Late-Round Perspectives: Ben Gretch

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

Ben Gretch is a fantasy analyst who's done work at places like Rotoviz and CBS Sports. He's known for his comprehensive work with Stealing Signals, he's half of the Stealing Bananas podcast, he's a ship chaser, and he makes you think deeper about fantasy football. These are his late-round perspectives.

I was thinking, man, how's it feel to be talking to an Omni thought leader right now? You know what's funny about that?

Ben Gretch (0:35)

I just updated it the other day. You are absolutely crushing it.

But I'm trying to run you down. It's a battle between me and you in our Omni fantasy league.

JJ Zachariason (0:43)

It's hilarious, dude. So actually, do you want to explain to people what Omni is all about and stuff? Since you've got, you're obviously the one who introduced me to it.

Ben Gretch (0:52)

Yeah, so it's basically a mix between the futures market and fantasy sports. So we're drafting teams instead of players across all the different sports and trying to predict champions, winners of each sport. So the Super Bowl champion, the NBA Finals champion, college football, college basketball, every sport. Basketball, we have the rotational sports. So like last year or this current year, we had the World Baseball Classic, we had the Women's World Cup, the ones that are not an annual. We incorporate them in the years that they run NASCAR. I mean, like every sport, golf, tennis, all of them. And then you won the league last year and then started this year insanely hot with like, you won the what? Because we drafted in like February and you won the first few champions.

JJ Zachariason (1:43)

I did, it was so funny about it, dude. And I've like talked to friends about this because it's laughably like just so lucky. Right? But like last year, last year, I mean, like I had a process for it, but it was definitely not like, this was not the expectation. Last year in the league that ended up winning, I drafted the NBA champion and the NCAA tournament champion. So both, both college basketball and the NBA. And the same thing happened this year, the exact same thing.

I'm like, I'm like, I have, I'm not even like the biggest NBA fan in the world. I love college basketball, but not to the standpoint of like what I'm doing with football or anything like that.

And it's just, it's hilarious the way that that just sort of like played itself out. But I had to throw that out there that, you know, I am getting that W this year.

Ben Gretch (2:27)

You're crushing. I'm looking at our draft right now. I had the one-on-one. So like I took Novak Djokovic, right? Like he tends to dominate tennis, although you have Carlos Alcares, who's the up and coming guy. And they have, they have one more tournament. The next January's Australian Open will be the fourth one that will count. And they're one, two right now. So whoever does better there will win tennis.

But you took the Nuggets in the fifth round, right? And you took Yukon Huskies in the 17th round and you picked the champion of those two sports.

JJ Zachariason (2:54)

It's so ridiculous. It's so ridiculous. But you guys should definitely check it out.

Omni Fantasy. You probably have sent links out and stuff on Twitter and whatnot.

Ben Gretch (3:03)

We will be drafting again in January and February. It's a post football season thing. But if that sounds fun, you can join the sub stack omnifantasy.substack.com. You'll get notifications, emails from there.

JJ Zachariason (3:14)

Yeah, cool.

I'm really pumped to have you on, man. You're one of the guests that people have talked about most to come on. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we definitely are not just player take driven. And I think that's partially why folks have said, hey, you and Gretch should have a conversation on perspectives and sort of talk about this stuff. You are the one of the higher level thinkers in fantasy football. And it's unfortunate that we don't really see a ton of like higher level strategy, that kind of stuff, that type of thinking, you know, within the fantasy space. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that player analysis is just easier.

There's a lot of work that goes into not just thinking of like these abstract ideas within the fantasy football space and within football, but also coming up with those ideas and then researching those ideas and talking about those ideas. It's not an easy thing to do, you know. But I do want to ask you, where do you think that comes from? What kinds of things may be in your life or the kinds of hobbies you have or the things that you read have sort of directed you into this spot where you're not just this player take machine. You're really looking at this from a different perspective.