Late-Round Perspectives: Jeff Bell

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

Jeff Bell is a fantasy analyst for Footballguys who co-host their daily fantasy and dynasty shows. He's done work with fantasy pros as well. He's a girl dad, a devy nerd, and he's also a CPA, so hit him up for any of your accounting needs. These are his late-round perspectives. Every time I have someone on perspectives, I think, like, how many shows I've done with them, like what our history, have we done a show together, you and I?

Jeff Bell (0:36)

We have not. I don't think that we have. I think this was to be the very first one.

JJ Zachariason (0:41)

Yeah, but here's the crazy thing, we've done a panel together.

Jeff Bell (0:44)

Yes.

JJ Zachariason (0:45)

We did the panel at the Expo, and we get to see each other now yearly at the Expo. Are you gonna be there again this year?

Jeff Bell (0:51)

I will be, definitely. It's about two hour drive from me, so it's hard for me not to go.

JJ Zachariason (0:56)

It's fairly close for you, which is nice. Yeah, I mean, look, anyone, I say this all the time, but anyone who is thinking about going to the Fantasy Football Expo, would you agree with me, I would assume? Two thumbs up, definitely do it.

Jeff Bell (1:10)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a great opportunity. I remember my first couple of times going. If you're in the content world, it's one of those things that you meet people and you realize that they're actually your friends. It's not just random, like nobody's on the internet. You have real relationships there and solidifying that in person is great. And then if you are a fan, it's a great opportunity to come out and meet people. Everybody's very open and accepting and loves to talk to everybody else. And I've met with several people that came as fans the first year and then became content creators after that.

JJ Zachariason (1:44)

Yeah, that is really cool. And I think that even if you're just strictly a fan, you will be able to get... And I'm not even saying a fan of an analyst or anything. I just mean a fantasy football fan. Just someone who's really into this stuff and nerds out about it. There is stuff for you. Literally every conversation, when you go from one conversation to the next, people are generally talking about fantasy football for that upcoming season and such, which is a whole lot of fun. Are you currently in rookie draft hell like I am right now?

Jeff Bell (2:15)

Very much so. I do a handful of safe leagues. So those kicked off this year and then just kind of in general, it seems to be the week that everybody, maybe less the dust settle last week with the NFL draft happening and then everything kicks off. It seemed like on Monday, everything just cleared up.

JJ Zachariason (2:30)

Like all at once, immediately. I'm on the clock like all the time. I'm on the verge of not realizing I'm on the clock and someone in my league is yelling at me, all that kind of stuff. Well, Jeff, look, I'm really excited to have this conversation today. We got some fun things that we're going to talk about. But before we get into those things, like I usually do this with every perspectives guest, but talk to me not just about your background. I mean, I want you to talk about your background, but also sort of the journey for you in the fantasy football space because you've been writing content, you've been doing content for a pretty long time now. And I want to give that context and that background for folks who, you know, are maybe new to some of your work.

Jeff Bell (3:05)

Yeah, it's really crazy how quickly it feels like you become a veteran in doing this because it definitely doesn't feel like I've been doing it that long. Once I've done four seasons now, once you've done four seasons, it feels like you're fully in it. But really, I mean, I've played fantasy football since, I remember my very first experience was a Sports Illustrated, they had the salary cap game where like, you could lock in your lineup. We played, I played with my friends and it was Kurt Warner's rookie year. And I got him week two for the bottom bargain basement price. And so I locked him in as like the cheapest quarterback on the slate and year in his first season, week two, wrote him all year long. And so basically you kind of had like a $50,000 budget similar to DFS, but you lock it in as like that price there, and you would be able to get gains on your players when you get rid of them. It's just a fun game. And that tells you, I mean, late 90s, 99 or so, 98 was his first year. And so that and playing since then, and really I wanted to get involved in the content creation world. And I always kind of thought that you just needed to be in an elevator with Matthew Barry, like just to spur the moment in order to become a content creator. And I never really pursued too much. In 2015, when DFS started to explode, I made friends with, through an acquaintance, somebody that was at Roto Grinders. And I started to talk with him. And he kind of told me, you know, if you're going to do daily fantasy content, sure, there's that's going on right now. But if you want to do other stuff, it's just oversaturated. It don't even bother. And so I had that in my mind for a couple of years there. And then the pandemic came and I kind of fell down the Twitter rabbit hole then and started to get involved there. And that's when you just discover layers upon layers and you start to find these things. And so it was really January 2021, really December 2021 that I started writing articles. I started out with a site going for two. Jeff Lambert's great there. He's great at getting people started. And then I started with Fantasy Intervention shortly after that with Chase Vernon and then meeting Dave Kluge, meeting Stuff Smalls who became my best friends in this space. And doing that, Jeff Lambert was able to get me connected with Fantasy Pros. I volunteered to do Devi content. He was like, I'd love to have Devi content. And then he had a connection with Fantasy Pros and they were like, hey, we want Devi content. And so it was not even like two or three months of doing content that I suddenly was at. Fantasy Pros, basically leading their Devi department. And so I did that kind of through that off season, spun up rankings, those types of things for them for Devi content. And started to do behind the scenes things for them, editing those types of things and learning how to do that process. And that kind of, by the end of my first regular season in 2021, they kind of gave me a green light to go ahead and write what I wanted to write, their site, things like that.