Applying The Lessons of Fantasy Football to Circuit Board Design

After reading the title you are probably thinking, “WHAT? How can you apply and compare two vastly different things together?” Well, just bear with me and I will explain. Let’s first take a quick look at Fantasy Football and how it works.

Most Fantasy Football leagues are based on the premise that you fill out your team roster with various players at different positions. This includes; Quarterback (QB), Running Backs (RB), Wide Receivers (WR), Tight Ends (TE), Kickers, and a defense/special teams.

You have both starters and bench players. Each week your players score points based on their game day performance. As the season progresses, you rotate players in and out of the starting lineup based on injury, match up, or if they have a bye week. To be an effective Fantasy Football player, you need to put aside personal and team favorites and pick the best players available. This can be difficult. I live in Minnesota, and my team is the Minnesota Vikings. Across the river in Wisconsin is our division rival, the Green Bay Packers.

If I only picked Vikings players for my Fantasy Football team and ignored players from other teams, I would put my team at a disadvantage. For example, Aaron Rodgers from the Green Bay Packers is among the best QBs in the league and is a highly-coveted player for Fantasy Football. Therefore, it is important to load up your roster with the best players, even if they are from the dreaded Packers.

Circuit board design is a lot like Fantasy Football. The products are like players, and manufacturers are like sports teams. Many people design and build a circuit using a small subset of products from a small selection of manufacturers because that is what they are used to. They have loyalties to the products and manufacturers.

As newer technology comes out from your manufacturer or competing manufacturers, there may be better solutions than what you are currently using. Using the Packers again, Brett Favre was a phenomenal QB in the 1990s and 2000s. As his career was coming to an end, the Packers transitioned to Aaron Rodgers as starting QB. There are other QBs today that are also very good such as Tom Brady, Matt Ryan, or Drew Brees.

As a designer, you need to be aware of the newest technology from all the manufacturers so that you too can pick the best players/products for your team/design. DigiKey represents more than 650 different manufacturers such as Texas Instruments (TI), Analog Devices (ADI), TE Connectivity, and Panasonic. We stock over 1.3 million parts and are adding thousands of new parts daily. Check out the latest parts here. To help you with your research, selection, and design, DigiKey has created a variety of original content such as our Product Training Modules, Articles, and Videos, as well as a variety of technical environments like Blogs, TechForum, and eeWiki.

DigiKey has the best manufacturers and newest technologies to pick from, so don’t put your design at a disadvantage. For your upcoming design season, do your research and pick the parts that make the most sense for your design. And yes, for Fantasy Football, I did pick Aaron Rodgers to be my starting QB; just don’t tell my Packer friends.