Fantasy Football: Are we really better off?

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity”

            – Albert Einstein

 

Einstein would have crapped his tweed pants if he could have glimpsed into the generation of Google, Twitter, and instant

He might have looked something like this...

gratification of any informational need. But what we forget to ask is how has this access changed things in the world of fantasy football? In an age where people have become conditioned to rely on their favorite gossip site to formulate their opinions, is the art of research, discernment and following your gut dead? How has this fact affected fantasy sports and how they are played? Who benefits and who loses out? I thought that maybe we could take a journey through the history of fantasy sports to try and understand how things have changed, what things have become, and for better or worse, what is the state of the game?

 

First, a little tale of yester-year. A time when instant lineup changes, up to the nano-second information about how our star players lunch will affect his practice output, and boundless statistical resources being a mouse click away are nothing more than a distant thought. When lineups are mailed, not emailed, but postal mailed like with a stamp (I know right?!), to the league manger and the scores are mailed back a week later. When going to the mailbox didn’t mean hitting up your Gmail account to get scoring alerts, and mobile updates meant someone walking over and letting you know what is going on. An article I read said:

 

 “The early years involved few leagues, but serious players. Several people stopped after several years, as it was too strenuous looking through statistics every week and remembering to call in with their starting rosters. The game was a fun idea, but had yet to become convenient enough to be the phenomenon it is today.”

 

Fantasy football creator, visionary, and all around smart guy Wilfred Winkenbach could not have imagined what his brain child would become. But the question is would he be proud, or would be appalled at the prostitution of a once pure, thinking-man’s game. Well, let’s take a look at some different perspectives.

 

Fantasy sports used to be much different. But was it all bad? When everyone didn’t have instant access to the same information things like instincts, real statistical research, and experience won leagues, not who could use their Iphone to pick up the latest sexy waiver wire acquisition. Has everyone having access to the plethora of information really killed fantasy sports, or has the emergence of the internet leveled the playing field. Let’s take message boards for instance. ESPN.com gives fantasy footballers a place to gather and talk football. These message boards are a great example of the transformation of fantasy football. One peek in and you will see countless people every minute asking things like “pick 2 out of these 6 players I should start” or “should I do this trade?” People then answer them and people skip off to do as they are told to do. To me there are so many things wrong with this.

 

First being able to go somewhere and have someone tell you how to manage your team completely detracts from what makes fantasy sports great; knowing more than the next guy, dominating, and gloating. There is a difference between using articles, columns, and commentary of intelligent people as a tool, and taking something as fact and running with it like it is prophecy. Furthermore, if you think about it, who is telling these people what to do? Other people! It’s like someone goes on the message board, asks a question, someone answers it and now you have a chain reaction. Those two people are doing the same thing, along with whoever reads that post and all the people they Tweet after they are done. Now you got like a million people all doing the same thing with their lineups. The question about validity of that information is a whole other issue that we will touch on later. So the question is what does this mean for the rest of us? Let’s explore.

 

Philosophically speaking we could launch into the how information revolution and the dumbification of people attributes to the death of independent thought, but that might be a little much for a fantasy football article. So let’s stick to the topic. You can look at it two ways, the proverbial glass half empty or half full. On one hand we can almost bank on the fact that 60 to 75% of the information out there is crap. Agreed? So for us who don’t rely solely on the direction of faceless language on a shiny screen, but choose to do our own research, watch games, and go with our gut, we can rest assured that most of our opponents are being fed garbage like swine being led to the Sunday Slaughter. So in that sense we should feel good about things, yeah?

 

But, half empty has some basis too. Because there is so much misinformation out there, so easily accessed by people too easily persuaded, the very integrity of fantasy sports seems to be compromised. Without regulation, selectivity, and discretion our game seems to be doomed to be no more legit than the latest TMZ gossip. Even with careful preparation, planning, and obsessive compulsive attention paid to our weekly lineups, it can all go south because some zit faced pre-pubescent douche with too much time on their hands started a rumor that Adrian Peterson was traded to the UFL, posted on

Someone like this winner...

his Facebook, and now AP is 80% dropped and the integrity of our league is ruined. Part of the fun of fantasy sports is outsmarting other smart, decisive folks and feeling good that you beat someone worthy of beating. The eventual Superbowl champion Steelers beating the snot out of the 0-16 Lions isn’t as gratifying as beating an inspired and uber-talented Cardinal team on the biggest stage in sport. Get my drift?

 

In fear of being the doom and gloom guy, I actually feel like we are lucky to play fantasy sports in this era. How fun is it to be able to watch a game on TV, watch live scoring of your team on ESPN.com, and get scoring alerts on your phone in a glorious whirlwind of football heaven. To me, it doesn’t get much better than that. Putting aside the fact that its integrity is tested by misinformation, pied-pipers and their unfortunate sheep, and monotonous harmonizing of strategy on a catastrophic level, I think fantasy sports and those players who play the game how it was meant to be played are stronger and will prevail over the rest. No matter the idiocy that rains down like bullet fire in the battle for sensibility, fantasy sports will be victorious and we can all remember something. Do we really want the purest form of fandom to end up buried under a stinking, steaming mountain of garbage that is popular culture, doomed to be nothing more than a shell of something once beautiful and pure? I sure don’t, so let us keep that in mind as we obsess over every move, every add or drop, every deal done with sweaty palm and churning stomach. Keep alive what is great about fantasy sports, the fantasy.