The Super Bowl of the Mind

Snide Remarks #645

"The Super Bowl of the Mind"

by Eric D. Snider

Published on October 18, 2011

It's no secret that I don't follow sports. Sports don't follow me, either. We have little to say to each other. Nonetheless, as a student of human nature and a person always eager to find new things to make jokes about, I was receptive when a friend asked if I wanted to participate in a fantasy football league. His assurance that I would not be obligated to watch any actual football was the selling point.

What is fantasy football? First, two things it is not. It is not a sport played by elves and hobbits and other fantasy creatures, as amazing as that would be. Fantasy football is also not where you sit around fantasizing about football all the time, because that would be weird. No, fantasy football is where you sit around fantasizing about football all the time -- but so do your friends, and whoever does the best job of fantasizing wins.

Fantasy football is an outgrowth of many sports fans' ardent belief that they would be better at coaching a team than any of the actual coaches. (If I knew enough about football, I would make a joke here about how that might actually be true in the case of Coach So-and-So. But I don't, so go ahead and finish that joke yourself.) What you do is, you compile an imaginary team of your own from the ranks of the current real players, then award yourself points based on how those players perform in their weekly games. You get points when your guys score points, obviously, as well as when they accomplish other tasks: throwing a touchdown pass, recovering a fumble, "sacking" somebody (whatever that is), signing an endorsement deal, etc. The other people in your pretend league do the same, and whoever gets the most points is named King of Pretend Things.

You may ask why all of this is necessary. Is there not enough pleasure in watching football already, without having to contrive situations to make it more interesting? The answer is no, there is not. Men have gotten to the point where they feel compelled to watch football even though they no longer enjoy it. They resort to fantasy football leagues to rekindle the spark, to give themselves a vested interest in the games' outcome and thereby force themselves to care about what happens. They are like the junkie who can neither give up heroin nor find satisfaction in it and must therefore shoot up in a public place, with the risk of getting caught, just to feel something, anything.

The fantasy season begins the same way as the real season: with the announcement that Brett Favre is returning for one more year. No, I kid, it begins with a draft. The draft is very serious business, as I learned when I joined my fellow imaginary league members one night at the end of August to conduct it. ESPN, the arbiter of all sports both real and fictional, has an elaborate system on its website to help you do your fantasy thing, and ESPN's oracles had produced a list of all the current players, ranked according to desirability based on analysis of factors like past performance, current health, and pending court dates. When it is your turn to choose a player for your pretend team, if you're not sure what to do, you can just take the highest-ranked guy still available. You know -- if you're LAZY.

Most people used ESPN's rankings as a guide but ultimately preferred to rely on their own strategies, reasoning that they're probably at least as good at predicting the future as ESPN is. My system went like this. When it was my turn to choose a player, I would look at the name at the top of ESPN's list, and ask myself the following:

- Have I heard of this person?

If the answer was yes, I would draft him. If the answer was no, I skipped him and continued down the list until I found a name I recognized. The problem with this system, I soon discovered, was that most of the players famous enough for me to have heard of them (i.e., they've hosted "Saturday Night Live" or been accused of rape) are quarterbacks, and you can't have a team of nothing but quarterbacks. So I switched to my back-up system of choosing the top-ranked player who had a funny name.

This was a treasure trove. Look at the hilarious names I got! Chad Ochocinco! Knowshon Moreno! Santonio Holmes! Marshawn Lynch! Marcedes Lewis! LaDainian Tomlinson! Plaxico Burress! Davone Bess! Montario Hardesty! Aren't those fantastic?? If you made up those names for fictional characters in a movie about football, people would accuse you of being racist!

The other league members were far more serious in their draft selections, as befits the serious nature of the endeavor. They chattered zealously about the players' assets and liabilities, growing louder and louder as they tried to convince everyone that their guesses were more accurate than everyone else's. They were talking about football games that hadn't been played yet, so it would have been ridiculous for the conversation to turn heated or angry, and I was pleased that it did not. In fact, everyone was quite happy, possibly more excited than they ever are while actually watching football (which, as noted, has become an act of drudgery). However, a passerby who happened to witness the scene would have been forgiven for thinking it was about to turn into a brawl, given the high-decibel fervor on display. For my part, I felt like Jane Goodall.

One of the things my friends had to take into account that didn't apply to me, and which couldn't be factored into ESPN's ranking system, was that they didn't want to draft anyone whose real-life team they didn't like. For example, I heard someone reject a high-ranked player because he hates watching the 49ers. Fearing I had missed something, I said, "But just because someone's on your team doesn't mean you have to watch their games, right?" This was met with incredulity. No, you don't HAVE to watch their games, but of course you'll WANT to, because you'll want to root for your players. I started to say that you can root for someone without watching him play, and that rooting won't have any effect on his performance anyway, but I was here to observe the tribesmen's way of life, not poke holes in their religion.

