HOT SPRING COUNTY — Football season has come, and with it the fantasy football season. That means offices are filled with chatter about who to “handcuff” and who’s going to break out. The “office” for the employees at Nix Screw Machine Products Inc. in Rockport is a factory devoted to manufacturing screws, but the fantasy talk is intense for the workers at the company’s two factories.
More is on the line than a pool of money, a trophy and bragging rights. The employees are facing off in fantasy football this year, factory against factory, for a paid vacation day when the season is over. Larry Langley, a manager at the company, convinced owner Dennis Nix to hold a draft and let the factories compete for the paid vacation day and even shut down his plants to hold the draft.
The phenomenon of fantasy football has exploded into a mainstream endeavor in recent years. Websites that support free leagues have garnered record interest in America’s most popular sport. The game has been around for almost 53 years, according to a feature on NFL Fantasy Live.
“We’re kind of a small company,” Langley said. “Most people around here kind of know each other. Our deal is Team Nix, a team-oriented kind of a deal. We were trying to come up with something that would make everybody get together, all on the same page. I got to thinkin’ about this fantasy football. I’ve been in it for years, anyway. I thought, ‘I wonder if I could somehow hook that up with our company. We’ve got two plants. We can let all the employees be against each other, have teams.’”
So Langley went to the owner and made his proposal, but he wasn’t sure how to handle the prize situation. He pitched the idea of shutting down the winning plant for a paid vacation day.
“If you don’t have something down there like a little carrot, people don’t like doin’ stuff; they won’t be motivated,” Langley said. “So I went to the owner when I was coming up with the idea, and I said to him, ‘We need to really give them something good, like a day off or something.’ He said, ‘Yeah, that’s cool. I like that.’”
Thus, the Rockport Superstars and the Perla Pirates were born. One of the plants is in Perla, east of Malvern. Jeff Hill designed team shirts, and the company bought referee shirts for office workers to wear at the draft. Some employees bought eye patches to distinguish themselves as the Perla Pirates.
Zeke Neeper and Brent Wheatley serve as team captains. Neeper is captain of the Rockport team, and Wheatley is the captain for Perla. The draft was held in person at the company’s office in Rockport, and Hill then put the teams into an online service so they can be viewed online and trades can be executed easily.
In addition to playing for a paid day off, the teams agreed that the losers each week will pay $20 into a pool. At the end of the 16-week season, the winning team will divide the $320 prize equally among the 10 team members. So, each employee can win a paid day off with $32 of spending money.
“It’s just good competition,” Langley said. “Sure, they’re against each other, but in a good way. This will last 16 weeks. It will last a third of the year for them being excited about it. Then hopefully, it’ll be something we just do down the road.”
Football season brings excitement to a lot of workplaces, but Nix has managed to give its workers an incentive to work together and compete with one another at the same time in the company’s factories. Langley thinks the competition will prove positive for the workers.
“The guys that are drafting and playing — they’re all excited about it,” Langley said. “They’ll have their teams on the Internet and all that stuff. We had a pizza party to start it off with. I think it’s going to be a good deal.”
Staff writer Morgan Acuff can be reached at (501) 244-4314 or macuff@arkansasonline.com.