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I had never known heartbreak before seventh grade.
I’m not one for caring about meaningless football games, but this one actually mattered to me. More than it ever should have. It was Monday Night Football; Legendary quarterback Brett Favre vs. a struggling New Orleans Saints defense. It was a match made in heaven, or so I thought.
I only needed four points to win my fantasy football game and move on to the playoffs and I was more than certain I was going to win. My stud QB was projected a whopping 27 points. I would have bet my mother’s jewels I was going to win.
Then it happened.
One hundred twenty-seven yards. Two fumbles. One interception. 3.75 points. I missed the playoffs. I wanted to cry, which was an obvious overreaction. This is when I realized I had a problem. I am addicted to fantasy football.
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I hate shopping.
My hatred for it has gotten to the point that I can’t even call it shopping anymore because I feel so feminine just saying it.
The word shopping means trying on a pair of pumps, giggling with your bff, then trying on 17 more. Buying, on the other hand, is more of seeing the garment, checking the tag to make sure it says medium, and buying it. No funny business.
Rather than do what I would usually do on a Sunday afternoon when I was 10, watch football, I was dragged on countless occasions to JC Penny. Because clearly that’s what a 10 year old wants to do with their Sunday.
They took me on trips down long aisles filled with shoes among shoes and I felt my manliness decrease as I heard squeals of unnecessary excitement from each shoe.
I don’t understand it. They are shoes. Just shoes.
I’ve accepted that that’s just what women do. They buy shoes. No guy understands it, and no guy ever will.
I realized recently that I, as a man, have a similar irregular passion that opposite sex will never fully understand. They will never understand why us men live, love, die and obsess over fantasy football.
Where girls have buying, boys have fantasy football.
Fantasy football’s popularity spread to the web in the 2000s, and over 27 million people play it. In a nutshell, fantasy owners draft one quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, one tight end, a kicker and a team defense. The players rack up stats and the owners get points per yard and touchdowns. The owners compete head to head each week and the owner with the most points at the end of the week, is victorious.
I started my first fantasy league alongside a friend of mine in 2007 with a team called “We Love Maria,” a team dedicated to our then-celebrity crush Maria Sharapova.
Yeah, we were seventh grade horndogs; of course, we named it after a girl.
Since then, I’ve been hooked on this fantasy thing. The ravishing Russian tennis star didn’t give us the boost to our team we had hoped for and we finished at a gruesome, noob-like 6-8 for the year.
The mediocre season actually bothered me and to be quite honest, I was a little embarrassed. I was a football fanatic, and my own personal team was a joke. I was genuinely depressed with the outcome of my rookie season.
Ever since the losing season, I’ve been spending way too much time with my fantasy teams.
Women are always trying to find the new trend. May it be Uggs, v-necks or scarves they are always trying to be the first to get the next best thing. That’s pretty much exactly what we do as fantasy players.
If I pick up a rookie running back and he goes off and has 38 points, I’ll look like a fantasy god since I found the new trend. Yet, if I pick up a wide receiver who I think has potential, but was unaware he is out for the season due to a broken leg, it’d be like wearing a clown nose thinking it was in style.
I found since converting that I pay way more attention to the players in the league, rather than the teams. I can honestly tell you that I don’t care if the Saints win a game for the rest of the year. As long as my quarterback Drew Brees throws for 300+ yards and 2 touchdowns a game, I’ll be happy.
Yet, fantasy has also tuned me into heartless fiend.
It’s almost gotten to the point that when I’m are playing an opposing player that is doing well, I start wishing harm upon them so they stop scoring points on me. Though I’m not proud of it, nor do I condone it, it’s what I do on a weekly basis. It’s not that I want them to be injured and have a life or career-ending injury, I just happen to care a little bit more about my fantasy team than should be healthy, so sue me.
I know I’m addicted to fantasy, yet I’m 100 percent okay with it.
Having certain/good players rather than not-so-stellar players on my team is probably the single thing consumes my time the most in the fall. I’d rather pick up the three billion leaves from my one oak tree than have a failing fantasy team. If I start a running back that has a week where he only has 12 yards and a fumble, you might as well never mention his name to me ever again, because I’ve forgotten it.
My Sundays consist of checking my team and stats after every quarter of every game. It’s a tedious process of praying and voodoo dances each time I click refresh to find out how my players are doing. This is followed by collapsing to my knees in joy or giving my running back an earful from my couch.
But fantasy hasn’t been all bad for me.
I’ve stayed connected with elementary and middle school school friends via fantasy football that I most likely would have grown apart from without fantasy. We always have something to talk about, even if it’s just about how bad one person beats the other, or how no one in the league started the best player that week, not to mention the immense smack talk that consists between my elementary rivals.
Our “bro time” is much like a girl’s buying time.
On Sundays, you can either find me either frolicking around in my living room because one of my wide receivers that is doing a number on a defense, or on the verge of defacing the TV because the QB I’m playing against just threw his fifth friggin’ touchdown.
Fantasy has turned me into a monster and practically ruins my fall due to the stress I undergo, but I’m okay with it. Why? I’m not quite sure. Probably for the same reason women go shopping… I mean, buying.
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