I first started playing fantasy football in 1999. My fantasy football teams were great because I had nothing better to do. I wasn’t able to drive yet. I was shy in general. My friends were also nerds who were into sports. What else could I do but sit down, watch games, analyze statistics, and be on the Internet enough to make moves quickly to better my team? I always played only one team a year. I won one league title and was in the top four of leagues every year I was in high school.
I got to college and things started to stray. While I still
liked watching football and fantasy football, I had other things going on and
actually liked to go outside, so my teams started to turn downward. There was
even one year where I did not play fantasy football.
Now, it’s gotten to a point where it’s really out of hand. I
have my day job, I do comedy, and I have a social life. This leaves little time
for being a statistics nerd. I recently picked up Baltimore tight end Dennis Pitta because I heard one interview with Ron Jaworski, and he said that he’s
good. That’s the time on my hands for fantasy football. I can’t hang with a
world of people who care about it way more than I do. I can’t hang with people
who choose being plugged into multiple computers and smartphones to keep up
with their statistics and which players to pick up and drop. I can’t keep up
with weekly podcasts and columns from “fantasy experts” (people who managed to
turn 1999 me into a career. Why couldn’t I have done this?!).
Nevertheless, I did some proper research cramming the day
before my draft. As a result, I somehow ended up winning “Best Draft” based off
whatever analysis Yahoo did. This was not surprisingly the kiss of death. My
team is now 0-2, and after Cam Newton’s awful performance on Thursday night,
may be trudging its way to 0-3.
Last weekend, Golak and I went out to watch the games at a
local Buffalo Wild Wings (yes, we were like the people in the commercials! By
the way, the most fun/pathetic thing to do when at a Buffalo Wild Wings is to
start cheering when a Buffalo Wild Wings commercial comes on the TVs). There was
one particular guy going crazy over fantasy football. At one point, he looked
at the screen the Chiefs were on and said, “Come on, Dexter McCluster!” Dexter McCluster? How deep is your league that you need him to do anything? Finally,
he was screaming at so many different screens that it led another guy (not
surprisingly a Browns fan in a Josh Cribbs jersey) to say, “You’re cheering for
too much!”
My main point is that fantasy football has lost its luster
just like poker, competitive basketball, and even competitive tennis did for
me. Somewhere along the line, people managed to destroy it and take away the
elements of it that made it enjoyable. For fantasy football, it’s more about the money and the
desperation than it is about the skill and the fun, which at that point, I might as well
gamble on actual games rather than having to care about statistics and making
updates during the week. So, it looks like 2012 may be the year I retire from
fantasy football. Now, watch as my team runs off 14 straight wins and takes down
the title.
I know as much about Dennis Pitta as I do the woman in this photo with him.
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