The NFL’s regular season starts on Thursday, which means that enthusiasts all over campus and the country will have finished drafting their fantasy teams and are now waiting to see how those investments will pay off. A 2006 study by outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. estimated that over the next seventeen weeks, thirty-seven million fantasy footballers will spend an average of fifty minutes a week tinkering with their accounts, costing employers nearly $18 billion in lost productivity. According to the same study, the average fantasy owner spends an additional thirty-four minutes a day thinking about his team and as much as $500 on software to give him an edge over his former friends.
I, for one, will not be taking part. It’s not that I don’t love football or the cutthroat competition that a fantasy league engenders—it’s exactly the opposite. Fantasy football fundamentally alters the relationship between a fan and his team, and in a day and age when football statistics and predictions are plastered all over the internet, fantasy expertise is as easy as signing up for the most expensive cheat sheet.
Still upset that Ocho Cinco let you down? ESPN Draft Analyzer offers insurance against lemons at $39.99 a month. Already drafted? For a similar fee, the RotoPass statistics service guarantees “Your Ticket to Domination.”
Or, if you’re itching to find out exactly how Nate Kaeding will react to the turf and wind at Three Rivers Stadium, The Answer Guys promise a “personal, detailed answer” from one of two football columnists at ESPN, conveniently eliminating your need to really know anything at all. The website includes a warning not to send profane messages, as if the idea of paying a professional to play your own hobby for you isn’t obscene enough on its own.
To me, the most offensive part of fantasy football isn’t even the faux experts that it breeds, but the bad fans. I support exactly one team in the National Football League. My only wish is to see them win each and every time they take the field, and I am completely invested in their weekly game. This is not so for my seemingly schizoid friends, who flip back and forth between all of the games involving their best fantasy players, rooting for everyone and no one. They trip over themselves trying to justify rooting for the away quarterback, so long as the home team pulls out a win.
The counterargument that online leagues give enthusiasts a chance to involve themselves deeper in the game is based in the same misguided obsession with personal statistics that caused Ricky Davis to intentionally miss a layup so that he could retrieve the rebound and complete a triple-double in 2004. To relate to the game solely on the basis of passing percentages and rushing yards is to ignore the players and coaches who support the stars, not to mention defense, which most online leagues relegate to a secondary role.
I think I understand where fantasy sports have their roots. When we were younger, we all dreamt of becoming professional athletes, quarter backs and wide receivers, but at some point, most of us realized we were JV material at best. Online leagues allow us to live out our secondary sports dreams, so that even if we can’t outrun Adrian Peterson, on Sunday night we might go to sleep confident we could have at least out-coached Tom Coughlin.
Indulge in this fantasy if you like—just don’t call it football.
