Talking About Fantasy Football is My Least Favorite Sport
When I was in college, my friend’s sister came to visit from her hippie commune in Oregon. (That’s what she called it.) My friends and I were discussing our upcoming fantasy football draft, and she had no idea what we were talking about. This was 2012. At the time, I couldn’t believe it. Now I realize she was right to think the whole thing sounded weird, and I was perpetuating the dumb fantasy football culture in America by thinking she was the weird one.
I’m actually in two leagues, both with different groups of friends. It’s not super high stakes stuff — one has a trophy and a $20 buy-in, the other is just a good excuse for friends who now live all across the country to stay connected and do something together.
I’ve been doing this since high school, I know about football as much as the next American with TV and internet, and I’m pretty decent at fantasy. I have the trophy I use to hold books up on my nightstand as proof.
And I absolutely hate talking about fantasy football. I hate it like Colin Kaepernick hates the troops and America.
Talking about fantasy football is the most irritating, pointless, mind-numbing pastime we as a group of competitive armchair quarterbacks have created. It’s one thing to argue about the merits of a real NFL game taking place, or talk shit to a friend who likes a rival team. But to discuss potential roster moves, lament “if only Odell got 10 more yards” and barter trades is soul sucking nonsense that I have no time for.
All of the people that go deep on draft techniques can kick rocks, too. What we’re doing is computerized roulette, but each number represents a physical person whose knee ligaments will be mashed potatoes by the time they hit 35. There’s no strategy outside of “don’t pick a kicker in the first round.” But you know what? Fuck it. You could do it and probably still win half of your games.
It’s chaos and meaningless. David Johnson proved that last year.
I become a conservative and emotionally unavailable 1950s father about fantasy. You already drafted your players, that’s what you get! Deal with it! Don’t talk to me about your problems, deal with it or shut up.
My friends think I’m selfish because I’ve gotten to the point where I will be frank with them and tell them that I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care who you drop. I don’t care who you’re trying to trade. As a matter of fact, don’t propose any trades with me. I won’t accept them.
At first it was that I only cared to talk about my own team, but now I don’t even want to do that.
Honestly, is this how NFL owners and GM’s feel? Is Jeffrey Lurie just sick to all shit of talking to Mark Davis about what they’re doing? This is a bad example, because talking to Mark Davis about anything is no doubt a fascinating experience because he’s an absurd, enchanting bowl cut cartoon character who drives a souped up mini van and calls Bennihana his “office.”
The NFL is already batshit. It’s a fantasyland with no real consequence that we as a society have placed on some pedestal and assigned arbitrary import to—so much that we’re burning shoes and using it to judge politicians’ viewpoints on crucial social issues.
We can’t forget it’s a big, dumb game. And I, as a resident of Philadelphia who got hella drunk and ran around in the streets when the Eagles won the Super Bowl, should take that lesson to heart, too. I see the hypocrisy here. Trust me.
But at least those teams on the field were actually there and playing together in the physical realm. They worked for this and it’s their livelihood. The fact that DeSean Jackson was on your bench and would’ve won you the game had you started him has no actual repercussions in the real world. Unless you’re some lunatic who is in like $1,000 leagues. That shit makes me anxious just thinking about it, so please don’t talk to me about that.
And you know what? Maybe I am selfish. Maybe when I hear my friends discussing their match-ups or prospective waiver pickups, I’m just so uninterested in the fact that I’m not a part of the conversation — like how Trump needs his name to appear often in briefings or he gets angry-bored. Maybe that’s the only child in me.
But when my friends ask about an acquisition I made, I kind of ignore it. When they say “Oh man, if only you had Ted Ginn starting,” I just say, “Yeah.” I don’t want to talk about it.
How did we get to this point? This was something we did as a way to stay in touch with our friends after adulthood forces them away from your basements and into marriages and jobs on opposite coasts, or maybe to bond with the coworkers you’re forced to spend your days with in close quarters.
I partially blame “The League,” the now-over TV show on FX based around friends in a cutthroat (yet comically small — eight teams? Really?) league that has inspired scores of Barstool chuds to send videos of themselves talking shit to each other over fantasy football and creating punishments for losing, like a diet version of frat hazing.
Everyone has to have a “smack board” now. Everyone has to spend the days before the draft doing mock drafts, reading in-depth analyses and predictions. All of this sounds like a profound waste of time to me.
Fantasy football is no longer a way to enjoy the game on a new level with friends. It’s now an American institution that you’re weird for not doing, like having Netflix or going to music festivals.
The only thing about your fantasy team I’m interested in is the hilarious name you’ve chosen for your team. But, if your “hilarious” name includes a player’s name on your team, or worse, incorporates a player’s name on your team into a dirty joke, keep that fucking garbage to yourself. You’re better off keeping it as “Team 8.”
Just for the love of God don’t talk to me about Team 8.
