In the NFL, coaches and general managers with years of football experience draft their players and try to coach them to a championship. In the new Fan Controlled Football League (FCFL), fans draft and coach their own teams.

The league comprises four teams (Beasts, Glacier Boyz, Zappers and Wild Aces). All games are on Saturday afternoons and evenings exclusively on Twitch. Every Wednesday, there is a draft where fans pick from several players, and whoever gets the most votes gets drafted. The teams rotate every week with a select number of players who have been franchise tagged, and stay on the same team for the season’s duration.

The league is a seven v. seven league with two or three offensive linemen, one quarterback, three or four wide receivers and running backs on the field all at once. The NFL, on the other hand, uses fields twice the size of the fields in the FCFL and is an 11 v. 11 league with five or six offensive linemen, one quarterback, four or five running backs and wide receivers on the field at one time.

  All the team owners are public figures who can drive traffic to the league and their personal teams through their brands. The Beast’s owners are former NFL player Marshawn Lynch, former WNBA player and current owner of the Atlanta Dream Renee Montgomery, former boxer Mike Tyson and wrestler Miroslav Barnyashev. 

The Zappers owners are comedian Bob Menery, NFL player Dalvin Cook, MLB player Trevor May and youtube star Ronnie Singh. The Zappers have former Heisman trophy winner and first-round NFL draft pick Johnny Manziel, 2013 NFL all-pro and Super Bowl champion Josh Gordon and former viral NFL practice squad receiver Damon Sheehy-Guiseppi.

The Glacier Boyz owners are rapper Quavo, NFL player Richard Sherman and youtube star Deestroying. The Glacier Boyz have the 2016 ACC Rookie of the Year and a two-year starter at Florida State Deondre Francois.

The Wild Aces owners are NFL player Austin Ekeler, comedian Greg Miller and Snapback Sports founder Jack Settleman. The Wild Aces have quarterback Jackson Erdmann who was a former Penn-State player who ended up transferring to a D-III university (St. Johns).

To vote on the plays, you have to download the FCFL app and start voting on the plays you want and players to pick up in the draft. The voting is weighted and skewed to the most dedicated and experienced fans so that newer fans don’t have as much say. As you get more and more experienced with play-calling, you move up levels, and your votes weigh more.

Junior Brett Halpern said, “The FCF puts a fun twist on regular football. It has attracted some big names and can continue to grow as more people are aware of it, and I think that it is a great replacement to the NFL during the off-season, and as a fan, I love picking the plays and matchups. I will also definitely continue watching as the season goes on.”