I sat at my computer Monday night in the library hitting the refresh button in Safari. I desperately watched as the status bar inched towards completion, and when the page finally turned, I held my breath in anticipation.
What was I waiting for? Was I waiting to see whether I got into the class I desperately needed to graduate? Or perhaps was I waiting to hear back from a professor about a grade?
Nope. Nothing so serious. I was just checking the final results of my fantasy football league.
I was genuinely concerned about whether I had won in my league. I was up 86-81 going into Monday night and all of my guys had played. But my opponent (who, funny enough, was my aunt) had running back Clinton Portis going for the Washington Redskins, so I was sweating bullets because to this point in the season I was 0-5. It would have been just my luck for Portis to get a touchdown on five yards rushing and lose 87-86.
So there I was, keeping track of the Eagles-Redskins on Monday night from the second floor of the library and when I noticed Portis had 43 yards rushing, I smiled. Two points for Aunt Brianne, and an 86-83 win for me.
That little anecdote brings me to my point: the whole fantasy sports phenomenon is really fascinating to me. It gets even casual fans interested in games that they would otherwise not care about. I watched most of the Chicago Bears-Cincinnati Bengals game because I have Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco and Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, even though I couldn’t give a rip whether or not either team won.
Ochocinco had a great game, catching two touchdowns, and Cutler did not, throwing one touchdown to three interceptions, so in a sense it was a bittersweet game for me fantasy-wise. But in the swing of how glad and mad I felt for the performances of Ochocinco and Cutler, I started to laugh.
Did I really just curse Cutler’s name to the football gods because he threw three interceptions?
Yup, sure did.
Fantasy sports has changed the way sports fans watch games. In one sense it makes them even bigger fans of not just one team, but the entire sport. But on the other hand, some of the sticking to one team to cheer on is lost as more and more people root for individual players to perform well and not necessarily the team. In a way, fantasy sports are perpetuating a part of the game that a lot of people don’t like: the self-centeredness of athletes.
Fantasy sports train people to wish that a certain player will perform well so in turn their own fantasy team will get more points. Even if it’s a player that is from a hated rival (for example if a Dallas Cowboys fan has a New York Giant on their roster), it doesn’t matter. In some ways, it lessens the loyalty one has for their own team.
But in no way am I criticizing fantasy sports. I have a couple of football teams and I’m in a basketball league as well, and I would say that because of the teams I have become an even bigger fan of NFL football and NBA basketball. My team is still the Blazers and I’ll cheer for them until the end, but I use my fantasy team to keep track of the NBA.
I think that despite the way fantasy sports have revolutionized fandom, it makes fans more informed about the game and more passionate. There is the aspect of rooting for two players from opposing teams to do well even though they’re playing each other, but the fact that you intimately know the stats on those players helps you become a smarter fan.
So I say, continue to watch the stat lines for the starting running back for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Carnell Williams, 57 total yards, 0 TDs last week). The game may seem meaningless, but who knows, that touchdown he scores in the fourth quarter of a blowout loss just might be the difference between a one-point win and a five-point loss.
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