By Jeff Moss
September 6, 2011
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com
I am quite sure this will be the least popular column in history of the DSR. An article in Vogue espousing the couture collection at TJ Maxx would probably go over better.
An expose on the legislative genius of Barney Frank in the pages of the American Spectator would most likely get a better readers’ write reaction than a sports columnist detailing his disgust at the phenomenon known as Fantasy Football.
Now, before you click off this webpage and cleanse your palate at rotoworld.com or some other rotisserie driven site, please hear me out.
Because I didn’t always despise Fantasy Football and the obnoxious idiots who take part in their make believe leagues. Actually, I used to love participating in this gambling endeavor created to wager on NFL players’ yardage stats and touchdowns.
As a matter of fact, I was an early Fantasy Football adopter before I even knew what Fantasy Football was. In the late eighties, the Detroit Free Press began running a contest where you could win prizes based on NFL players’ performance.
Before there were the Internet and cell phones the Freep would give you a chance to draft a team by punching in your picks on this 20th Century invention called the rotary home telephone. Gregg Schultz and I were successful enough one year to win a pair of binoculars from the paper.
But winning the same gifts that the Girl Scouts hand out for selling 50 boxes of their cookies quickly became small potatoes so we formed our own league back in the early nineties.
In the early days of FF you never completely knew how your team performed until the Monday morning paper was delivered in the morning.
There was no bottom line scroll detailing every single fantasy stat because at that time only TRUE degenerates were gambling on the TD totals of Warren Moon and Christian Okoye.
But then something occurred that took this quaint little fun betting exercise from the derelict underground to a cottage industry …… The Internet.
And not the WWW you know today, but an excruciatingly slow dial-up connection from a 486 Pentium I CPU to a service called Prodigy.
At first I thought this online computer connection was the greatest thing in the history of the world. Instead of having to wait until Monday for the day’s box scores, we only had to wait about 90 minutes after the game ended to see how our players did.
I can still remember psychotically reloading Prodigy like a mental patient to see if the 4:00pm games box scores were posted yet on a slow-ass service that made Victor Martinez look like Usain Bolt.
But the more the Internet progressed the bigger Fantasy Football became. By the time CBSsportsline.com started running real-time scoring for your league, the best kept secret in football wagering turned in to a mainstream runaway juggernaut.
I continued to participate in our Fantasy Football league for a few years after the boon started, but I became more and more disenfranchised in the national obsession with it every passing year.
After I lost the championship one season because I forgot to call in a BACK-UP tight end I pretty much had had enough of rotisserie sports and I gave it up cold turkey.
I quickly discovered the only thing more annoying than hearing about Fantasy Football when you are involved in it is having to hear about it ad nauseum during the fall months when you could give two shits about Arian Foster’s hamstring.
Fantasy Football has spread like a West African virus from its early days and now you can’t get away from the damn thing if you tried.
Anyway, before I get any more upset about the omnipresent Fake Football leagues, here are eight reasons I will never be in another Fantasy Football League as long as I live:
1) The Sophie’s Choice of Participating in Multiple Leagues – If it isn’t bad enough that you have these losers OBSESSING over their one team, you’ve got this type of freak who participates in MULTIPLE leagues.
There is nothing better than being at a bar watching the Sunday games with a friend and the dork can’t figure out whether or not he wants Desean Jackson to score a TD or not because he has him in one league, but is playing against him in another.
And when I say there is nothing better than that, what I really mean is I’d rather be involved in a 3-way with Mitchell and Cameron from “Modern Family” while Lilly is watching in her crib than ever having to listen to one of these “quandaries” again.
It gets even better when said idiot is in a THIRD league and not only does he have the original Desean Dilemma, but the problem is compounded because he owns Desean’s QB (Michael Vick) in that one as well.
If you are currently nodding that you have been in a similar circumstance, please do the rest of us a favor and hang yourself Real Housewives of Beverly Hills style.
2) Guy at the Office who Wants To Tell You About His Team – I love this fuckstick. The one who gets you cornered at work and wants to shoot the shit about his “squad.”
Look, I bet on thoroughbred horses every weekend, but do I come by the water cooler on Monday to tell you about the bad beat I suffered when Trappe Shot got pinched at the rail mid-stretch in the Forego Stakes? OF COURSE NOT!!!!!
