This guy hates fantasy football. As usual with a "ten reasons" column, there's one compelling reason but a whole lot of fatuous dreck.
1. It changes how you watch a game.
This is the compelling reason.
2. It glorifies stat accumulators at the expense of team players.
This would have been an okay argument until he shot himself in the foot with a truly bad example. Peyton Manning is, in fact, a demonstrably better quarterback than Tom Brady. The arguments people make for Brady so badly miss the point that I suspect even discussing it is a waste of time. Just trust me that Manning is. (The rest of the Colts are inferior to the rest of the Patriots by a greater margin than the Manning-Brady gap.)
A much better example of glorifying stat accumulators at the expense of team players is the trend among sportswriters and fantasy touts of fellating the Denver Bronco running back of the day, without stopping to think that the offensive line is the biggest reason why [Insert RB Here] gets 1,000+ yards.
3. It makes heroes out of problem children.
Nah, real football already did this. Fantasy football is nowhere near the #1 reason for Randy Moss's popularity. (Simple thought experiment: Fantasy leagues typically have 10+ teams of which only one can own Moss. I daresay that the portion of football fans who glorify Moss is well above 10%.)
4. The geek factor.
What a strangely inaccurate argument to make. I don't think any fantasy football owner is seriously hypothesizing a game in which each team started three running backs and the final score was 72 to 66 with defenses scoring points instead of preventing them. Bah.
5. The death of the NFL offseason.
Blame the NFL Network and various sports cable outlets for this. I'm a fantasy footballer first, where if it weren't for FFL I'd probably ignore the league the way I ignore the NBA. (My team won a Super Bowl for its aging QB, then won the very next Super Bowl, then Elway retired, they spent the post-championship grace period in a weird state of mediocrity of consistently doing just well enough to make the playoffs but get annihilated, and now I'm face to face with the reality that Mike Shanahan is a weasel and I have no reason to identify with any current Bronco. Meanwhile, two of the three most noxious franchises in the league play their home games in the market where I live.)
Anyhow, as somone who follows the NFL only for fantasy, let me tell you that I get in a good seven months of not giving a rat's behind about the NFL, between the end of the Super Bowl and about a half-hour before my first draft.
6. It's ridiculously and unfairly skewered toward offense and touchdown-makers.
Valid point, a bit redundant after I gave #2 the benefit of the doubt.
7. All those confusing and divided loyalties.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a Giants game or A's game and rooted against "my" fantasy guys from the other team. It's uncanny how badly my fantasy players do against "my" "real" players. In one league in particular I can trace my coughing up first place to the breakdown of Paul Byrd at the end of 2002. He'd had a fine summer, but wore out a bit and then the day Oakland won it's 20th game in a row they got their initial 11-0 lead by absolutely smoking him.
8. The expert phenomena. [sic]
The expert phenomenon is really the Internet's fault. How dare ordinary people defile the sportswriters' temple.
9. The money aspect.
"Gambling" is a word better reserved to games of chance than to games of skill. Admittedly, FFL is somewhere in between, and even more admittedly, there's only one league in which money changes hands, and that's... embarrassingly I couldn't tell you what the entry fee is these days. Mark Coen could.
10. The trendiness of it all.
This I'll grant.
I agree with you for the most part, but on #3 --- a lot of people do play in more than one fantasy league, so probably more than 10% of all fantasy players own Moss. I'm just saying :)
Posted by: victoria at August 25, 2005 03:23 PMI saw that article too... the thing that struck me most was the possiblity of Fantasy NewsCaster or other, similar non-sports fantasy games (using fantasy in the same sense.)
#1 isn't an argument against me playing fantasy sports (there is almost no change in how I watch football... maybe I watch football more but that's different.)
I, however, have been in sports bars with people (both random patrons and friends) who are obsessive in their rooting for their fantasy squad... but I don't see why this is worse than being obsessive and obnoxious about your favorite physical team [hence my largly ironic jersey collection.]
Also 6 and in some part 2 could be alleviated by modifying the points system. Many leagues do incorporate defensive players... which this guy would know if he'd set-up or even played in a league and paid attention.
Posted by: John at August 25, 2005 06:39 PMI will grant that it changes how a person watches a game, but I would think/hope/pray that most real football fans would like to see their team do well ahead of their fantasy players doing well (which I then remembered was Matt's essential core premise as well on point 7). On the plus side, it has made me less parochial in my NFL watching, no longer do I only care what the Lions did, I now have an interest in Sunday night/Monday night games that I may never have had before. By the way, I combine the rooting for your real team/rooting for your fantasy team very well by drafting many many Lions. But my fake Lions are always more successful than the real ones could ever hope to be.
Posted by: Craig D. Barker at August 26, 2005 04:28 AM