Everyone has a Sunday routine. We sleep-in late, go to Leo’s for an
afternoon brunch, chain ourselves to a desk in Lau, and proceed to do the
massive amounts of homework that we neglected for the past two days.
Unless, of course, we play fantasy football. In this case, we chain ourselves to the
living room couch and stare at the TV for hours, tracking stats from five
different games on our computer and smartphone.
We watch anxiously as little horizontal bars stretch across the screen,
following the drive chart to see if any of our favorite players have
scored. Every yard is 0.1 points. Every field goal is 3. Every touchdown is 6. Each point is a little victory, bringing us
one step closer to beating our opponent and earning bragging rights for the
rest of the week.
It is not a very productive way to spend a Sunday, but it
sure is entertaining. It makes every
game and team interesting. Once
irrelevant, I suddenly care about the Cincinnati Bengals because I drafted BenJarvus
Green-Ellis. I now root for the Patriots
because I have their starting running back, and I don’t hate the Cowboys as
much because I want Dez Bryant to play well.
Owning fifteen players from fifteen different teams expands the breadth
of my interest in the NFL.
Sunday becomes sacred – not for the sake of doing homework
or going to church, but for watching football.
Being a team owner is very time-consuming, and reading Plato is
extremely difficult when you are tracking several games at once on your
computer screen. There’s a real benefit
to having an 11 p.m. Mass and no classes on Monday.
With four playoff appearances and one fantasy championship
under my belt, I know the glory of winning it all. But there are also many sacrifices along the
way. Listening to your friend scream
every time Arian Foster scores a touchdown can get extremely annoying. It is agonizing seeing your roommate pound
his chest after beating you by the slimmest of margins. Some guys in your league create weird
nicknames and develop strange alternate egos.
Your heart is torn when your hometown team plays against your fantasy
quarterback.
Is it all worth it?
Although it seems like a mundane way to spend your weekend, there are
actually a lot of important things on the line.
Despite its name, fantasy football has a lot of real-world
implications. Over the past few years,
it has grown tremendously popular, with an estimated 27 million people
participating last year. Every major
sports website – ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo, CBS, FOX – has its own team
of fantasy writers and analysts offering week-to-week coverage of games, draft
strategies, and player rankings. Popular
analysts have their own columns and radio shows devoted entirely to fantasy
sports.
How did we get to this point? How is it possible that Matthew Berry gets paid
full-time to write about a silly game of stats and numbers? Are we spending our Sundays in vain? Sure, it is a lot of fun competing with
friends and cheering for our favorite players, but fantasy football – and all
fantasy sports in general – is corrupting the sport in many ways.
Put simply, it has reduced football into its basic elements
– points and yards. We are enslaved by
the numbers. We cheer for players
instead of teams and touchdowns instead of wins. We betray our hometown teams. We muddle our loyalties.
It makes Sunday the busiest day of the week, for all the
wrong reasons. At the end of the season,
the glory of a fantasy championship sure is sweet. But it might not be worth all of the
hair-pulling and screaming at the TV. After
all, it is just fantasy.
