Today I am going to try and explain to you why I don't need an intervention because that's what addicts do, deny. I love fantasy sports. I cannot get enough. As the years go by, the grip of fantasy sports grows stronger and I'm not resisting. How can I resist something that allows me to add another fun, yet competitive dynamic to great friendships I already have with people close to me? How can I resist the chance to live vicariously through another person's success when all I wanted as a kid was to grow up and play sports for a living? The answer is obvious, I simply cannot.
Before I can sway you towards believing fantasy sports are not a joke and actually takes skill and knowledge; I will first explain what exactly fantasy sports are. It all starts with a group of sports fanatics that want more than the casual fan. These fanatics are usually ex-athletes and by ex-athlete I mean they played sports through high school but quickly realized receiving a college scholarship and then making the pros was not an option. These guys still wanted to compete in sports and beat their friends but didn't have the arena to do so. Of course inter-mural sports is an option but fantasy is the lazier option of the two.
Next, these "players" usually have a love of sports statistics and like to use stats to determine an athlete's worth. So to get more specific here I'm going use fantasy baseball as a reference of how this all works. A fantasy baseball team is formed by collecting a roster of real-life professional baseball players through a fantasy draft before the Major League Baseball season starts. The draft is easily one of the best days of the season because every "team owner/manager" comes brimming with optimism and a strategy that they think will surely win.
Owners can join together in person or via the internet for the draft. Many people pay to play which means you can win money if you make it to the championship. Then a random draft order is determined which works like a serpentine in which, lets say a 12-team league, it starts at number one and when it hits the twelfth owner they get back to back selections. Then the eleventh owner picks as it heads back to that first owner again, and so on. Following that structure allows for an even chance to grab the best talent available.
Once a fantasy roster is filled out it hopefully looks like a group of all-stars in the form of a baseball lineup complete with position players (1st base, 2nd base, etc) and a collection of the best pitchers possible. The idea of fantasy baseball is to put your lineup against another owner's lineup on a weekly basis and when that given week ends you compare statistics in categories like home runs, stolen bases, and strikeouts that your lineup collected. If your team won more categories than your opponent, you win.
In a typical season you will play all eleven opponents twice and when the season ends you either make the playoffs or you don't. If your team continues on and eventually wins the league championship you collect your winnings from your vanquished owner's initial buy-in.
"To me, more than anything else, baseball is history and statistics. Fantasy covers the statistics pretty well." -Matthew Berry, ESPN fantasy sports writer.
I like the above statement because statistics have a strong meaningful bond with sports that the casual fan doesn't understand. Critics of fantasy sports say that rooting for certain players success, in a game that you don't care which team wins is blasphemy.
I have my favorite sports teams that I root for in real life like the Mariners, and of course sometimes a player on the Mariners opponents team is on my fantasy team. That is my only real problem with fantasy sports but in the end, I always want my real life team to win regardless of fantasy implications.
Playing fantasy sports has enhanced my interest in teams and players I would normally never care about. I've come to realize that all these statistics will basically dictate what happens on the court, field or arena. I like knowing what a player's tendency is in a particular game-time situation. That knowledge leads to educated decisions when forming a successful team. Knowledge is the Yin to luck's Yang. A fantasy manager can only control which players will battle the opposing manager's players that day; outside of that, the rest is luck. It's intriguing when you don't know which player will dominate that season or which players be injured or benched.
People and their decision making throughout the season make fantasy sports so unique. Each owner approaches the draft differently and put their own signature on the team by adding their favorite players. Some managers constantly make moves by adding and dropping players while others trust their lineup over the long haul. Some owners tend to win more than others but the losers come back next year for the chance of being the last team standing for an undeniable ego boost amongst your friends.
The competitive level reaches a fever-pitch as owners trash talk each other on league message boards. Since not all owners see one another daily or even monthly, the message boards serve as an outlet to boast about your team and rip others. Many times it's very amusing, playing out much like conversations overheard in a boys high school locker room.
Maybe it's a guy thing but fantasy sports makes watching sports a lot more fun and allows boys to be boys. Isn't that what all sports fans want as their dreams of being a professional athlete fade? The chance to share success in sports just like our childhood idols do is a dream that will never die.
Please don't call an addiction therapist; I'm going to be alright.
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