And so the 12 of us in my playtime pretend football league chose the fake squads of millionaires on whom our sad hopes would be pinned for the next four months. You get 14 players, which includes your main cast and some understudies. My decision to cast Michael Vick as my lead quarterback was controversial -- not because he used to kill dogs for a living (I guess everybody got over that), but because it was unclear how well he would perform this season. The season is almost halfway over now, and it's still unclear. To me, anyway, because I haven't looked.

The only thing I have to do week to week is check in at ESPN.com and see if I need to pull replacements off the bench to sub for players who are injured or suspended or had a scheduling conflict, like maybe they have a doctor's appointment at the same time as the game. The points are tabulated automatically. I thought it would be funny if my randomly chosen team wound up doing as well as some of the more carefully crafted ones, and while I was right that that would be funny, it hasn't happened. My team has done quite poorly. Worst in the league. Maybe there's more to this "rooting" business than I thought.

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A Year of Snide Remarks was funded by a Kickstarter campaign. This week's column was sponsored by VarsityQuarterback DVD Training Series. Sponsor had no editorial control over the column, and the author alone is responsible for its content.

Notes:

It is with this column that "Snide Remarks" moves from Mondays to Tuesdays, for dull reasons explained here.

This item has 29 comments

Tom says:
October 18, 2011 at 2:32 am
Man this was delicious! I'll be laughing about "King of Pretend Things" and "Jane Goodall" for a long time.
Don Caley says:
October 18, 2011 at 5:36 am
Oh my god. Eric, you and I must share some critical bits of DNA. No, not for humor, unfortunately, but for enjoyment of sports. I did not know there was another male on the planet that was as indifferent to sports as me. That's scary. I'll bet there are others out there, still in the closet.
Dave says:
October 18, 2011 at 7:14 am
I love this article.

I have never understood why anyone would ever care about professional sports. I'd understand if they had family members or close friends who were on the team.

I kind of understand cheering for the football team that plays for the college you went to, but even then that's the exact same as cheering for your high school football team in my opinion.

The mentality of watching professional sports of any kind is exactly like watching professional South Korean Star Craft players, so why aren't both camps of people treated as nerds equally in our society?
Randy Tayler says:
October 18, 2011 at 7:15 am
I once won the office contest for March Madness by clicking the "Auto-choose teams based on popularity". $50, baby! Woo-hoo! THAT was some high-paying clicking, it turned out.
Lane says:
October 18, 2011 at 7:52 am
I know of a group of nerds who have a fantasy football league as well; there reasoning is that it's just a thinly-masked game of D&D.
wghornsby says:
October 18, 2011 at 10:22 am
OK, who helped you with the Brett Favre joke.
unnamed source says:
October 18, 2011 at 11:58 am
Eric, perhaps if you had drafted Ms. Goodall for your team, it might have done better this season.
Dan says:
October 18, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Well, Fantasy Football is just D&D for people who make fun of D&D. You're still obsessively poring over stats, still getting into arguments with your friends, and still sitting around a table having a good time.

Also, there really is a football game that is truly fantasy, with Elves and Hobbits. It's called Blood Bowl. It's available as a tabletop game and a video game.
Jane says:
October 18, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Eric, your fantasy league friends probably already told you this, but Chad Ochocinco used to be plain old Chad Johnson. He changed his name to Ochocinco to reflect his jersey number, 85.

Ugh, the Bengals. Don't know why Chad wants to be bragging about it.
Coach So-and-So says:
October 18, 2011 at 12:35 pm
I've played fantasy football of the sort this column is describing for years, but the best fantasy football game ever, without a doubt, is this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigskin_621_A.D.

It's sad, woefully inadequate Wikipedia entry does not nearly do justice to the enjoyment of playing the game.
FHL says:
October 18, 2011 at 1:05 pm
I play a college football pick 'em game with my family. It's another offering by ESPN - you're given a line up of 10 games for the weekend, and you pick who will win, with a confidence rating. My wife and I are non-sports fanatics, but we consistently end up in the top of the rankings, possibly proving the old saying that ignorance is bliss.

Sadly, we've found that we often end up watching ESPN on Saturdays to see how our teams are doing.

