He’s hating him some Fantasy Football!
Fantasy? More like a farce
Ten reasons why I detest the fantasy football craze
etc etc
I’ve been helping my little brother out with his fantasy football league. Neither of us is really sure how the thing even works, but the experience has convinced me that this guy is right. To his list, I’ll add my annoyance that ESPN constantly wastes airtime and crawl space to fantasy sports of all kinds.
I’m with the writer. It definitely changes the way you watch on Sunday. Suddenly you don’t care whether your favorite team wins, it’s more important that your fantasy team wins, because you don’t want to lose your stake.
The only way it’s even remotely fun is if it’s free, and if it’s free it becomes a job to keep up with every week. The only incentive is money, so its silly. I tried it, but it was just annoying to me. I don’t do it anymore. I watch the Steelers every week and that’s all I care about.
Dammit. It IS silly. After this week’s numerous debacles on the topic of literacy I go and make a mistake like that? I am such a putz. :rolleyes:
I have the same problem with the office pool that I’m in. Stupid, considering it’s $3 a week. But I could win something like $50!
You see the bind I’m in.
I root for the Saints over any of my fantasy teams (even my league with $600 at stake). Although I would watch almost any football game, FF makes the Arizona vs. St Louis type games much more interesting.
Well, just so long as you accept that ESPN not doing so would enrage a HUGE proportion of fans.
If I were running FOX sports and wanted to compete with SportsCenter, this would be how I’d do it. I’d create a quality daily news show, but do my best to incorporate fantasy stats into the crawl and the game summaries. Fans are so rabid about it, that they’d totally tune in to get that info if ESPN weren’t providing it.
Huge?
They started covering fantasy stuff to cash in on the fad, I don’t see why it would be a big deal if they confined it to their site or to one show I could just ignore.
Well, I’ve read quite a few articles from journalists who are becoming increasingly frustrated with FOX and CBS for not showing enough mid-game stat updates. Times be changing, and I’m willing to bet that there’s a pretty big portion of people tuning into SC to find out how their fantasy team did. This extends beyond the 30 sec blurb they want to see on their hometown team. It’s the thing that keeps them watching the rest of the highlights in many cases. If they didn’t flash the box scores and use the stats ticker, people would find that info elsewhere.
I don’t think they are doing it to capitalize, I think they are doing to stay current. Not doing so would make them a dinosaur. Think of George Michael’s Sports Machine. No stats, nothing realtime…no audience.
If they minimized the stat portion, a big enough portion of the coveted demographics would start looking elsewhere for their highlights. As it is, I bet SC’s ratings are suffering due to in-house broadband.
I’ll bite.
And this is bad because … ? I wasn’t aware that there was a morally-approved way on absorbing my sports entertainment. Moreover, why is this a bad thing? I like to have something to root for, and this way I have something I otherwise wouldn’t have while watching a Dolphins-Broncos game in September.
Bullshit. Fantasy players know full well that some guys are better worse IRL than in the stats. It’s frequently mentioned.
No, dumbass, they’re called moviegoers and book readers. More to the point, football stats refer to things that DID happen. I wonder if Banks has a problem with the sports-obsessed guys calling talk radio to speculate on some third-stringer’s groin pull.
Utter horseshit.
See #2 & 3 above.
No, jackass. Nothing is sacred when it comes to a game. Football – real or fantasy – is an fricking game, and the fact that you want it kept “sacred” for you speaks volumes about how firmly grounded your priorities are.
Mel Kiper.
Too naive for words.
Which is really what it comes down to. This has as much merit as a bitch that “there hasn’t been any good music since I was in High school.”
You say that like it is a good thing. To me he’s reason enough to hate fantasy football. He’s frequently wrong but never in doubt, and he’s never called on it when he’s wrong. A player not living up to his potential really means “I way overrated this guy” but pompous Mel would never say such a thing.
I dropped out of FF thirteen years ago and haven’t regretted it once. My friends who formed the league I was in easily replaced me and have continued to enjoy it, presumeably. It takes too much time for me and I frankly don’t care to bother with the rosters or stats of 32 teams.
I played one year.
I didn’t find it fun at all. The main thing, for me, was that it really did distract me from watching a game.
Now, I bet on football, so when I watch a game, I’m into who covers, and I’ll change allegiances based on where my money lies. But, still, you can watch the offense, and defense and the line, and get into the strategy and play calling and flow of a game.
But with fantasy. . .
I don’t take my eyes off the crawl. Detroit just scored a TD. Was is Roy Williams? Are the going to show it? Ah, another field goal for Phi. Good thing I have Akers. I hope it was a long one.
