Who are Dan and Kelly Grogan?
Let’s see... the music world had Lennon and McCartney; the crime-fighting world had Batman and Robin; even the ice cream world had Ben and Jerry. The fantasy football world, however, has seen just one duo that has been going strong since this crazed interest started – Dan and Kelly Grogan. It all began in 1986 with the idea to publish a fantasy draft guide to help the hundred or so that we’re playing back then.
Here’s how things started.
It was a draft day blunder in 1985 that prompted us to get into the "fantasy business." We use that term loosely since there really wasn't much of a fantasy business back then… there wasn't much of a fantasy market either! The mistake we made in our initial fantasy draft was to take a player who had retired after suffering a broken neck the season before. We thought we had a steal in Seattle receiver Paul Johns. Although he had just one TD the previous season, he had scored four times in 11 games in 1983. To us, he looked like just the guy who was ready to make his move.
But, Johns' only move in 1985 was to retire. His broken neck marked the end of his career - but it was the beginning of ours! After learning of our mistake (a 4th rounder too) we lamented, "there has to be a better way." So, we began tracking stats and compiling fantasy-related information during the '85 season for the sole purpose of being better prepared for next year's draft. A few weeks prior to draft day, however, word leaked out that the Grogans had some kind of "secret information." Keep in mind, there were no fantasy magazines or Internet back then. Everyone pretty much relied on Street and Smith's annual pro football magazine to draft their team.
When one of our league members offered to buy what we had, we thought we were on to something. Hey, we might be able to sell five or six of these things! We approached the owner of a little newsstand in Denver called "Johnnies" and tried to interest him into putting our publication on sale. The term "publication" is a stretch since what we had was Xeroxed copies of our notes and some statistics. Johnny had no idea what “fantasy football” was and actually thought it was something X-rated! However, after he was convinced this was really about sports, he took 10 copies.
"They all sold and I want more" was the message I found on my answering machine -- voice mail hadn't been invented yet -- from Johnny upon returning from his newsstand only an hour or so later. Thanks to our new distribution partner, we sold 81 copies of "NFL Player Eval" (what a name!) that year, but more importantly, it meant we were in the publishing business. As we found more retail outlets, we printed and distributed more copies over the next few years and by 1999, we were up to 10,000. We even put a cover on it, but didn't use a photo since we thought we'd be violating some NFL law. In 1992, we abandoned the "self distribution" idea and signed an agreement with a national distributor to place 75,000 copies in the market place. Onward and upward…or so we thought.
The Internet was in its infancy in 1991 and we were on-line as we grappled to learn a little html and spent days in frustration because our site kept crashing despite hosting just a few dozen visitors. Grogan's web site made its "television debut" in 1992. To our delight, WebTV selected our site to include in a commercial they were filming to tout, among other things, how you could get fantasy info right off your TV. This would be great. Millions of people will see our web site and the customers will be coming in droves. Hardly. Our exposure in that commercial was maybe a half a second - barely enough time to even catch the URL.
No business is without its ups and downs and we've had our share. The national distributor, who we thought would take us places we had never dreamed, nearly took us to our demise. In 1998, they stiffed us (and that's putting it mildly) on roughly a year's worth of magazine sales revenue. We never did see our money, but it was time to move on to a more trust-worthy partner. We re-grouped and went forward.
Early in 2006, we realized a fantastic opportunity that most companies only dream of. We were acquired by Athlon Sports Communications of Nashville, TN. You've probably seen Athlon publications at the newsstand. They've been the leader in sports annuals publishing guides since 1967 and cover just about every sport - pro and college football, pro and college basketball, baseball, racing and golf. The prospect of partnering with an esteemed publisher like Athlon and joining a company of people who are phenomenally passionate about what they do was overwhelming to us.
We are more than pleased that the Grogan's brand will continue as member of the Athlon family of publications.
