Pros and (Mostly) Cons of Fantasy Football

Kyle Baldemore
Aug 31, 2018 · 5 min read

I was going to write a cheat sheet for fantasy football, but was hesitant to do so because of my upcoming fantasy football draft on Sunday. Once (or sometimes two or three times) a year, I stare at a list of names of freak athletes and Drew Brees and formulate a strategy to assemble the best possible lineup of these people. It’s the funnest thing ever. It’s also possibly the dumbest thing ever.

Even dumber, possibly, is that my reluctance to do a cheat sheet is because it would provide insight for rival players into my totally avant-garde draft ideas. Even DUMBER than that, possibly, is that I haven’t made the playoffs in my fantasy football league in three years, but I’m still considered #good by peers because I’m well versed in fantasy football jargon. Meanwhile the new guy two years ago got laughed at by all of us fucking nerds for taking a quarterback in the first round, and he ended up winning the whole thing thanks largely to that quarterback.

Here’s a short list of good things about fantasy football, because my biggest personal cognitive dissonance short of eating meat is still fun for me on occasion.

MONEY

Playing with a bunch of puds in a free league is such a waste of time when it comes to football. Like, I do a free baseball league every year because the season lasts 90 years long and I would probably forget I even put money down. I do a free hockey league because it helps me keep up with new guys coming in and I stay connected to teams outside of the Blackhawks.

Football’s weekly schedule makes it stupid easy to follow and set your lineup, but somehow you hear stories about guys not giving a shit enough to stay on top of it. Money is the motivator here. You think Big Jim is gonna forget to sub out his now-paraplegic quarterback if he’s 5–0 for the season and has a chance to win some cash? No way. He’ll ride Brian Hoyer to a 5–8 year, thank you very much.

The most I’ve ever won playing a fantasy football league was $200 when I was maybe 20. I felt like God with that $200, you have no idea. One of the leagues I’m in this year had a buy-in of $250, because I’m arrogant and stupid. Definitely gonna win, though.

NOSTALGIA

This is more of a personal thing, but one of the very, very few things my dad and I have in common is sports. Some of my earliest memories of my dad involve watching him pore over cheat sheets in preparation for his draft(s). He let me help him draft one of his teams when I was like 8, and I eventually got to have my own team with his supervision. I quickly thought that I knew everything, of course, and made my own league as a teenager that I still run today.

My brother inherited my dad’s fantasy genes that apparently skipped over me. He’s won probably $2000–3000 in his lifetime, the fucker. Jake’s very modest 99% of the time, but put him in a fantasy setting with people he’s familiar with and he turns into LaVar Ball. It’s hilarious.

TALKING SHIT

Bringing up Jake’s mouth in a good segue for the best part about fantasy football, which is talking mad fucking shit to EVERYONE. You drafted a guy who shredded his ACL in pre-season? Idiot! You dumb asshole! Nobody should be safe from shit talking.

My best friend is the resident heel of the league that I run, and it’s honestly perfect because his team is always either really good, or really awful. The year after he won the championship on the back of Blake Bortles-to-Allen Robinson garbage time touchdowns, he proceeded to come in dead last the following year. I got a sick joy from watching his budding empire crumble. I’m a psychopath.

Okay, now the bad stuff.

LITERALLY EVERYTHING I JUST SAID

Completely being honest, how is any of this good? How warped of a mind do you need to have to revere gambling, reminiscing about your dad gambling, and ghoulish schadenfreude?

Football fans are dumb. Or, at the very least, watching football makes them dumb. I’ve never been to an NFL game, and I probably never will because of RedZone, but I would imagine it to resemble that scene in Game of Thrones where someone throws poop at Joffrey’s face and it starts this huge riot. People get hurt in football, and that excites the masses. The excitement isn’t overt usually, it’s sometimes mixed with horror, revulsion, sympathy, despair, among other things.

Fantasy football causes fans’ reactions to injuries to change. The sympathy and revulsion are quickly washed away with thoughts of “who’s his backup?” Last year my first overall pick was Giants receiver Odell Beckham Jr. Him, along with Kareem Hunt’s breakout performance, Melvin Gordon and Kirk Cousins’ consistency, and savvy waiver pickup Alvin Kamara had my team off to a great start. Odell broke his leg in half in Week 5, and his on-field reaction was difficult to see. I was upset for the guy, because I like Odell and he was my player. But I’d be outright lying if the thought of “oh fuck, my wide receiver depth is trash now” didn’t linger in the back of my mind.

To call a fantasy draft “dehumanizing” might be a bit dramatic. You’re picking guys to “own” in a very non-literal way, and only the staunchest social justice warriors would take umbrage, I think. But it’s not inaccurate to say that fantasy football as a whole dehumanizes actual football players. A couple bad games means a player gets verbally abused online. Sometimes even an injury, like Odell Beckham Jr.’s gets criticized by people. Football players are becoming more polarizing than ever to the NFL’s dumbass fan base because they’re finding a voice. They’re speaking out on racial inequality, police brutality, incarceration disparity, and fans will go at great lengths to find excuses to chastise them for not “sticking to sports”. The argument that athletes shouldn’t talk about politics is especially asinine when Ted the accountant or Trevor the gas station clerk is the one making the argument. Maybe stick to, uhh, your job?

Also: NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR FANTASY FOOTBALL TEAM. Unless you’re literally asked about your team, talking about it is like a giant fart in the wind to most people. And if you want to talk about drama/pettiness, look no further than your average fantasy football league. Getting twelve dudes to agree on anything is pulling teeth. Collecting fees on time, explaining and re-explaining waivers, the scoring system, the draft time, pretty much EVERYTHING is an argument. That $250 league that I’m in has a no-trade rule. Fucking what? I thought it was a joke, but apparently too much bickering about trade “fairness” in past years has made it outlawed. Most of these men are in their 40s.

Anyway, come back in two days for the link to our podcast, where we’re going to recap our draft and directly contradict me saying that nobody cares about my fantasy football team.

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