Saturday, August 27, 2005

Fantasy football is dumb

For those of you who might be blessed enough to not have encountered the fantasy football phenomenon, let me try to explain it. A bunch of football fanatics get together in a league. Each person gets to draft his or her own team and then all the teams compete for the duration of the real-life football season. As far as I can figure out, scoring systems vary depending on how your league has set things up, but most are based on the real-life performance of players in the real-life games that they play for their real-life teams. Most games are set up through websites that do all the scoring automatically once you've registered the players that are on each team.

It appears to me that the primary purpose of fantasy football is to provide subject matter for shit-talking between dudes. It's also customary to wager a fair amount of money on the success of your team, so maybe a secondary purpose could be to win a little money? The dudes I know, one dude in particular, has only lost money on fantasy football, so I'm not sure I can legitimately list that as a perk of the game.

I can't help but view fantasy football in the same way I see those fantasy-based, interactive video games where techie geeks spend entire weekends battling for magical armor. Why spend so much time on pretend armor, or pretend football, when there's an entire world going on out here that's real! You could be playing a real game of football with all of your friends in the park. Then you could go get real beers and talk to each other about real current events. There are real hikes to go on, real classes to take, real books to read...

You may even have a real girlfriend sitting next to you and your laptop, who would love for you to pay some real attention to her.

9 comments:

Turd Ferguson said...

I believe playing fantasy sports is just an extension of the whole sports watching experience. If you really like football, playing fantasy football is going to make you watch and pay attention even more (because you want to watch your teams players). Like in some way you are in on the action. Also, you were right. Its an opportunity for dudes to talk shit to each other, talk about sports, and possibly win money. Dudes love that shit. I would know. I'm a dude. I don't play fantasy football because I hate the NFL, but I do play fantasy basketball and baseball.

Anonymous said...

Real football hurts. And real girlfriends don't give blowjobs three times daily.

Anonymous said...

I suspect Mr. Anonymous is my delightful boyfriend. That comment reeks of Baldwin from the low pain threshold to the overzealous fellatio expectations. And btw, who has been dealing out BJ's during fantasy sports? Sketchy!

Anonymous said...

hmm nevermind I guess this is impossible since he is running H2C right now. Odd. Someone out there is channelling him then..

RB said...

Unfortunately that comment came from my wonderful (?) boyfriend. Ugh.

Anonymous said...

RB, I like the seedy turn your blog has taken as of late. Blogs should be about real life, and it doesn't get any realer than unrealistic expectations about BJ's.

Anonymous said...

RB,

You're killing me here. I been raking Pliska over the coals as of late for playing fantasy sports and I was going to do a post called Which is gayer? Butt sex or fantasy football? And you beat me to it. However, as Hip E. has stated repeatedly, the Jo-Tel, as your blogfather, is entitled to steal your post ideas. I'll try to take it in a different direction though. Also, good post.

Anonymous said...

actually fantasy sports are cool.

RB said...

A) PETE, there is absolutely nothing gay about fantasy football. Most gay men I've talked to about it either don't know what it is, or rightfully think it's stupid.

B) Since when is the Jo-tel my "blogfather"? Don't get me wrong -- of course I definitely appreciate Jo-tel comments on RBlog and enjoy checking out what is going on at the Jo-tel, but I started blogging because another friend, Annie told me she thought I'd be good at it and sent me a link to blogger.com.

I'm definitely glad you guys like the postings of late, but "blogfather"?! Come on. You're borrowing from MY content, after all. : )