I think your method of picking funny-sounding names is awesome, though. =)
Dustin Petzold says:
October 18, 2011 at 2:02 pm
It's too bad Eric's team of funny names didn't exist when Bubby Brister and Artose Pinner were still in the league.
Suzanne says:
October 18, 2011 at 4:02 pm
You should have gone with Jermichael Findley. An obvious choice.

If Ochocinco changes his name back to Johnson, will you drop him? I'm surprised Bill Belichick hasn't made him do it already.
Frank says:
October 18, 2011 at 6:16 pm
Eric,

Is it saying something that I know that XM has programming devoted specifically to Fantasy Sports? (Actually, I only know because my station has done some work for them) But people from all over the country not only are motivated to watch the games but also to call into this station to ask the hosts for advice on their fantasy trades. Use caution! You are on the verge of a pit in which you don't want to fall.
Duke of Earl Grey says:
October 18, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Ah, fantasy football! It's the Dungeons & Dragons of the cool kids!
Shannon1019 says:
October 18, 2011 at 9:07 pm
I should know better than to eat while reading Snide Remarks. I almost choked on my Cocoa Pebbles. You had me at: "they've hosted "Saturday Night Live" or been accused of rape". Love it!
Gary says:
October 18, 2011 at 9:57 pm
Ha! Chad Ochocinco no longer plays for the Bengals, but for the Patriots. And now all us awesome fantasy football warriors can point and laugh at #9, until we lose in our leagues, fail to become King of Pretend Things, and proceed to gripe incessantly about switching to a bench guy just when the bench guy nose dives and the starter picks up his game. In the words of Mr. Snider, amiright?
Lowdogg says:
October 19, 2011 at 8:52 am
I'd like to know your record so far. I'm sure It is better than mine.
Strude says:
October 19, 2011 at 10:58 am
You know what? Why can't you have a team full of QBs. If that's your fantasy, go for it. In my fantasy league, no one tells me I can't have a room full of... oh, never mind. Different kind of league.
Cameron says:
October 19, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Sports. MEH. Imma go play a game of Magic.
Rob D. says:
October 19, 2011 at 3:00 pm
If your team wins the league........they might make a movie about you and your system. They can call it Funnynameball! It won't star Brad Pitt but I can see Adam Sandler playing you in the movie.
Karen says:
October 19, 2011 at 10:48 pm
I picked my March Madness teams by mascot when I was married, also thinking it would be funny if I turned out to be right. Same result as picking based on funny names. I did, however, end up calling all the major upsets no one who cared could have foreseen. No, I didn't watch any of them.
islandgirl says:
October 20, 2011 at 12:09 am
I laughed so much mostly because I totally would have picked my players the way you did.
Bret says:
October 20, 2011 at 2:11 pm
"If you made up those names for fictional characters in a movie about football, people would accuse you of being racist!"

I RARELY ever 'lol' (and hence, rarely use the term in any context) when reading online material, but this had me coughing I guffawed so hard! Great article and this particular quote was my favorite. Thanks Eric
Charles Norris says:
October 20, 2011 at 4:59 pm
My experience with Fantasy Football was three years ago and I couldn't pronounce the "LaDainian" in LaDainian Tomlinson. Needless to say, I was not invited back the next year.
Liz Cat says:
October 21, 2011 at 4:13 pm
The real goal of fantasy football is to come up with the funniest team name!
T the B- says:
October 22, 2011 at 9:06 am
Eric- How on earth did you manage to avoid D'Brickashaw Ferguson? Shoulda been your number one pick!
Nick says:
October 26, 2011 at 9:55 am
I have a few issues with this:

"Fantasy football is an outgrowth of many sports fans' ardent belief that they would be better at coaching a team than any of the actual coaches" - eh? It's just a game, based in skill and (mostly) luck for a side wager each year. I don't think what you said here is true at all.

Also, a lot of guys do enjoy watching football, but fantasy (and gambling) gives you an extra level of rooting interest. It's just for fun you know.
Darnell Dickson says:
October 26, 2011 at 12:19 pm
Loved the article, but what did you name your team? I would assume "Snide Remarks," but you should know that a good team name can often make up for a really crappy performance.

I once called my fantasy baseball team "Schwing Batter" in honor of SNL's "Wayne's World." The fantasy football team my 16-year-old son and I have this year is called "The Double D's" for Darnell and Devin (I don't think he gets the double entendre).

The best team name I heard this year was (if you drafted Kansas City wide receiver Dwayne Bowe) "Somewhere Over Dwayne Bowe."

BTW, this summer I left Provo for the wilds of the great plains. I'm the sports editor at the Lincoln Journal Star in Nebraska. So, yeah, newspapers is "still a thing" for me.

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Eric D. Snider