Fantasy Football — A Real Problem

It’s difficult to watch one’s favorite sports team or listen to sports-talk radio without being bombarded by advertisements for so-called “Fantasy Football” leagues Fan Duel and Draft Kings. The leagues summarize, in my estimation, modern man’s preference tendency towards “freedom from” and not the “freedom for” that comes with commitment. Such leagues allow one to pick a different team each week, and abandon that team for another just days later. If that setup isn’t a microcosm of our modern approach to relationships in general and marriage in particular, then I don’t know what is.

I am, in fact, a HUGE sports fan, and have made it a point to attend different baseball games around the country. I’m also a HUGE fan of winning money. But if there was ever a time in history when the profits of a business model are centered on and a function of a purposeful short-term commitment, it is definitely now.

Just as bad as the aforementioned principles that underpin fantasy football is the overt point made by the commercial’s actor, who added insult to injury when he proclaimed “Fan duel has changed my Sundays; it’s made it a lot more interesting.” As Catholics we must remember that there is nothing more interesting and nothing more apt to change our Sundays than attending Mass.

These are certainly sad times in which we reside. Thank you, Lord, for loving us each week and for an eternity, no doubt, while refusing to abandon us no matter how bad our “stats” are.