(image: the next generation of football fan)

Fantasy Football Has Ruined the NFL

Let me start off by saying, I have no problems with Fantasy Football itself. In fact, I'm in my first pay-to-play FF league this year, and I'm actually enjoying it for what it is.

Secondly, I'm not making the argument that it's ruined the NFL for league owners, merchandisers, or cable networks. Or for Yahoo!, ESPN.com, or CBSsportsline. Anyone with their hand in league profits have benefitted nicely from its recent surge in popularity.

What it has done, however, is ruined the NFL experience for the average football fan.

I've realized that outside of a few select friends and long-time football fans, I can't have one god damn conversation about the NFL anymore (with the exception of the wonderful OkaySports boards, of course) without someone bringing up Fantasy, and 9 times out of 10 the conversation devolves into a story-for-story recollection of the past Fantasy seasons, trading war stories like Brody and Quint traded scar stories in Jaws.

A common conversation could go something like this:

"Hey, did you watch the game yesterday? Tiki was tearing shit up"
"No he didn't! He only scored like 11 points for me!"
"Um... what?"
"Why didn't he score a touchdown after his 53 yard run down to the 2-yard line!"
"Because they have other weapons. Are you even a Giants fan?"
"I should've never drafted him"

Or, watching the game with some of these guys:

"Come on T.O.! Get me 6 points"
"The fuck are you doing rooting for the Cowboys?"
"I'm not! I just want T.O. to score for me. I still want the Giants to win the game"

But maybe I just need to watch the game with people who share my mentality. Okay, so there goes about half of my football fan crowd. I'd rather watch the game with my mother, who continually says shit to grate on my nerves while the game's going on, than to watch with one of these fantasy-first motherfuckers. At least she's always rooting for the Giants and against their opponent. She's grasped that concept of the game, which is more than I can say for a lot of so-called football fans my age.

But no matter how many people I cut out of my football-watching crowd, that won't change the fact that ESPN has dedicated chunks of precious SportsCenter time (time I choose to spend before work while I eat breakfast) to this beast. Instead of actual sports coverage, highlights, or analysis, I get some 20 year-old douchebag named Matthew Berry telling me the do's and dont's of fantasy drafts. Why don't we have some Magic: The Gathering analysis after that? This has nothing to do with sports coverage. Put that shit on ESPN 2, or on some isolated show, I don't want this snarky bitch making bad jokes and acting superior when I'm just trying to catch up on the sports day.

And the in-game stats have got to go, too. When looking for the real-time score of the other games going on while I'm watching the game, I used to be able to check the bottom line or the box in the corner, and simply wait 30 seconds to a minute to see it. Now, I have to wait to see that Shaun Alexander has gotten 3 carries for 9 yards with 12:01 in the 1st quarter, and other meaningless stats before they move on to the next game's score. I realize Fantasy is getting big now, but do we really have to pander to the "player fans" before the actual football fans?

We've got to put an end to this madness. Everyone in a fantasy league should also take part in some type of straight-up football pool where the only thing that matters are wins and losses and maybe how much a team wins by. Maybe that would balance shit out a little bit.