Fantasy Football Surpasses All Previous Cringe Thresholds

It's gone too far. Maybe it's not gone as far to say it's a sign of the apocalypse for organized sports but the existence of a new fantasy football situation comedy on FX -- The League -- tells us just how far off the beam the collective sports consciousness has fallen.

I don't get it. I never have. Lord knows I love my sports but I'm not among the several millions of so-called "sports fans" who invest months of their lives and sink hundreds of their dollars into fantasy sports. Call me crazy it's just that I still "fantasize" about being the quarterback, not the General Manager.

According to one half of the husband-wife team who created The League, I'm missing the major social advances provided by this recreational adjunct to real sports provides:

"For women or really anyone who doesn't know a lot about football it is one way to learn more about the game and get invested - by following individual players," Jackie Schaffer tells me "Fantasy Football has created a sort of social unit for myself and my husband. A way to stay in touch and watch games 'together' every Sunday when we're spread out across the country.."

I think the more accurate depiction of the fantasy footballers "social unit" is addressed head-on with a reality-based assessment by The New York Times columnist Neil Genzlinger who reviewed her show:

The sorry losers who take part in fantasy sports may have a hard time recognizing themselves in The League, a new FX comedy about longtime buddies who have a fantasy football league. For one thing, several guys in this league actually have sex with their spouses or girlfriends.

And what of Ms. Shaffer's contention that one learns more about real football by playing fantasy football? Fantasy Football -- fantasy sports of any kind -- not only teach almost nothing about their sports, they teach the wrong thing.

Let me put this in non-sports terms which most sports-addled fantasy players can understand.

As music fans, do we learn more about music by listening only to the crescendos? As students of politics, do we learn more by only analyzing sound bytes?

Nothing -- I repeat NOTHING -- in the last five years has contributed more to the dumbing down of the American sports fan than the reductive, banal and utterly shallow opiate of fantasy sports.

What's the harm, you say? Well, I bet you're one of those people who gets all bent out of shape when a pro athlete doesn't act like the "role model" -- on or off the field -- you wish he/she would. Mostly it's because of what you fear your kids will think.

So, what kind of role model are you to your sports-involved kid when you play "fantasy" sports which only tracks and glorifies the individual/non-team-related/non-wining or losing-related pieces of the game? At your kid's games you implore them to make the unselfish block, lay down the sacrifice bunt, be a good teammate, practice fundamentals, sit on the bench with dignity, "we win as a team and lose as a team," blah, blah, blah. You say one thing on Saturday to the kids, then on Sundays you obsess wildly over the touchdowns, yards rushing, passing yards and other statistical data which are only simplistic extractions of the game -- highlights -- not the more complex (and fulfilling) game itself and entirely itself. If your kid asks, "Why don't we do a fantasy league for my little league?" What's your answer?

If what I'm saying makes no sense to you then you are precisely the dumbed-down, hyper-commercialized sports fan who is the problem.

 

Comments

[Woochifer]

So, who should I sit this week, Santana Moss or Devin Hester?

[Dave Hollander - Huffpost Blogger]

Moss. He's often injured after a good week. The Bears will rebound from last week and Hester will be a big part of it.

[kpedrok]

So you say that you don't participate in fantasy sports, and yet you claim that fantasy sports teach nothing about sports? How can you claim that without ever actually following fantasy sports.

I have been writing a blog about fantasy baseball for just over a year now. My website is fantasybas­eballhotst­ove.blogsp­ot.com. I have written over 400 articles in that time. What I study specifically is statistics. How a hitter's batting average in play can dictate exactly how lucky they have been with regards to their batting average for instance. I have learned a great deal about the impact of weather, ballpark dimensions, a player's age, and just the general history of the game during this past year than I ever would have otherwise if I didn't have such passion for fantasy sports.

As a math teacher at the same time, this website is a way for me to follow my two life passions. Baseball and math. What's wrong with that? How is this any different from any other hobby like watching birds, collecting stamps, or writing like you are? Sure this hobby might seem strange to you, but millions of people have spoken.

One more thing - fantasy sports aren't tearing marriages apart in this country. People are.

[Dave Hollander - Huffpost Blogger]

You can write your 400 blogs, crunch your reams of statistics and study the weather, duck migration patterns or whatever else you deem relevant to your fantasy. But sports is real grass, real flesh, real emotion, real energy. Fantasy sports knows nothing of this.

[ConcernedAboutRFuture]

Fantasy Football is, as I type, responsible for many, many marriages and relationships gone awry. It is difficult to lose your mate for an entire weekend, incluidng monday and sometimes thursday.

In general, I think ALL SPORTS dumb down a population when it is so obsessed with the sport... couple that with reality shows and well.... you know..... we are what we are.

I can't tell you how angry I get when visiting the in-laws and my hubby and father in law are plastered to TV, disregarding everything and everyone in the room for 4 hours, while an unbelievable amount of Viagra commercials plays, and plays and plays.... as my little son watches. None of those football commercials are for children....but guess what, there's no other TV to watch or anythign to do... because they're watching football.

Can anyone give me some advice as to what I should tell my son when he asks what an erection is?

[3fingerbrown]

Gambling has made the NFL what it is today. Fantasy football is just the next step--and a positive one: it cuts the bookie out of the equation.