Emily Lund: Fantasy Football, Go AWAY!

Basically, I know nothing about football or any of the players on any of the teams. So, you might think I’m here to rant about my hatred of fantasy football because it consumes all of my husband’s time on Sundays, Thursday nights and Monday nights. I am sure you are fully expecting to read a bitchy rant about how the season is too long and how I just don’t understand the draw of it or how I only like Tampa Bay’s turquoise (the color of the sea) uniforms because they are “pretty”.

I almost forgot, I know one thing about football which I learned before I stopped watching in 1998 for the following reason. FACT: Barry Sanders, my favorite player, could have broken every record in the history of the universe if he so desired. However, because the torture of playing with the worst football team with the worst quarterback and worst coach was just too much to bear, Barry Sanders fled the country and retired much too early, all in avoidance of having to play one more second of his life with the shittiest shit show ever, the Detroit Lions.

End rant.

However, this piece is about Fantasy Football and my utter disdain for the whole thing.

Once upon a time, in August, I was admiring how great I had done over the years completely avoiding playing any sort of fantasy sport and how no one had ever convinced me this was good idea. Good job!

BUT, I recently started a new job and felt that I should attempt to integrate with my coworkers. Somehow, I was convinced to sign up for the workplace fantasy football league. Well, shit! I didn’t have time for this, but I also thought I could most likely sign up and leave my team to chance. Incorrect!

Right away, I learned there was a draft. We would all be in a room eating and drinking and drafting. My first instinct was to draft a quarterback…wrong. I was quickly advised to get running backs and wide receivers and leave quarterbacks for 5th or 6th round. What on earth was I going to do? I had two days to prepare for the draft. I couldn’t name a running back or wide receiver if someone paid me. I decided to start my investigation into all of the positions in the current lineups of all the teams in the NFL. I created a detailed spreadsheet with marcos and algorithms to determine who I would draft based on my position in the draft. I consulted everyone who had a team in a different league (who wasn’t playing against me) and made about 10 lists of possible outcomes. I then forced my male employees to advise me on every draft decision made as I was making it and within the 90 second timeframe I was given to choose. I spent copious amounts of time coming up with the perfect name for my team (Team Therapists). This was day 1.

Well, we are now into week 5 (as I write this) and I’m so far deep in this mess that I have officially turned into one of those Fantasy Football crazies. I told my husband I was too tired to have sex and then immediately turned on Thursday night football to see if “my boy, Odell Beckham Jr.” was going to get me any points. My husband sat in bed next to me, arms crossed asking me if I was really going to stay up watching Thursday night football. Sidenote: prior to this year, I had no idea there was football on Thursday nights.

Everyone else in our league is a seasoned professional at Fantasy Football but no one is as competitive as I am. This is a terrible combination for me. I don’t know anything about any of this but I MUST WIN! Well, I’m not winning; I’m 1-3 with no hope of improvement based on the fact that this is all random and luck and like playing the lottery! Well, that and that my team is awful. I think the Fantasy Football technical term is all my starters have “shit the bed”.

My accused rapist QB (you may now understand my team name) is out for 4-6 weeks and my backup quarterback has given me hot steaming piles of dog poop so far. My starting RB got me negative points and one week my head coach got more points than any of the starters on my team. Terrible.

I now spend days and nights on the computer, on the blogs, asking peoples’ advice and changing my starting lineup. I wake up in the middle of the night on Sunday to check my score, and I can’t have a conversation with anyone in the room if a football game is on the television. I’ve resorted to taunts and shit-talking to my opponents and trash-talking the stars who are burning out early. I had to explain to someone that I needed a new kicker because mine became a free agent in the “real football world”. I’m THAT dude!

I still know nothing about football, but if you want to know how many fantasy points Jeremy Hill didn’t get me this week (because I traded him, damnit!), I can tell you immediately. This is a serious problem, and I have grown to hate fantasy football, my ESPN football real-time updates, and anyone who has Aaron Rodgers on their team. Why was this torture invented? I assume it was to get people to watch every single game broadcast instead of just your favorite team’s game. I just don’t know.

What I do know is Fantasy Football is not a fantasy. It is a nightmare that I can now not escape from until January. It is the biggest timesuck of my life, and I have watched more football games in the last 4 weeks than I have ever watched in my entire lifetime (including football games I attended in High School). I am an angry, crazed Fantasy Football girl. I will never ever participate again…NEVER AGAIN, unless of course I make it to the playoffs this year.