I like football. I like college football and pro football (even though I’m a Jets fan). In fact, I’ve spent pretty much every Sunday this fall in a bar in Chicago, proudly wearing my #28 Curtis Martin jersey, and screaming along with people I’ve never met at players I’ve never met, who are playing a thousand miles away in a state I haven’t lived in in twenty years.
So I get the relative suspension of disbelief that fandom requires. And I understand the “fantasy” aspect of fantasy football. Fantasy football is fun. I don’t play it anymore, but I understand its appeal. There’s shit-talking and competition and, at the end of the day, it’s just another way to gamble, which is always good. That said, I can’t say I’m all that interested in spending eleven hours every Sunday counting how many yards some no-name running back on a 3-5 team had against the Raiders. Then again, I’ve also spent eight hours and three hundred dollars watching a tiny white ball bounce around a spinning wheel, so maybe I shouldn’t be throwing stones from my glass house, which would probably be made of more suitable building materials if I hadn’t blown so much money at casinos over the years.
But, if you do play fantasy football, one simple piece of advice: shut the Fuck up. Nobody cares about your shitty team. Oh my God, you’re 7-2 in your league? That’s amazing. Have you submitted your resume to the Giants yet? They might be looking for a GM soon, since they’re only 2-6, which is WAY worse than 7-2. You were up eight points before Monday night and then Jimmy Graham caught two touchdowns? That’s terrible. They should totally change the rules so Monday night games don’t count. Fantasy football stories are like poker stories, only less interesting. I’d rather look at pictures of your ugly kids. Hell, I’d rather hear about your hemorrhoids. But, no, fantasy football players have to tell everyone that story. No less than the smoking hot girl I dated this summer complained to me just last week about her fantasy team tanking. (Yes, she’s smoking hot and she likes football, and no, you can’t have her number.) And, since she broke up with me a few months later, I wanted to say, “Ha! That’s what you get!” Instead, I just said, “Oh, that sucks,” and gave her a hug, because, again, she’s smoking hot and what else do you expect me to do? But you’re not smoking hot. So shut your damn mouth; I’m not interested.
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All told, fantasy football has gotten out of hand. People have four or five teams, and I’ve heard multiple people say something to the effect, “Well, yeah, I like the Dolphins, and I hope they beat the Patriots, but I have Tom Brady on two of my fantasy teams so I hope the Patriots score a lot too.” Frankly, I have more respect for people who cheat on their wife. Maybe their wife is a bitch sometimes; what have the Dolphins ever done to you? Football fandom is about loyalty and perseverance and hope. It is permanent; it is forever. It’s not some bullshit promise like marriage.
The coverage is insane too. In a poker room a few weeks back, one of the televisions was tuned to one of the fifteen new sports networks that are going to try and fail to compete with ESPN. A fantasy football show came on; if I recall correctly, it was slotted after Full Contact Chess and before a Division III women’s soccer match. The show was five guys sitting around a set discussing sleepers and positional rankings and matchups and the like. And it was full of tidbits like, “LeSean McCoy has averaged 16.5 fantasy points per game in his last four road matchups versus AFC West teams,” which might have some importance if those four games hadn’t occurred over the last four years, against teams that were vastly different than they are today.
Besides, the very idea of using fantasy football “experts” defies the whole point of fantasy football. Isn’t the point that you are supposed to be the expert? Isn’t that why you get to tell the guy you beat heads-up that he’s a worthless excuse for a human being, because your fantasy win proves that you know the game better than he does? The great irony of fantasy football experts is that men won’t ask for help with anything. Plumbing problem? We can fix it. Sex advice? That’s for idiot women who read Cosmopolitan; we don’t need some dumb broad telling us how to pleasure our wives. Fantasy football? All of sudden, we need help.
So I get fantasy football. What I don’t get is using outside help, and what I can’t stand is hearing bullshit tales of sorrow from what is essentially a made-up game. I don’t want to hear your fantasy football tales of woe. I don’t give a shit. And besides, I won’t be impressed; I finished 17th in the nation in the Yahoo Fantasy Sports league in 1999. Picked up Kurt Warner off the waiver wire in Week 1. Did I ever tell you that story?
