Computers are crashing all over America this month. Stress and anxiety are reaching unhealthy levels. Relationships are straining to the breaking point.
All of this over fantasy football.
Perhaps the most meaningless form of competition ever dreamed up by a human being, fantasy sports have taken over Internet chat, water cooler discussions, television programming and magazine publishing. They’re everywhere.
Chances are if you don’t play fantasy sports, you know someone who does. Estimates run somewhere between 13 million and 20 million people participate in some kind of fantasy league, which isn’t limited to sports. One report I read recently said that there are fantasy movie leagues where players “draft” upcoming or new releases and score points based on how much money the movie grosses at the box office.
While rotisserie baseball would have to be considered the grandfather of all fantasy sports, fantasy football has taken the activity to a whole new level. Just go to your local supermarket and check out the magazine rack. There has to be at least a dozen publications devoted to fantasy football, with mock drafts, expert analysis and statistical projections contained between the covers. It seems only Paris Hilton has more ink wasted over her than fantasy football.
Once a year, grown men brush off their wives, girlfriends, children and household chores, gather in person or online, swill beer, scarf down pizza and pretzels and draft their teams. Something that should only take an hour at most is stretched out over an entire day because everyone has to consult their magazines, databases, GPS, astrology charts and bookie before each pick.
It’s serious business. Some leagues play for a pot worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. But even the ones with just a trophy or bragging rights at stake are hotly contested.
And people aren’t just using it to fill their free time. One study estimates that American employers lose close to $37 million a year in labor because employees spend up to 10 minutes per day at work managing their teams.
Playing fantasy football goes against the tenants of being a fan. If you’re a Patriots fan and you’ve got Curtis Martin on your fantasy team, it’s a conflict of interest. If you’re a Cowboys fan and you’re in a head-to-head league and your opponent has Drew Bledsoe at quarterback, it’s a conflict of interest.
Fantasy football has warped the perspective of the majority of the country’s football fans. It celebrates individual over team accomplishment. It’s one of the main reasons the Patriots aren’t truly appreciated in the new, stat-oriented America, and it’s the sole reason why some people still think Peyton Manning is better than Tom Brady.
Fantasy football stands for everything I’m against in sports. And I absolutely love it.
Not that I couldn’t live without it. I was a fan long before fantasy leagues. If, as some analysts predict, the major professional leagues soon seek exclusive rights to the leagues and start charging big bucks for anyone to start or join a fantasy league, then I’ll probably have to learn to live without it. I’m not paying to play unless there’s a chance I can win back at least what I paid in.
But there is no denying playing fantasy sports enhances the experience for me and many other fans. Hey, if I didn’t have Brandon Inge on my baseball team, then I wouldn’t give two shakes about yesterday’s Blue Jays-Tigers game. And it’s the same for a Cleveland-Houston game in December. If I don’t draft a Brown or a Texan, it doesn’t exist.
If that makes the purists cringe, so be it. Let them revel in those compelling Bears-Redskins match-ups.
The conflict of interest thing puzzles me a little bit. I know some people, most of them irrational, die-hard, my team right or wrong fans, who are violently anti-fantasy because of this. Many of them are less understanding about my love for fantasy sports than my wife or any other woman I know. These guys literally seethe at the thought that I might actually hope a Jet or a Dolphin or a Colt has a good game, even when they’re playing the Patriots.
Look, if I’ve got Chad Pennington on my fantasy team and he throws for 450 yards and four TDs to beat the Patriots, 28-27, it kills me just as much as any Pats fan. I hate his guts for at least the next 72 hours. I still hate his guts even if he clinches the league championship for me with that performance. Ideally, he’d lose 28-27 on a missed extra point. But the fantasy-haters believe that I’m supposed to wish Pennington goes 0-for-23 with three fumbles and six interceptions against the Pats, or even when he’s playing the Falcons, for that matter.
But see, here’s the kicker. Chad Pennington was going to throw for 450 and four scores whether I had him on my team or not. He was going to kill the Patriots whether I was rooting for him or not. So what’s the harm if he helps me win a little trophy. Yeah, ideally he’d do all that and lose, but he didn’t. And it wasn’t because he’s on my fantasy team that the Jets beat the Pats.
I’m supposed to feel guilty about this. I’m somehow less of a Patriot fan because I’ve drafted a Jet to fill the space in my trophy case that my athletic talent, or lack thereof, could not.
I belong to four on-line leagues, all of them with the same group of high school buddies, a couple of whom live out of state, as well as some of their “new” friends where they live who I now consider friends of my own. I keep in touch with them on the league message board on almost a daily basis. Otherwise, I see them a couple of times a year. If it weren’t for the fantasy leagues, I’d have a lot less contact with them. Heck, I’d probably lose touch with some of them.
Hey, we’re guys. Guys don’t call each other or write letters. We drink beer, eat pretzels and make fun of the guy who drafts Rex Grossman in the fourth round.
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