Fantasy Football Participant Guidelines
It has come to my attention that you intend to play fantasy football in one of the various online leagues out there. I wish you luck on your endeavor and hope that your sleeper pick in the tenth round turns out to be the next Shaun Alexander and that you win it all.
However, before you do, I ask the following of you.
1. Don’t pick your favorite players on draft day. Pick the best ones.
Let’s face it. To win in fantasy sports you have to leave your “team colors” at home. If you’re a New England Patriots fan, you may want to draft Tom Brady number 1 overall, but that would mean you would surely lose. Especially if your next pick is Troy Brown. You have to draft the best player available regardless of what team they play for and whether you like them or not. Point is, if Peyton Manning is on the board, you take him over Brady even if you know in real life that he’ll never win a Super Bow. (Yeah I’m from Boston!)
2. Come Game Day, don’t cheer against your “real” team so your “fantasy” team does well.
I know I just said pick the best players when you draft. And I still mean it. But when it’s 1pm on a Sunday and your team (say the Miami Dolphins) is playing the Buffalo Bills, you better be routing for your team to win 31-0. Please don’t be that guy who has Willis McGahee (the Buffalo Bills RB) who wants him to get 4 TD’s, but also have his team win. Don’t be that guy! You have to pray that he breaks his legs. The Dolphins are trying to win the division after all and you are a loyal fan. You can only enjoy the fantasy numbers after the game, never during. These are the rules and they are unflinchingly rigid.
3. If you’re team “wins” please don’t brag about it at work.
Being the guy that comes to work all jazzed up because his fantasy team won that week can make your co workers really annoyed. Especially if your co workers are always in your league. You didn’t score any touchdowns. You didn’t make any diving catches. You didn’t run for 85 yards on 3rd and long in the 4th quarter. You sat on the couch all day eating Domino’s while constantly hitting the refresh button on the ESPN NFL scoreboard. So stop bragging until you actually put on the pads. All you did was get lucky and gained five pounds watching others work for a living. So get back to work!
4. Remember this isn’t a skill game like chess, it’s luck.
If fantasy sports were as hard as all those magazines would like you to believe than how come all of them give the same advice. Pick the best RB with your first pick. Wow, how did you think of that? Seriously, it’s not that hard. It’s mostly luck. There are only like 200 players anyone would draft. How hard is it to list the best players from 1 to 200 and then pick according, making sure to get the right number of QB, RB, TE, WR, DEF, K? Answer, not very. It’s not like chess where there are a million possibilities. So stop telling me what a great “move” you made early Sunday morning by starting your backup TE who happened to have a career day. Good for you. But I call that lucky. There’s no luck in skill games. You have to actually be good at it. So please stop feeling like your awesome. You’re not.
5. Please actually like the NFL and sports in general.
I hate those guys (a few girls maybe) who play fantasy sports but don’t really like sports. They just like to play with numbers. They want to fit in. They have 100 bucks a team riding on it, so they go to the bar and are constantly checking their cell phone for updates. They only watch certain players on their team and ignore the games themselves. They’ve taken all the fun out of the game and replaced it with stats.
If you don’t like sports, please don’t play fantasy games. If you think you like sports, but spend more time playing fantasy than actually watching games, then you don’t like sports. If you read the sports pages only to find a new WR to replace the one that is out 3 to 6 weeks, you’re a “fantasy” sports fan. NOT a real fan. I know this won’t stop you, but please go away. We don’t need you. Real fans only. Fantasy sports should enhance your love of the NFL, not be your only connection.
These are my five terms. If you agree to these requirements, then I welcome you to Fantasy Football 2006.
Sincerely,
A Real Sports Fan
