Fantasy Football
“The only sport whites can play better than blacks.”
“Tom Brady and Brett Favre.”
Fantasy Football is a role-playing game in which middle-class office personnel "fantasize" that they have retained a team of bondservants from the NFL. Teamowners participate in a virtual slave trade known as a "draft". According to psychologist Sigmund Freud, "Fantasy Football is a pandemic which stems from a subconscious desire to dominate other individuals".
Enjoyed by 37 million Americans, Fantasy Football "has been the single force that has driven all technological advances of HDTVs and DVRs", according the CFO of Circuit City, who wished to remain anonymous.
ESPN[edit]
Hector and Victor are a duo of cartoon characters featured on ESPN (Edifying Sports with Prattering Numbskulls) who purport themselves as soothsayers who are able to project the weekly output of each and every NFL player.
Eric Karabell is a narcissistic columnist (nice work...if you can get it, incidently) who embodies the attitude and beliefs of most teamowners and fuckers who still call everyone "dude" and "bro".
Since sports enthusiasts can now access the internet with mobile phones, these amusing scamps have a wider audience than Bob Ryan and Mike Lupica combined. Lupica and Ryan are both largely print journalists, and, thus, subsist on press-box nachos and the kindness of strangers.
FFPD[edit]
Fantasy Football Personality Disorder is a diagnosis characterized by an extreme addiction to Fantasy Football. Sufferers of this illness often experience extreme mood swings, lethargy during weekdays, and apathy towards work, family, and friends.
Characteristic Symptoms[edit]
Participating in Mock Drafts[edit]
Owners may believe that only they are capable of digesting widely-published player rankings. They may fantasize that other owners will pass on top-tier players, thereby leaving these players available to be drafted in later rounds.
Combing the Waiver Wire[edit]
Although analysis for players who are buried on the depth chart may be stagnant for the entire season, owners may continue to read stale news repeatedly in hopes that it may change. They may engage in obsessive-compulsive behavior (for example, checking and re-checking if a full back might be designated as a running back).
Memorization of Depth Charts[edit]
Rote memorization of depth charts is very common.
Repetitive Add/Drop Behavior[edit]
An owner may add a player, drop that player, add that player, drop that player, and add that player in the same week.
Promotion Mania[edit]
If a player on their team is promoted in the depth chart, the owner may be ecstatic for days.
Commissioner Conspiracy Cuckoo[edit]
A "player" with an irrational belief that the commissioner of your league is drunk with power and makes changes just to offend all the managers.
IR - 5 Stages of Grief and Loss[edit]
When a player is placed on Injured Reserve, teamowners often undergo five distinct stages of bereavement.
Denial[edit]
When learning of a major injury sustained by a player in an "actual" game, owners often pretend that the injury did not happen. They suspect that the media is misleading them or that the injury was sustained by a look-alike or a decoy. Or, if he happens to play for the New England Patriots, that it's just Bill Belichick acting like a wanker and refusing to disclose the information.
Anger[edit]
Eventually, when said player shows up on the NFL's inactive list, an overwhelming sense of frustration and malevolence is aroused towards the head coach, medical staff, and front office of the actual "real" football team. Anger is the most painful stage of grieving. The owner will often ask "why me?" and blame those in charge, who are making a living in the professional sports world despite what is, to the aggrieved "pretend" owner, their obvious idiocy. Their resentment may also be directed towards their own league commissioner (who usually enjoys this year-round in any case) or video-game software developer EA Sports' own, competing, "fantasy" athletic pastime's infamous "Madden Curse"...and, of course, John Madden.
Bargaining[edit]
Owners often try to make deals with other owners in an attempt to recover the lost player. For example, they may try to offer three backup running backs as a trade for one top-tier starter. This is often bad for both owners and embarassing for others to watch.
Depression[edit]
Feelings of hopelessness and an overall loss of direction in life may surface, much akin to what the afflicted suffers through in the late winter, spring, and early summer months. For example, an owner may resort to self-destructive behavior such as dropping all of their players and resetting their entire roster to feature players with the last name Jones. Or, say, in a pique of labored irony that belies their depression, assembling a team that would have been ridiculously awesome if this were 1998.
Acceptance[edit]
Finally, the owner begins to accept that loss is a part of life and starts organizing his tackle box, studying tidal charts, and figuring out how he's going to get permission from his wife/girlfriend to spend his Sunday's fishing. If, however, the owner is also the fantasy league's commissioner, and extremely unlikely to have a wife/girlfriend/girl-who-will-call-him-back, he generally skips this last step and plays the EA Sports pretend football game in glorious quiet at his home instead--and awaits calls all weekend from owners complaining about league format or some piece of scoring minutiae that they have failed to understand fully over the course of several years.
Purported Positives[edit]
Like sickle cell anemia, FFPD is a genetic disorder that causes as many benefits as harms. Owners of successful fantasy football franchises are immune to many of the dangers encountered in everyday life, including physical contact with the opposite sex, exposure to the earth's sun, and any activities that involve leaving the house on a Sunday (including Church).
The successful fantasy football owner is also a conservationist. He conserves water by refusing to shower on Sundays, he conserves oxygen by sitting speechless in front of his computer for hours on end, and he conserves valuable latex by telling girls on Saturday nights just how fucking awesome his franchise is.
See Also[edit]
Sources[edit]
- Reuters "Study: Fantasy Football Costs Businesses $1.1 Billion a Year". FOXNews, August 16, 2006
- FFPD Sufferer "Dallas Laserbeams: Some shitty fantasy team's website". Some dipshit, December 4, 2007