November 26, 2008 Fantasy football, plus math, equals motivated students Play video

(Josh Brogadir, NECN) - Chances are if you don't play fantasy football yourself, you know someone who does.

It's big business where plays on the field correspond to values calculated by a computer - all to the delight of millions of avid fans of the NFL.

The author of a book about teaching fantasy football in math classes says higher test scores, increased attendance, and motivated students are the result.

"So listen, before we get started on this, we've got to finish the quiz tomorrow."

It's 10 o'clock Monday morning - time for math class at Bay Cove Academy in Brookline, Massachusetts.

"The last two weeks he hasn't started Cassel and he's had like 40 points both weeks," math teacher Ed Summers said to a student.

What does Patriots quarterback Matt Cassel have to do with long division?

How does NFL football translate to math class?

It all seems to make sense - when fantasy football - comes to school.

"I thought that it would be a real good project for the kids, something that they could get into, that kind of was a little bit out of the ordinary," Summers said.

Now, if you've never played fantasy football, it works something like this.

You are the general manager and get to draft a team of NFL players - selecting a quarterback, running backs, wide receivers, etc., then each week, chart the number of points your team gets.

Plays made in a game by each position get a pre-assigned value.

For example, if a receiver catches the ball and gains 20 yards, your team gets one point.

If your quarterback throws an interception, subtract two points.

In most leagues, at the end of each week you will have a head-to-head score against another team.

There are playoffs and at the end of the season, like the NFL, there is one winner, a Super Bowl champion.

"See how they had 22? If you calculate these, (for the defense's scoring) touchdown is 7, safety is 2, field goal, field goal, 6 more," Summers said.

Summers, a first year math teacher, is Bay Cove's Monday morning quarterback, the leader of this team and designer of the playbook.

After a few months of combining math with fantasy football, he's also earned the title - chief motivator.

Summers has motivated a group of traditionally hard to motivate students - and helped them want to learn.

"It's made math class funner, easier, and I look forward to it every Monday to do this stuff," said 18 year old Marcus Houston of Cambridge.

"It's better than going to class and just doing a bunch of math problems, makes it more interesting and fun," said 18 year old Kathleen Olefsky of Norwood.

"We like to say we're very strict, but very friendly. We work with kids who've had a history of problems in the public schools and they come here because they're in need of a small setting," said Bay Cove Academy school principal Judy Gelfand.

Gelfand admits that three months ago, she was skeptical that the Ed Summers math fantasy football experiment would work.

"But actually it's taken hold, the kids really seem to enjoy it. They're learning a lot of math skills sort of through the back door," she said.

"With the scoring conversions, if they did the math correctly then they got the full value for the points. And if they did the math incorrectly, say that they forgot to add fumbles and take two points off, then they would be docked five points. So really if you don't do the conversions correctly then you get docked points and your score isn't as good as it should be," Summers added.

The students use basic math operations to keep track of points and standings - and each kid has his or her own team name such as Kanisha's Hood, Saintlings, Apocalypse, and Garfield.

"As I check, no one had Aaron Rodgers, no one had Donald Driver, Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, Deuce McAllister, so we're all set."

Up the road in Lowell, Massachusetts, 35 miles or 616 football fields away, self-described diehard football fanatic Krisanne Santarpio is integrating fantasy football into Freshman algebra for the second straight year.

"My house was always pretty much packed with three brothers, all their friends, so about 20 boys, myself and my mother," Santarpio said.

Like hundreds of other educators across the country, she uses the textbook, Fantasy Football and Mathematics, where the kids, divided into teams of four, go through the box scores and find the statistics.

"The book gives great equations for them to learn. There's tests in there, pre-tests," she added.

This is a much more complex system to use.

Teams begin with a $40 million salary cap and it's not just six points for a touchdown or minus two for a fumble.

Try plugging those numbers into a complex formula like this:

1/8 (T) + 1/24 (V) + 1/48 (V + R + C) - 1/12 (I) - 1/16 (F) = W

"They are learning their fractions, their decimals, percents. They're learning how to round whole numbers, they're learning the calculations," Santarpio said.

"Personally, I'm not good at fractions and doing fantasy football does give you input on practicing fractions more," said Freshman Chouleng Soun.

Where it has also helped the kids in Ms.Santarpio's Freshman algebra classes at Lowell High School is with peer tutoring.

It's easy to see that the students work well together in their teams - and stay on task solving the problems.

"(It) helps us work with fractions and helps us not only just doing math, but work with other people and stuff, be able to communicate, help each other out when we're stuck and stuff like that," said Freshman Tim MacLean.

And although pro football is a game played by men and adored by legions of face-painted boys, it's some of the girls in this class who never even knew what fantasy football was - who have quickly become fans of the sport.

Math class has inspired Chouleng Soun to watch games with her dad.

"That does actually encourage me to be more of a football fan because he's my father and we do actually connect more because of football, so I'm pretty glad that we did this," she said.

Across the world, fantasy football is a multi-billion dollar betting business - from office leagues to fun among friends.

We asked if this program makes gambling a concern in class.

"No. No they really, they love it. If they had their way, they would do fantasy football every day," Santarpio explained.

So to the winners go an ice cream sundae party at the end of the season in Lowell, a yet to be decided prize in Brookline, and, of course, math skills.

Santarpio says fantasy football is helping kids learn so much in her math classes, she's considering using football statistics with the quadratic formula.

And she plans to teach fantasy baseball in algebra class this spring.