week.
âMichael and I get to my parentsâ house early every Sunday so we can sit beside each other and go through the player rankings,â says Tozzi, who graduated in 2014 with a bachelorâs degree in organizational communication and a minor in flight technology. He is a pilot for Castle Aviation.
âOnce the games start, we eat dinner in the kitchen and there are computers out everywhere. Then we go back downstairs, and weâll have three games on at once. Weâve got a big screen TV, and my brother and I both have iPads. Itâs almost like a big surround system.
âDuring games weâre constantly answering lineup questions from fans and followers on Twitter for the evening NFL games. Weâre both in multiple fantasy football leagues, so we keep refreshing the live scoring to check our matchups. I wouldnât say weâre in there going crazy, but weâre not super quiet either.â
Fantasy football competitors from all over the globe, however, have staged raucous touchdown celebrations thanks to advice provided by the Tozzis, whose expertise in the burgeoning fantasy field is widely respected.
With NFL football, the most popular element of the fantasy sports scene, contestants create their own âteamâ by drafting players from a league and earn points based on the performance of their picks. In conventional fantasy football leaguesâtypically played for fun or for low dollar amounts just to make things interestingâcontestants play different opponents each week. The top entries at the end of the regular season qualify for the playoffs, and a champion is eventually crowned, usually during the final weeks of the actual NFL regular season.
According to the , 57.4 million people will play fantasy sports in 2016, creating a $3 to $4 billion annual economic impact across the sports industry. Wagering on fantasy sports is legal, since itâs considered a game of skill and not gambling.
Fantasy football started to gain popularity in the 1990s, continued to grow through the next couple decades, then exploded in recent years when companies began to offer daily fantasy sports opportunities. Instead of drafting a team once before each season, contestants on the FanDuel and DraftKings websites can draft a different team each week. For as little as $20, competitors get a shot at monetary prizes that reach as high as $1 million.
Before they were teenagers, fantasy sports had already piqued the interest of the Tozzis. âMy brother got me into it pretty early,â says Jordan Tozzi. (His brother, Michael, graduated from Malone University and works in pharmaceutical sales for Eli Lilly and Company. Both reside in Magnolia, Ohio.) âWe have a bunch of older cousins, and we would always play them in fantasy football leagues. We loved itâand by fifth or sixth grade, I was beating all of them.â
Right about the time the daily fantasy contests began to take off, the Tozzi brothers officially entered the fantasy sports profession. âDuring my freshman and sophomore years in college we were doing all this research for our fantasy football leagues, and we thought, why not publish it online and try to make some money off of it? So we did that,â says Tozzi. âFriends were always asking us for advice, and we would tell them to just check out our website.
âThe first year we had the website, in 2013, we entered an NFL fantasy football contest where they grade all your rankings, and we were . We beat guys from ESPN, CBS Sports, Yahoo. It kind of blew up from there.â
Just like that, LegionReport.com became a destination site for fantasy football enthusiasts all over the world. âSince then weâve built a large following online and on Twitter,â says Tozzi. âPeople view our website from Europe and all over the United States. You initially do something to help your friends, and it explodes. Thatâs the awesome part about it.â
While the Tozzis concentrate their energies on NFL football, friend and fellow Âé¶čÓ°Ôș State graduate Danny Stokes â13 contributes to LegionReport as an NBA basketball writer. They may eventually expand the website into other sports, but at this time its focus is pro football and basketball.
âThe first year we had the website, in 2013, we were ranked the most accurate fantasy experts in the world. It kind of blew up from there.â
Guidance from LegionReport.com is not only beneficial, but free as well. âPeople don't have to pay us for a service,â Tozzi says. âThe only way we make money is from Google, the ads on our page and link advertisements within the articles. We just want to help people win their fantasy leagues.â
The Tozzisâ main goal in the future is simply to continue adding followers. They provide advice each week on who to play and which free agents to pick up, and they suggest a lineup to enter in the daily NFL fantasy contests. âWe communicate with our followers via Twitter (@LegionReport), if they have specific questions,â says Tozzi. âWe also draft fantasy football teams for owners.â
Delving through mounds of constantly changing information each week to give the best fantasy football advice possible has become a labor of love for the Tozzis.
âIt takes a lot of hard work to produce consistent results, which is the key to long-term success in fantasy sports,â says Tozzi. âMichael is up early in the morning, and Iâm up late at night, so weâre always up to date on the news. Throughout the week we text each other and communicate during the Thursday and Monday night games. The system seems to be working.â
As children, the brothers learned that hard work and preparation are keys to success, no matter the occupation. âOur family restaurant is in its 102nd year and has always been a huge part of our lives,â says Tozzi. âWhen I was young, my parents had me do little jobs, like putting dishes away. As I grew older, my responsibilities increased. My brother and I have worked every position at one time or anotherâdoing dishes, prepping, cooking, serving, bartending, cleaning. I learned the value of hard work, determination and dedication from my parents.â
The Tozzi brothers apply those family lessons to winning at fantasy sportsâand the results speak for themselves.
âI never imagined weâd take it this far,â says Tozzi. âIt just keeps growing.â
Tozzisâ Tips to Win Your Fantasy Football League Championship
- Keep searching. Championships arenât just made at the draft. Itâs important to keep an eye out for players that go undrafted who can help your team as the season progresses.
- Go deep. Injuries can hobble even the best teams, so having several good players at each position on your roster is crucial to success.
- Start your studs! Sometimes after reading an article about the next hot player, you can get a little too excited and bench a proven performer.
Allen Moff is the Âé¶čÓ°Ôș State athletics beat writer for the Record-Courier newspaper.