And if I ever did that, do us both a favor and immediately kick me in my god dam nuts so there is no chance I can reproduce.
So please, PLEASE, spare me the details of how a late, meaningless, 20-yard run in the Monday Night game cost you a precious victory.
I. DON’T. GIVE. A. FUCK.
3) Loser Who Has a Dream Team and is Bragging About It – The only thing better than the previous fictional co-worker is the asshat who starts rattling off his players and tell you that he “owns”:
Aaron Rodgers, Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson, Calvin Johnson, Andre Johnson, Antonio Gates, Morten Anderson and the 1985 Bears defense.
Am I supposed to be impressed that you are either:
A) In a TWO-team league or ……
B) Competing with a bunch of people that resemble the girl who won the Homecoming Queen vote in the Values.com commercial that airs during Tigers games.
http://www.values.com/inspirational-stories-tv-spots/96-Homecoming
Look, if you’ve got Ray Rice as your back-up running back you shouldn’t be bragging about it. You instead should be concerned about changing your competition’s adult diaper.
4) The NFL Network TV Commercial – Have you seen this asinine spot? You know, the one with Dennis Green and Steve Mariucci literally sweating over what player they are going to get next?
Do these two jackasses realize they used to be in charge of REAL FOOTBALL TEAMS and how buffoonish they appear when groveling over Fake Larry Fitzgerald? Hey, Dennis, ya big fat slob, YOU USED TO ACTUALLY COACH THAT GUY and now you have resort to this?
It would be the embarrassing equivalent of Sandra Day O’Conner doing an ad promoting her new gig as the next judge on “The People’s Court.”
5) Free Fantasy Football Leagues – As annoyed as I am about the whole endeavor, the gambling aspect at least kept me mildly interested for a while.
And for people who don’t get their gambling jones elsewhere like me, I can somewhat understand why they enjoy joining a Fantasy Football league.
But the douche bags who participate in FREE LEAGUES just for the SPORT of it?
Gotta believe these are the same idiots who prefer blow jobs with a condom on.
“Hey, can we hurry up with this non-gambling Fantasy Football draft so I can get home to play some free Texas Hold ‘Em on PokerStars.com?”
If I ever became the dictator of a country, people who play FANTASY FOOTBALL for the FUN of it with no financial outcome involved will be the first ones on the trains.
6) Radio and Television Shows Dedicated ONLY to Fantasy Football – Look, it is bad enough to hear Sean Baligian fake-laugh his way through a radio program in which he refuses to mock or ridicule any caller no matter how stupid their take is.
But that shit is Marconi Award winning content compared to:
Dumb Slob on the Phone from Westland: “Hey, Sean, big fan, can you help me decide who my 3rd wide receiver should be this week between Jonathan Baldwin, Nate Burleson and Greg Little?”
Are you people effing kidding me? You can’t plug in your Fantasy Football lineup without assistance from a Specs Howard grad? Are you people that feeble minded that you can’t complete the most menial of tasks without a self-appointed guru?
Look, I’d rather listen to Glenn Haege spend an hour taking phone calls discussing toilet backups then one “Hey, Sean, do ya think I should play Minnesota or Seattle’s defense this week?”
Idiots. The whole lot of ya.
7) Guy Who Comments on EVERY SELECTION during the Draft – It would be one thing if THIS guy had a sense of humor. But the Mel Kiper, Jr. of EVERY fantasy draft is the dude you wish was born a deaf mute.
“Yeah, I’ll take Michael Vick.”
“What, you like killing dogs? Hahahaha.”
Slit your fucking wrists.
8) Chicks Getting Involved – I can pretty much guarantee you that the first five or so years of Fantasy Football, there wasn’t a woman anywhere in the world involved in a league.
You know something sports related has Jumped the Shark the minute chicks want in on the party.
Listen, there are basically only two ways a HOT girl can turn me off. One is catching her on the toilet dropping a deuce. The OTHER is overhearing her discuss how the bye weeks are going to effect her running back position.
Call me a male chauvinist pig if you want, but there is nothing attractive about a girl knowing THAT MUCH about sports.
So while you people (the annoying sports equivalent of Trekkies) are meeting at local sports bars or congregating in chat rooms this week to draft your fake players, please remember that a large segment of the population doesn’t give a flying fuck about your team.
And in closing, I would like to share with you the prescient words of the great Captain James Tiberius Kirk:
“Get a life, will you people?”