Fantasy sports leagues comprising historical players and/or historical results

Abstract

Computer-based fantasy sports leagues portraying games between historical players with contest outcomes based in part on the performance of those players in historical games and game results, typically with related network and user interfaces. The fantasy sports game can be a fantasy football game. In one embodiment, the historical data includes statistical information related to previous, historical real-life athletes and specific, real-life actual games played by those players. The games can be structured such that specified time periods of the athletes are incorporated into the operational considerations, and can include a fantasy drafting process by the human players wherein selections of the available real-life historical athletes are made. The historical fantasy game comprises methods, systems, programming, etc., comprising associated instructions and operations for displaying the sports video game characters for the fantasy game.

1 . A computer-based fantasy sports game based on a real-life sport wherein the computer-based fantasy sports game comprises at least one virtual game played in a virtual fantasy sports league comprised of multiple virtual teams each comprising at least one different real-life player, wherein the virtual teams are allotted points in the virtual game based on historical game statistics achieved by their respective real-life players in real-life games played by the real-life players, and wherein the game statistics comprise only historical results for all of the real-life players. 
     
     
         2 - 4 . (canceled) 
     
     
         5 . The game of  claim 1  wherein the game statistics comprise actual game statistics from real-life games played by the real-life players. 
     
     
         6 . The game of  claim 1  wherein the game statistics consist only of actual statistics from real-life games played by the real-life players. 
     
     
         7 . The game of  claim 1  wherein the game statistics comprise normalized statistics derived from actual game statistics from real-life games played by the real-life players, wherein the normalized statistics are consistent with the average of, and do not exceed the variability of, the actual results for the real-life players throughout a specified time segment. 
     
     
         8 . The game of  claim 1  wherein at least some of the real-life games are selected from a specified time segment of historical games. 
     
     
         9 . The game of  claim 8  wherein the time segment is one year, two years, three years, five years, or 10 years. 
     
     
         10 . The game of  claim 8  wherein specified time segment is a time era consisting of one of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, or 2000s. 
     
     
         11 . The game of  claim 1  wherein the real-life players are selected from different specified time segments that are different time eras and each virtual team includes at least one historical real-life player from each of the different time eras. 
     
     
         12 . The game of  claim 11  wherein statistics for at least one category of game statistics is normalized such that the total number of points in the category for a first time segment is equal to the total number of points in the category for a second time segment. 
     
     
         13 . The game of  claim 1  wherein the game further comprises at least one of a real-life preseason or real-life playoff game to provide a season-within-a-season. 
     
     
         14 . The game of  claim 1  wherein the fantasy sports game is played during an off-season for the real-life sport. 
     
     
         15 . The game of  claim 1  wherein the fantasy sports game further comprises an administrator for the league that approves or denies trades of real-life players between the virtual teams, sets the scoring for each category. 
     
     
         16 . The game of  claim 15  wherein the fantasy sports game further comprises a waiver wire and wherein the administrator sets the waiver wire for the league. 
     
     
         17 . The game of  claim 1  wherein the game further comprises a salary cap based on the salaries of the real-life players such that the salary cap prevents the virtual teams from buying more than a predetermined number of high-priced players. 
     
     
         18 . The game of  claim 1  wherein the game further comprises an iterative process wherein points are allotted to the virtual teams over a period of time based on multiple, sequential iterations of the virtual game. 
     
     
         19 . The game of  claim 18  wherein the multiple, sequential iterations of the virtual game comprise at least two iterations per day over the course of a weekend. 
     
     
         20 . The game of  claim 19  wherein the multiple, sequential iterations of the virtual game comprise one iteration per day over the course of a week. 
     
     
         21 . The game of  claim 19  wherein the multiple, sequential iterations of the virtual game comprise one iteration per week over the course of one, two or three months. 
     
     
         22 . A computer-implemented method comprising playing the computer-implemented game according to  claim 1 . 
     
     
         23 . The computer-implemented method according to  claim 22  wherein the game is played using a computer network and user interfaces for human participants to interact with the game. 
     
     
         24 . A method comprising making a computer-readable memory containing computer-readable programming configured to implement the game according to  claim 1 . 
     
     
         25 . A computer-readable memory containing computer-readable programming configured to implement the game according to  claim 1 . 
     
     
         26 . A computer comprising computer-readable memory containing computer-readable programming configured to implement the game according to  claim 1 . 
     
     
         27 . The computer according to  claim 26  wherein the computer is part of a network of computers each containing computer-readable programming configured to implement the game.