BY STEVE JANOSKI
Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010
We all know a guy like him. He’s been a Giants’ fan since you were in first grade together, but all of a sudden, he comes into the bar with a Maurice Jones-Drew jersey on a Sunday afternoon.
His opening comment is likely going to be along the lines of, “Bro, you’ll never guess who I got on my fantasy team— we’re gonna’ be siiiiick this year.” Clearly, he had the first pick in his fantasy football draft…and then he went out and bought the jersey of the guy he drafted.
Shortly after, he begins listing all the players he chose, and you stop listening and tip your pint glass back in the attempt to stop your ears from bleeding because really, who cares who anybody else has on their fantasy team?
Such is what the first weeks of the football season have become.
Long ago, we used to root for the team we actually liked— now, pretending to be the Jerry Jones of our very own football team has us rooting for players we hate on teams we despise.
I was guilty of this last year when I picked Dallas Cowboys running back Marion Barber to be on my team, “The Bayshore Yagabawms.”
I should have known better, because as a lifelong Giants fan, nobody has hated the Cowboys organization with more vigor than I.
Regardless, in a move that rivaled Benedict Arnold’s treason, I still picked Barber.
I realized the trappings of fantasy football during the Giants- Cowboys game last year as I watched Barber rip off run after run, killing my team but earning my fake team points.
On one play, he tore through the line and sprung for a 20 or 30 yard run, causing me to curse vehemently at the TV all the while being quietly semi-happy that I was getting fantasy points for it, only to end the play cursing and swearing again when Barber gimped off the field clutching his hamstring seconds later (an injury that put the Yagabawms in the cellar for the rest of the year.)
Fantasy football had turned me into an indecisive, blithering idiot in a matter of seconds, and I felt guilty, dirty even, for having rooted for Barber against my boys for even a second.
This year, although I refused to draft any Cowboys, I made the mistake of trying to manage four different teams simultaneously. What I didn’t realize is that running multiple teams is like trying to date more than one woman at a time— if you think you’re handling it smoothly and things are going well, you’re probably about one step away from a horrific, Chernobyl-style disaster that will leave bodies in the streets and cities destroyed.
Some guys, I’ve heard, have gone as far as managing 10 or 15 leagues at a time.
I don’t know where they find the time to actually watch the games in between managing their mythical teams, but it’s a safe bet that they don’t have to worry about things like dating.
On the other hand, fantasy football does give me a reason to watch games that the Giants aren’t playing in, and offers me someone to root for because, in a roundabout way, I’ve got money on them.
It’s also been adept at getting the general public more into football—one rookie fan I know was overheard during a draft whispering, “What’s a ‘bye week?’”
Now, this Don Quixote of the football world is welded to the TVs at the local dives every Sunday, alternating between fits of joy and despair as the scores tumble and rise—it’s like sitting at a craps table, except the drinks aren’t free and nobody cares when you win.
The NFL has scored huge with fantasy football, and as the game tightens its narcotic grip on the hearts and minds of the young males of this country, one wonders whether “Draft Day” will eventually become a holiday, like some say the day after the Super Bowl should be.
If it does, I’m taking that whole week off, because I don’t want to hear who everybody picked.
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