It all started as a bet between two brothers, then expanded quicker than your uncle's waistline at Thanksgiving.

Brothers Josh and Jacob Gibson, a pair of former Franklin County High School football players who went on to bigger things (literally), desperately wanted to lose weight. Diet and exercise would help, but they decided that the best way to drop pounds was to have a little money riding on it.

"I'll hold you accountable, you hold me accountable," Jacob said.

Josh offered a wager of $50. Make it $100, Jacob said. Deal.

Then, Josh had an idea. Why limit the bet to just the two of them?

"I know a lot of fat people!" he wrote his brother in an e-mail.

The call went out to friends and co-workers. "Just because you're getting this e-mail doesn't mean you're fat," Josh Gibson wrote. "It means I think you're fat."

A total of 11 guys -- all in their 20s and 30s -- bellyflopped into the pool and ponied up $100 each. Thus was born "Fantasy Fatball," a game for the firm of gut but not the faint of heart.

Let the bashing begin

The goals of the game are simple: lose weight, win money and totally ridicule and trash-talk your buddies online. The man who loses the highest percentage of weight based on his starting weight gets $1,000. That's not the fun part, though.

Josh Gibson made the trash-talking easy by setting up a private Fantasy Fatball blog where competitors could post comments and photos, as well as their weight-loss progress. In short, it's not a pretty site.

"I know that the point of this league is weight loss by utter shame and humiliation," Gibson wrote on the blog.

The premise of Fantasy Fatball was originally modeled after other fantasy sports leagues, where competitors select real professional players for their fantasy "teams" then compare the players' statistics to determine the winner. That concept was too confusing to be applied to the fatball league, so the competitors decided to make it a simple wager.

The real fun is on the private blog. They don't just chew the fat -- they chew up each another in a series of posts that often include photographs of morbidly fat people that are doctored, politically incorrect or often both. Usually, a contestant's name is mentioned in the caption.

Weight Watchers this is not.

These contestants do not feed off heaping portions of inspirational stories or sentimental, warm-and-fuzzy encouragement. They feed off -- and feed on -- each other:

The only way one dude could win was through "weight loss by way of elective amputation," someone wrote.

It was said of one early leader that "he's a skinny fat and will plateau soon."

One guy was told he had no chance "because he's got such a big head."

When it comes to encouragement, that's the way guys do it. And these are just the comments that we can publish in a family newspaper.

In a recent sit-down interview with six of the contestants who live in the Roanoke Valley or nearby, the friends admitted that the online bashing is just for fun. In fact, when they all gathered to talk about fatball, they all complimented one another on how much weight they had lost.

"All we do is talk [trash] about each other" on the blog, Jacob Gibson said. "Nobody talks about what they're doing."

Collectively, the 11 guys have shed more than 300 pounds since the competition began in mid-December.

"What a gross thought that we had that much to lose," Josh Gibson said. "It's not like there are 50 of us."

Most have lost pounds the old-fashioned way: diet and exercise. The smack-talking helps, too.

"There's no possible way I could have done it. No possible way" without the competition, said J.P. Nolen, who is currently in second place after having lost more than 50 pounds, more than 17 percent of his start weight.

"It's not the money, it's the competition."

Nolen, a deputy in the Franklin County Sheriff's Office, said that in high school he would order the five-for-five deal from Arby's -- five roast beef sandwiches for $5 -- and eat them all. Now he eats healthy, although his grocery bill has doubled as a result. He claims he has already devoured his winnings even if he does win.

Like Nolen, Jacob Gibson has changed his habits for the better, although he made the tactical error of losing 20 pounds last fall before the competition started. Yet, he's more than happy to shed the weight he packed on as a football player at Virginia Tech in the early 2000s.

He has lost more than 60 pounds since his days as an offensive lineman. When he came out of Franklin County, he weighed about 230 pounds. As a senior at Tech, the 6-foot-4 Gibson played at nearly 300 pounds.

"I'd eat at the football training table every night, then later order two subs, two fries and two drinks and eat all of that," said Gibson, who works for a Roanoke-based education software company. "I'd call the sub shop and they'd pick up and say, 'Yeah, we got your order ready, Jacob.' "

The Fantasy Fatball leader so far is Jacob Gibson's co-worker Sam Lackey, who has lost more than 18 percent of his start weight in two and a half months. Lackey is so serious about the competition that for Christmas dinner he ate Lean Cuisine. That's a guy in it to win it.

In fact, when Lackey learned several weeks ago that second-place Nolen suffered from the stomach flu, his first thought was: "Damn it!" Why him and not me?

At times, the contest gets dirty. Lackey has been known to place candy bars on Gibson's desk. One contestant who couldn't make the recent interview threatened to have a pizza delivered to the site.

A new game? You betcha

All kidding aside, the fatball guys might be on the cusp of a trend.

Last month, the New York Times reported that "diet betting" has become a popular incentive for losing weight. Several dieticians interviewed for that story said that when money is involved, even if it's just a small, friendly wager, people tend to work harder to lose weight.

The Times cited a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association in December that found that people who had money on the line were more likely to lose weight than those who didn't. The study also found that weekly feedback was an important factor in losing weight. No need to tell the fatballers that.

Certified nutritionist Jeanie Redick agrees that there's something about the competitive nature of men that makes losing weight easier for them than it is for women.

"I can't say I know much about the trend, but it just makes sense," said Redick, who operates the Eat For Life nutrition counseling center in Southwest Roanoke. "Girls like each other too much. Guys, there's something about the pecking order. They've got to be on that top rung."

Redick said that two of her sons-in-law entered into a similar weight-loss wager and lost 20-25 pounds each. Once the bet was over, however, much of the weight went right back on.

So, how long can the fatballers keep it all off? During the interview, several of the men talked longingly of celebrating the end of fatball season on April 1 with a trip to the Red Palace Chinese buffet.

"I've got to bulk up and get ready for the next one," said contestant Jared Cyphers.

Another Gibson brother, Bays, is competing, but he has been derided as a "skinny fat" by his brothers with little chance of winning. He was also castigated by his brothers when he told them his wife wanted to join the Fantasy Fatball group.

"That's going to change the whole dynamic," Josh Gibson said.

She was blackballed.