Fantasy Football

Recently multiple webcomics have expounded upon the topic of fantasy football, namely that it's really freaking nerdy.

First, two offerrings from Dave Kellett at Sheldon:


And also one from Penny Arcade:



These produced an interesting conversation wherein my dad suggested a combination of the two: a fantasy game with fighters and magic and dragons and adventure, but run off stats generated from the real world (ex, football stats).

My thought is that football stats themselves are too sport-ish to be the backend for this real world RPG, but i think the concept is sound: take the RPG into the real world of stats where any number of variables could affect the outcome, instead of just dice rolls. It could be a great way to get nerds to care about... something.

I just haven't figured out what. Any thoughts?