Fantasy Football And Its Discontents
This is probably the one where I lose you. But please, I need this. My 13 pet parakeets are dying and this is all I have.
This year I named my two fantasy teams “Shakespeare?! *Shakes Beer*” and “Jazz Legend Roy Donk.” If after reading that you need more proof that I’m dumb look no further than my teams last year, which were named “ISIS? More like Bye, Sis” and “Thot Crimes.” These are the team names of someone with too much time on his hands and a willful misunderstanding of the term “humor.” And yet, last year “ISIS? More like Bye, Sis” won the league. Clearly, I tapped into a dark energy.
People still see fantasy football, despite its rising popularity, as the domain of D&D nerds who happen to like watching athletics. Even though both sports and non-sports media, as well as the NFL, have fully embraced fantasy football the stigma around fantasy remains. FX had a popular show about a fictional fantasy league that aired for seven seasons. The show starred a guy who lied about being in the Twin Towers on 9/11, but a show nonetheless. Sports sites hire multiple writers to cover fantasy football. Game broadcasts include fantasy point totals on their bottom tickers. Fantasy football is here to stay! It’s easy to see why those companies like it. The NFL likes it because it gets people invested in games they normally wouldn’t watch. The media likes it because they can use the increase in traffic to get more ad dollars. Vegas likes it because it gets people one step closer to betting on games. But why do the people who actually play like it? Who are these people who spend countless hours of their lives on fantasy?
There are a few obvious answers. For one, it allows fans to feel like they are Chris Ballard, the General Manager of the Indianapolis Colts. Which is utterly reasonable. Who doesn’t want to live their life as Ballard. To stop being a Ballard Boy and become a Ballard Man? On any given day of the week your average NFL fan is figuring out how exactly they will complete Adelbard’s Transformundus Maleficarium allowing them to finally inhabit Chris Ballard’s body and live the rest of their lives as CB himself.
Of course, not everyone has access to the strength of spirit or a high enough Wisdom stat to understand the dark mysteries of the Astral Plane. So for 99% of people who play fantasy it’s a power trip. You don’t like how a player is doing? Cut ‘em. You don’t like how some pretty boy millionaire is taking third downs off? Cut ‘em. Your back-up flex option got injured? Cut ‘em. Most people don’t wield any type of power in their day-to-day lives and making roster changes in a fantasy football league is just one easy way to get that fix. If only these people would realize that al-Abad’s Incantation remains the only safe and reliable way to quickly access the unlimited power reserves of the universe. Even the youngest trainee at The Citadel knows to start each day with the Incantation. Doing a three-way trade so that you can handcuff Melvin Gordon just to piss off your friend “Calvin Johnson’s Johnson” won’t give you access to the powers of the divine. Everyone knows this.
There are other reasons why people play fantasy of course. Maybe The Lost University of Naub-al Shum revoked their admittance after it was discovered they were tinkering with the very percepts of reality and they’ve got some time on their hands. Or perhaps, a djinn stole magic from their very soul rendering them impotent and in need of a hobby. Could be that their high school friends still play. Sometimes it’s because they were defeated by the massed armies of the Hidden Lands and are biding time before their return to power. Rarely it’s because they’re a big Cleveland Browns fan and they want to do everything they can to support their team. Could be anything really.
Whatever your reason, fantasy football is fun. Just don’t take it too far. You might piss off Azazel-Krum the interdimensional demon who really needs Ezekiel Elliot to come back to the Cowboys. And you don’t want to piss off A-K.