I root for stupid shit. Basically as a fantasy watcher, I’m rooting for a team to do to my guy every play, no matter what the strategic considerations. For me, it’s just not an enjoyable way to watch a game.
As the writer said, football is already a pleasant diversion that requires concentration and thought. I don’t need a diversion within a diversion.
I’m not going to criticize a guy for liking it though. I just don’t like it that way.
Furthermore, it takes a lot of time and it ain’t cheap. And, in any league you’re probably competing against guys that live and breath fantasy football. They’re in multiple leagues. They start working on it in July.
So, you can either spend your money and study and make trades, and try to compete, or just kiss your entry fee goodbye for what. . .something that ain’t as fun as just sitting down and watching a game.
Bah.
Fanatasy football seems no more empty or silly than actually watching a footbal game. Both are equal wastes of time. 
Slight whoosh – Kiper did not make his name as a fantasy football guy. He’s an NFL draft / college football expert.
Furt is just demonstrating that the “cult of the ersatz expert” has been around just about as long as television coverage of the NFL. Banks erroneously blames the popularity of fantasy football for an aspect of NFL coverage that dates back at least as far back as the dawn of Howard Cosell’s career. Also, anyone that came up watching the NFL in the 70s and 80s will recall the likes of Jimmy the Greek and Pete Axthelm.
I don’t watch or follow Real Football or Fantasy Football, but I have to say that this trabid, foaming-at-the-mouth screed reminds me of the condemnation poured out on Dungeons and Dragons and other role-pklaying games back about 1980 or so. “What’s wrong with these people? Isn’t reality good enough?”
Og knows, there’s plenty of stuff I don’t care for – Professional Spots, Rap Music, Magic–The Gathering, Romance Novels – but I don’t condemn them for it.
Well, they were gamblers.
There’s a fundamental difference between gambling and fantasy. Gambling still requires that you consider the game the was it way designed. Fantasy requires that you wish they use your guys, to the detriment of perfect strategy.
Betting with a point spread on a game keeps THE GAME interesting. It evens out two unequal teams AND you still end up rooting for teams as you did when you don’t bet. You’re watching football the way the game is designed. . .you’re rooting for one team to stop another one.
Even betting on over/unders requires a critical look. . .not at “TEAM vs. TEAM” but at “OFFENSE vs. DEFENSE”, again, the way the game is designed.
Fantasy. . . You got 10 guys. He’s got 10 guys. You’re trying to follow all of them. What are you watching? What are you rooting for? What if you have the QB and your opponent has his #1 receiver?
The game is designed for one team to play against the other. When you look at it that way, fantasy is definitely like the class nerd.
That said, there’s a place for the class nerd. I’m not down on guys who want to look at foots that way. I’m just not one of them.
This is why I developed the 1-On-1 Pool – the feeling of “getting the win” and trying to make “the playoffs”, without changing the fundemental way I watched the game. I love trying to picking winners, and I love rooting for my team (and against my particular hated teams), but I saw the way FF was changing the way friends were approaching the game.
It drives me nuts when some of the rabid Eagles fans I work with are happy about the Giants performing well, because they have Barber or Shockey on their FF team. Damnit! I’m the Giants fan, you’re the Eagles fan, and we’re supposed to do nothing but talk smack to one another! I’d be miserable if I happened to have McNabb fall to me in a FF league, having to cheer on an Eagles QB <shudder>.
But, to each their own…
Of course he’s a pompous blowhard; that’s my point – those sorts of “experts” abound – 95% of sports radio is the same – with or without fantasy football. So his blame is ridiculous.
He’s right – fantasy football isn’t about football. It’s even worse with fantasy baseball. If people want to play that, fine (you don’t even need real players – I did it with baseball cards 30 years ago), but don’t get it confused with the sport.
Good rebuttal, furt.
It’s amazing how everyone thinks that fantasy sports are a relatively recent development. It’s only the popularity of the game that’s become prominent lately.
I’ve been running fantsy football leagues for 15 years now, and I was playing Strat-o-Matic baseball as a kid. I played the sports as well; it was a way to keep going on rainy or snowed-in days.
Nice strawman attack on the “geek” factor- almost all the fantasy players I know are what could be called “jocks,” supposedly the antithesis of geekdom.
Add money and you’re just gambling. It has its place, but it is not the sole reason for fantasy leagues, regardless of what the money grubbers want you to think now.
Besides, we know who the true Steeler fans are, don’t we Airman?