Jack hates fantasy football and you should too

In an approach uncommon to many in the sports realm,  I’m going to be as upfront as possible (take a lesson, Brett Favre):

I HATE fantasy football!

Everyone reading this right now is aghast at how the one, and only, Jack Bauer of All Sports, could possibly think negative of fantasy football. Allow me to explain myself. For me, fantasy football actually takes away from my enjoyment of the game. I am already big enough fan of the NFL, so why wake up at 9:00 a.m. West Coast Time on Sunday at the expense of my Saturday night social life?

Fantasy football forces me to care about things I don’t want to think about — such as the performance of a running back, wide receiver, etc. on a team destined for a top-five draft position after season’s end — or the performance of a team’s defensive unit playing in an unheralded matchup on Thursday night football that I simply don’t want to watch, despite the massive football fan I am. At the end of the day, I just want to watch football and not have to root for a random roster of individual players that end up on a team with my name attached as manager.

Rooting for a team near the goal line to throw an incomplete pass so my “fantasy” running back can run it in for a touchdown, or for an offense to not gain a single first down, not score a single point, and commit an abominable amount of turnovers so my “fantasy” defense can score higher ruins the experience for me. I do not like being in situations of having to root for both “good football” and “bad football” when a game has no bearing on my reality team. I prefer to just sit back and take in the experience of watching the greatest game on Earth and appreciating the immense talent of players, competitive nature of games, fan involvement, and the complexity of play calling.

Being a huge fan of football as well as a lifelong fan of the Eagles, I have enough to root for already without fantasy football. The interests of my team will always take priority over the interests of any fantasy team I have. I do not see the point in playing if at times I am actually rooting against players on my fantasy team because they could hurt my reality team. I do not even view potentially benefiting from players putting up good stats against my realty team, or a team I want to lose, as a consolation for me if I do not get the desired result for my reality team.

In order to comply with my personal believe of full disclosure in my life as a sports-geek, I am obligated to report that I most recently played fantasy football last season in a league which featured Dr. Sportsfan and The Phoenix. This was the first time that I had played fantasy football since the 2003 season, and the superstitious (though improving slowly) Jack Bauer of All Sports does not believe it is coincidence that it was the 2004 season when the Eagles finally broke their streak of three consecutive conference championship game losses and reached the Superbowl. My fantasy football team finished in fifth place (out of 10 teams) with a .500 record and qualified for a playoff birth. After improbably reaching the finals for the first time in my fantasy sports career, of course I lost to a sub .500 team. I HATE fantasy football!

For those who are merely casual fans of the sport and/or do not have an attachment to a reality team, I more than understand the allure of fantasy football. However, I can not support fantasy football and the Goliath that it has become. Despite the influx of new fans and interest to the game, the consequences are largely negative. The increase in fans has brought more money to the NFL, which has caused ticket prices to rise, and player contracts, specifically rookie contracts, to spiral out of control — thus creating selfish divas out of grown men who are supposed to be the toughest of all athletes as well as team-first. Furthermore, all of the talk about going to an 18 game regular season schedule and an expansion franchise in London can be attributed to the vertical rise in interest in the NFL the last 10 years, due in no small part to the growth of fantasy football.

I HATE fantasy football, and those who have attachment to a real NFL team — and/or care about the long-term sanctity and tradition of NFL football — should hate it too!

Tags: fantasy football, NFL