Let me setup the scene for you:
Favre and the Vikings are moving down the field in the 4th quarter last week against the Miami Dolphins at home. Down by 4. Needing a touchdown to win. They have the ball with a little under 6 minutes to play with EXCELLENT field position. Naturally, they hand the ball to Adrian Peterson because 1) they only need 24 yards to score, and 2) they want to run some time off the clock.
“WHY THE F*** WON’T YOU THROW TO SHIANCOE???”
Available at BustedTees.com
You see, I don’t care about strategy. I want my fantasy guys to get points. It doesn’t matter that teams are doing the right things to try to win the game. Nevermind that they were facing the Dolphins, a division rival of my beloved Jets. In that moment, one thing was simple. Throw it to Shiancoe. Get a touchdown. I won’t lose this week.
Well in the end they ran on every play, gained 23 yards, lost the ball on downs at the 1 yard line and ended up losing the game. Of course, it’s all Favre’s fault. Go back to that little hole in Mississippi and throw the ball around with your buddies while you all wear Wrangler jeans and refuse to shave.
Anyway, I thought now was as good a time as any to ramble about fantasy football and how it is the single thing that is holding the NFL together every week. Join me?
First off, let me say that fantasy football is amazing. It enables somebody to feel like they are in control of a team and they can do whatever they want to their players with absolutely no consequences. For free. In some leagues there are unlimited trades, free agency pick ups, and no salary cap. Awesome.
Mostly, it makes me feel like I am the GM. If a guy has a great game one week and he isn’t on my team, I slap myself for not being savvy enough to have picked him up. But then I feel like a ninja on Tuesday mornings as I pick up all of the players I want for the next week before all of the other people who have real jobs can. After 2 weeks of play, I’ve made 10 different roster changes. Might be the reason I am 0-2. Or, it might be the reason I’ll end 14-2.
I like to have the power to cut players whenever I want. Oh, Ahmad Bradshaw, your 89 rushing yards are respectable, but you didn’t get me a touchdown. Don’t you know that I get 6 extra points if you score??? Get off my virtual field!
Now on to the main portion of this post. The NFL would not exist without fantasy football. Don’t believe me? Do you REALLY believe there are that many Drew Brees or Andre Johnson or Danny Amendola fans in the country? There wouldn’t be if these guys didn’t rack up 25-30 points for their fantasy owners every week. Would I constantly be looking for St. Louis highlights to see how many points they gave up if I didn’t get points for Amendola returning so many kicks?
Because of fantasy football, NFL Sunday Ticket is such a huge success. Think about it. Sunday Ticket gives a fantasy owner access to every single game so he can flip through the channels to keep tabs on his players. They even let you program into your TV who is on your fantasy team so that way you will get screen notifications when that player gets a catch or scores. Amazing. If you have the Red Zone channel and Shiancoe on your fantasy team, you feel my pain from last week.
New Meadowlands Stadium cost a reported $1.6 Billion
With so many people playing fantasy football and going to bars or paying for Sunday Ticket to watch games, the NFL continues to grow. Money from TV deals allows teams to finance billion dollar stadiums. (Side note: why do people go to football games? For any reasonable amount of money, you still can’t see anything happening. Just buy Sunday Ticket.)
In the end, the feeling one gets from playing fantasy football is probably equivalent to what someone feels like on steroids. Intense power and satisfaction. Unless you are losing. Then you feel like you just watched Carrot Top for 3 hours. Every fantasy owner instantly becomes the authority on who to start, who to sit, and what it will take to win a football game. It also shows us that 99% of these people are dead wrong, incompetent, and should go nowhere near coaching (see my post on Little League dads).
For the 1% of people who actually know what they are doing and consistently win fantasy leagues, I think they should be hired immediately by the New York Jets. That way, we can win a few games, not keep boneheaded players that collect more penalties than 3 year old children (I’m looking at you Cromartie), and win a Super Bowl for the first time in over 40 years.
Why you gotta be like that? 