So.
I’m entering this weekend with mixed feelings. On one hand, I get to fly up to Seattle and bring some of my favorite clients to the Seattle Seahawks home opener vs my hometown Chicago Bears. I’ll be sitting in good seats drinking a Pacific Northwest ale and wearing my team’s colors in a stadium so loud they’ve dubbed themselves the “12th man.” Hey Seattle, don’t you know that the last time someone was called the 12th man he betrayed his boss and let him die on a cross? Boom, Catholic joke.
But I won’t be rooting for the Bears. No, I’ll be rooting for Marshawn Lynch, the Seahawks running back. Why? Because he was my first overall fantasy football draft pick.
Fantasy sports as an institution have essentially ruined what makes the sport of football great, like cheering for your team through thick, thin or overrated prima donna QB.
A few years ago I’d been strictly a basketball guy. When I started my new job in the Bay Area I was asked if I wanted to play fantasy football with the guys in the office. Being such a social guy and all around team player I whole heartedly agreed. I’m neither of those things.
Draft Day rolled around and I spent the majority of it shooting from the hip. Traditional fantasy football draft strategy has you picking running backs and receivers before other positions. I snagged quarterback Andrew Luck with my second overall pick. I drafted Gronk, a tight end, THIRD. I basically said, hey I see these guys on SportsCenter’s Top Ten every Sunday night, they should be on my team. It’s like when your little sister does her March Madness bracket by which mascot animal she likes more and finishes in the top 1% in the nation. Pure idiocy and guessing.
My fantasy football team last year was like a greased up lightning bolt runaway freight train strapped to a rocket ship. (Hey that’s a good visual for an erectile dysfunction commercial.) I won out the season, and won handily. I collected all of the prize money from my coworkers and knew right then and there that I’d made a terrible mistake.
This year I’m not in one or two fantasy football leagues. I’m in three. I’m defending my title at the old work league, I’m in a league at my new job and I’m the commissioner of one that includes all of my buddies from Hawaii to NYC. Unfortunately for you — but fortunately for my mother — I can’t share the name of that league in this PG-13 setting.
I purchased NFL Ticket Max for DirecTV. That’s not the normal NFL ticket that every well-adjusted human being can choose to purchase. This is NFL Ticket to the MAX. I can watch every game every Sunday on every device I own, including the microwave. You can program your fantasy players into your TV receiver so if they make a play you’ll be notified by ticker underneath your screen. You know, like a stock trader. I have so many players in the three leagues that they don’t all fit.
My Capital R Roommate is in one of the leagues. The other night we got in a genuine bona-fide argument about her trading for a new QB. I’m canceling plans to get home and watch a meaningless Thursday night game against two crappy teams that aren’t even in the Bears division. And why? Not because someone on my team is playing, but because someone on one of my three opponents teams this week is playing. That way every time they make a four yard run I can kick our imaginary dog.
I don’t even enjoy watching football anymore. I bite my fingers like a seven year old with an oral fixation and flip between Red Zone and a regular game like an obese woman from St. Louis opening and closing a refrigerator. When someone makes a spectacular play I’m not watching the replays but running to my phone to see if I’m playing against him that week. It’s like I have a drug problem without any of the fun parts.
The sick sick irony of it all is that in these first two weeks of the NFL season (Christ almighty I’m going to have an aneurism by Thanksgiving), my teams have gone 1-5 in the first six games. If I was an NFL coach I’d be fired.
The Capital R Roommate on the other hand? She’s demolishing in her other league.
What do you think, Jay? One of my better columns?
Thanks for reading and have a better weekend than I will!
View Comments
