What is this guy talking about? Fantasy football of course. Read on and you will understand my frustration.
I am driving home from an evening BBQ on Saturday and the local sports station is on the car radio. The topic of conversation for the evening is comparing the NFL at the game experience to the stay at home experience. If you’re a reader of this blog you already know that there really is no competition between the two. The at the game experience is better (yes, I am fully aware of my bias here!).
The argument for the stay at home experience from many of the callers focused on the ability of a fan to watch multiple games at once from home. If you are at the stadium you are limited to the game on the field, with only scoring updates for the day’s other games being flashed throughout the stadium. Yes this is true, but if you are a die hard fan of the home (favorite) team who gives a crap about the other teams?!?
As a football fan, 100% of your attention, passion, and energy should be put towards cheering on the home team, booing their poor play, or letting the opposition know that that there is a 12th man on the field that day!
Scoring updates at the stadium should be enough for a fan. From the scores you will know if your team is gaining ground in the division and play-off positioning. But if you are into fantasy football, scores aren’t enough. You need player by player updates for each team.
And you know what those player by player updates are doing to you? They are ruining your fandom, your allegiance to your favorite team. All of a sudden you are rooting for players on your enemy teams to do well at the expense of screwing over your favorite team’s division standing.
Honestly, what is the point of buying and then wearing the jersey of your favorite team’s player on Sundays if you are secretly rooting for another team’s player to do better that week so you can win your fantasy football match-up? Case in point, my buddy is a die hard Eagles fan (well at least I thought he was) yet he will be rooting for the Dallas Cowboys Defense and Chris Cooley of the Redskins this season because each are on his fantasy team! This is so wrong for so many reasons!
While at the game you should be enjoying watching the plays develop and catching the on the field angles and emotions that TV cameras just can’t capture. You shouldn’t be constantly checking your cell phone for fantasy updates. Your Monday morning should be great or super sucky based on the performance of your favorite NFL team not the performance of your fantasy team. Your time at work should be spent searching for new grilling and drinking recipes, not searching the fantasy waiver wire (and of course not working as well).
I could go on and on, but since it’s still the holiday weekend (and the local liquor store opens again at 10am) I will end the venting here. Oh yeah, the No. 1 reason why the at the game experience is better…tailgating (well as long as you aren’t ruining the tailgate by talking about your fantasy team)!