Across the country, newspapers have started fantasy high school football leagues, usually limited to their own staffs. While some athletic directors have welcomed the extra coverage such leagues provide their athletes, others find the idea inappropriate for high school sports and have even worked together to get one stopped.

In Ohio, the Canton Repository had its sports editors compete against writers last fall, with each team drafting a new roster every week. "We thought it was a good thing," says Matt Bing, Athletic Director at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Louisville, Ohio. "It's always great to get our kids' names and stats in the paper, especially because we're a small school. That's publicity kids want and colleges look for."

Bing says he also liked the rotating nature of the league's rosters, which allowed a greater number of student-athletes to be highlighted and didn't put a constant focus on any one player. "They can only select a player so many times," Bing says. "I think that's good, because all the schools get a chance to have their student-athletes in there."

However, in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, athletic directors put an end to a similar league in their local newspaper last season. They felt fantasy football leagues exploit players, put too much pressure on them, and may carry an association with gambling in some people's minds.

Before the 2006 high school season, the St. Paul Pioneer Press set up a league for its sports writers, drafting players and creating a point system based on the number of yards and touchdowns they racked up each week. Unlike the Canton Repository league, rosters did not change from week to week.

"I was shocked when my football coach first told me about the league," says Eric Lehtola, Athletic Director at Andover (Minn.) High School. "I brought it to the attention of the other athletic directors in our league, and we agreed it was wrong and exploited our athletes. We felt it trivialized everything our teams were doing."

Lehtola's initial complaints to the newspaper's editors fell on deaf ears, so his next step was to organize a boycott of the paper by area schools. "I talked to the other athletic directors in the area, and we all told our coaches to stop calling and e-mailing their scores and stats to the paper," Lehtola says. "It was the only leverage we had."

Many of those opposed feel such a league sends the wrong message by placing too much emphasis on individual statistics. "If you throw for four touchdowns and 300 yards, that's a great accomplishment and it would be in the newspaper anyway," says Kevin Merkle, Associate Director of the Minnesota State High School League. "But what about when a kid has a bad night, say 2-for-12 for 50 yards and a few interceptions? Typically, a bad night like that wouldn't get much ink, but if he's on somebody's fantasy team, those numbers are going to stick out."

While the Pioneer Press fantasy league offered nothing more than bragging rights to the winner, Lehtola was also concerned because many fantasy leagues are big business with entry fees and large payouts for winners. He didn't want the league to introduce a gambling atmosphere to high school football. "Even though no money changed hands in this case, we didn't want our high school teams anywhere near that kind of thing," he says.

After a few weeks, the Pioneer Press sports editor acquiesced and terminated the league. Lehtola says without a united effort from area athletic directors, the fantasy league probably would have continued. "The networking was absolutely critical," he says. "We have very strong, organized conferences--almost a brotherhood among them--so we were able to work together to stop this."