In the old days of the internet, if you wanted to break into the fantasy football space as an analyst, there were limited options. Basically, you tried to get a job with Rotowire or Rotoworld writing player blurbs and go from there. It proved to be fertile territory, as many top names in the space graduated from those news factories.
Then, with the advent of daily fantasy sports, other sites such as Rotogrinders popped up, creating jobs for people who wanted to tell you why Adrian Peterson was a fade at $9,000. Again: fertile territory.
Podcasts entered the chat, creating more opportunities for the DIY set.
And while there have been many helping hands through the years in people who helped launch the careers of numerous industry voices, there has yet to be … a reality show from which America’s next great fantasy voice emerges.
Until now.
Welcome to So You Think You Can Tout, the brainchild of Peter Overzet, creative lead at Fantasy Life and all-around best ball bro.
Think American Idol. Think Top Chef. But for fantasy football.
The concept is simple enough. Aspiring fantasy analysts submit video applications. Overzet and a rotating cast of guest judges put them through a series of challenges designed to test different skill sets, from data analysis to on-camera debates to content creation.
The audience follows along, picks favorites, and watches the field narrow over the course of the summer. The winner lands a paid gig doing a weekly show on Overzet’s Deposit Kingdom YouTube channel, plus receives $3,750 in Underdog credits (enough to max-enter Best Ball Mania), a stipend for gear upgrades, and a professional highlight reel.
The idea grew out of something Overzet has observed for years in the best ball community: Some players are every bit as sharp and opinionated as the people making content.
Who knows ball?
“Everybody always thinks they’re smarter than the fantasy analysts they consume, and that’s kind of the fun of it,” Overzet told InGame. “I basically thought this would be a very fun way to find talent, because I do know there’s lots of smart and interesting people out there, and give them kind of an excuse to get going.”
He also wanted to solve a content problem. Fantasy football media has a sell-by date. Basically, once the games are played, once the drafts are held, all the content produced becomes trash.
Overzet wanted something with a narrative through line, something a viewer could come back to months later and still enjoy.
The response has already outpaced his expectations. Overzet set an April 23 deadline for submissions and figured he’d have to hustle across communities to drum up applicants. Instead, they started flooding in almost immediately.
“In some cases, I thought they came in too quick. I’m like, ‘Hey, maybe spend a little bit more time on your submission here,’” he said. “But it just showed that people were so excited for it.”
As of Monday he had about 35 submissions in hand, with dozens more in the works. He expects the final count to land somewhere between 60 and 80.
Format forming
The format is still taking shape, and intentionally so. Overzet doesn’t want to lock in a rigid structure before he sees the quality of the applicant pool. But the broad strokes are there.
A few early cutdowns will trim the field to a core group of eight to 12 contestants who will compete through the main stretch of the summer. Rather than eliminating someone each week, he’s leaning toward a scoring and voting system that keeps the full group intact for a while.
“There’s some people that are data people, there’s some people that are streamers, there’s some people who are good at player debates,” Overzet said. “I don’t want to eliminate someone just because they have one blind spot in their resume.”
Each episode will feature guest judges from the fantasy industry. The main episodes will run in the 20-to-30-minute range on YouTube, with behind-the-scenes vlogs and livestreamed challenges filling in around them.
If all goes according to plan, the winner will be crowned sometime in August, with enough runway to start producing content before the NFL season kicks off. But Overzet is keeping that flexible too.
“If it’s really successful or it’s moving slower just because the episodes take longer to produce, maybe it spills over into the season,” he said.
Either way, it’s already more work than one person probably bargained for. Overzet knows it.
“When the applications started rolling in, I was like, oh s**t,” he said. “I’m already thinking of how do I free up time in my schedule to work more and more on this.”
The fantasy industry has always found its talent in unconventional ways. This is easily the most unconventional yet.
