Oh what fun it must be to call yourself a member of The Office fantasy football league.
To be clear, I’m not just saying any office’s fantasy football league. I’m talking about THE Office, as in the hit NBC television show that ran on television from 2005 to 2013 and became a streaming service juggernaut soon after. One could argue that no sitcom has ever had quite the cultural impact and staying power like The Office has had.
And what if I told you that something related to the hit TV series has been going on for nearly just as long as the show and its second life on streaming? Brian Baumgartner, who plays the beloved character Kevin on The Office, revealed in an interview with the Green Light with Chris Long podcast that the cast has been doing a fantasy football league since the second season of the show:
“We’ve been doing it since I would say 2004. That’s 19 years then, I think. We just finished 19.”
Think of something you’ve done for even 10 years. A decade is a long time, right? Well certain cast members and others involved with the show have been partaking in a friendly fantasy football league for nearly two decades. It’s honestly cool to hear that the people that came together to make the iconic show continue to get together to play fantasy football all these years later.
Baumgartner went on to explain how the league members would draft while they were sometimes in the middle of taping the show:
“It used to take us like a week to ten days to draft. Untraditional. We had, because we were on the set of ‘The Office,’ a yellow legal pad that flips up with the pages, and that would be passed from desk to desk. I’ve never gone back to some of those early seasons to see if I could ever see that on somebody’s desk.
So we’d pass it around and maybe you would literally be shooting a scene at that moment, or it was lunch, or it was your turn but you got to go home early that day. So it would take us like a week to 10 days to draft.”
When the graces of technology finally reached the fantasy football world, The Office league adapted and ditched the yellow legal pad for computer-based drafting. The man behind Kevin – who could cook up a mean pot of chili in the show – shared that they would sometimes utilize the technology that was on set to draft:
“The computers on the set… they worked. And at least one or two years, once the draft became where you could draft online, we would sit at the desks after we were done filming – at night or whatever – and we would do the draft there.”
Probably one of the only times where drafting your fantasy team while at the office wasn’t frowned upon.
Baumgartner continued to share cool tidbits about the exclusive league, like how they haven’t changed the buy-in for fantasy football season since they started all the way back in 2004. He also let everyone know that the league is about as competitive as it gets, and that he tends to be one of the better squads year-in and year-out:
“People take it very seriously. There are a lot of texts. We have the Zoom call happening at the same time as the draft is happening so we can kind of talk sh*t with each other.
I will tell you this… I have been to the quote-unquote ‘Super Bowl’ of our fantasy league more than anyone else… I’ve never won. It’s hard to talk about.”
The cast of The Office has a fantasy football league
(via @greenlight) pic.twitter.com/2ahGRlnG0u
— Yahoo Fantasy Sports (@YahooFantasy) February 27, 2025
(via Absolutely tragic way to end the fun conversation with Baumgartner sadly confessing that he can’t ever win the big game.
However, much of the rest of the conversation he had on the Green Light podcast was fun and lighthearted, and you can catch the whole interview at the link below:
The post Brian Baumgartner Says ‘The Office’ Cast Have Been In A Fantasy Football League Together For 19 Years: “I’ve Never Won” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.