Fantasy Football: The Art of Specific Outcomes

My first exposure to fantasy sports was in college. One night a dorm character named “Pizza John” asked me if I wanted to participate in his Rotisserie Baseball league. What the heck is Rotisserie Baseball? As Pizza John explained, it was a game that involved “drafting” actual professional players, assembling them onto a fictional team, and keeping track of their statistics over the baseball season. As he explained the formula for WHIP (walks + hits/inning), it occurred to me that this wasn’t the “college life” I had envisioned. I certainly wasn’t the coolest freshman in Smith Hall, but I was pretty sure hanging around the hall lounge and pretending to manage Frank Viola and Bret Saberhagen wasn’t going to help my social standing and declined the invitation.

A few years later, fantasy sports–specifically fantasy football–had gone mainstream. It was still pre-Internet, so league commissioners used a newspaper to compile stats and tabulate scores. Additionally, there were no online drafts, no auto-picking. I remember a friend of mine conducting a draft via cell phone while on a fishing boat in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Fantasy football magazine in his lap, he explained to me how Brad Baxter was a huge touchdown vulture for the Jets.

Shortly after that fishing trip, I played in my first “serious” fantasy football league. It was an auction-style, non head-to-head league–just who could score the most points over the course of the season. Our official scoring newspaper was The Philadelphia Inquirer and the scores weren’t released until after Monday Night Football. Back then, you really had no idea how you were doing in real time. It was great to see one of your players score a touchdown, but you couldn’t run to your clamshell style cell phone and see how it impacted your matchup. Every Tuesday morning, I would pull up my e-mail at work (after the extra step of connecting to the Internet of course) and find out each week’s results. Fueled by two rookies named Peyton Manning and Randy Moss, I managed to finish the season in third. That podium finish hooked me on fantasy football and validated the knowledge gained from a lifetime of watching the NFL.

My NFL education started around 3rd grade. When I was a kid, we couldn’t get home from church fast enough. We attended the 11:00 am service and coffee/cake usually took until about 12:30 pm. As soon as our station wagon got back into the garage, I would have just enough time to run upstairs, rip off my “nice” clothes, and warm up the tv to catch the last few minutes of pregame with Brent Musburger and Irv Cross. (This was back east with a 1pm kickoff.) And then the games were stories of legend–battles of good vs evil played out on a 100 yard field. This was the heyday of NFL Films, and highlights were edited into epic cinematic tales scored by dramatic orchestrations and narrated by John Facenda’s “Voice of God.” Today’s NFL is packaged into a video game and while Madden is an incredible technological feat, but it’s derivative. NFL Films elevated the game into art. When Dwight Clark made “The Catch” in January 1982 it was magical. I wasn’t even a 49ers fan, but Joe Montana and company were the best version of football at the time.

Without Sports Center running on an endless loop, I had to study football statistics on my own. Each Monday, I would pour over the sport page analyzing game and the players–who scored touchdowns, who threw for 300 yards, who turned the ball over. I learned about the spread and made a few bets with my dad, but handicapping games was never really my thing. I didn’t know it at the time; I was training to be a fantasy football owner.

Years later, fantasy football continued to be my vice and when we bought our first house in California, it only seemed logical to have DIRECTV installed with the Sunday Ticket package. After years of wondering about my out of market players, I would now be able to monitor their progress directly. That seemingly meaningless November game between the Titans and Jaguars? I was watching to see if Chris Johnson got the goal-line work. I zipped around the 700-level channels dropping in on any game that was fantasy relevant all the while keeping track of my teams on my laptop propped up in front of me. I didn’t think it could get any better.

…and then Red Zone came along. For those of you don’t know, Red Zone is a DIRECTV channel that constantly cuts to where the best NFL action is. For eight hours on Sunday, you can let Red Zone producers choose where to take you. We used to go over to Lou Pini’s house who preached the Sunday Ticket practice of having a “base game” and occasionally clicking over to check in on other games. It was tremendous pressure to be holding the remote on Sunday. NO MORE! just sitting back and relaxing and let the Red Zone wash over you.

Then in 2015, I walked away. I had lost the love of the game. Something about the sport was unrecognizable from the NFL of my childhood. More than anything else, there was too MUCH offense: slot receivers could go over the middle with out any fear of retribution, quarterbacks could barely be touched, and so many games came down to who had the ball last. The NFL had become the video game and in my mind, lost some of its charm.

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

Four years I stayed away. I would nod politely when friends would talk about their fantasy football teams or wanted to show me their scores on their phones. Then something happened during the last year’s playoffs. Wild card weekend I was trapped on the couch recovering from surgery. I watched every minute of football that Saturday and Sunday, and the game once again fascinated me. The boys would sit down and the game drew them in like when I was a kid. As a family, we predicted winners for all the playoff games, and while I was the worst handicapper, I didn’t care. It was something fun to do. Somewhere between the Chargers’ gritty effort in Baltimore and the horrific uncalled pass inference against the Saints, I rekindled my love of football.

Before this season, there was some clamoring for a neighborhood fantasy football league. Both boys also expressed an interest in playing fantasy football. I figured it was time to get back on the horse. I rallied the troops and the Presidio Fantasy Football League was born. Draft day was a lot of fun. I’ve always loved bringing the owners together for a live draft. Usually, this consists of a dozen fantasy football nerds huddled in a conference room or living room judiciously making picks while drinking beer and eating pizza. Given our highly social neighborhood, this draft was more like a block party that just happened to have fantasy football draft going on simultaneously.

We’re about halfway through the season and my team is in the middle of the pack. Fantasy football is the same wild ride it always was: there’s sweet victories and crushing defeats. There’s agonizing lineup decisions five minutes before kickoff and the weekly ritual of oddly rooting for incredibly specific outcomes. Ok, we need lots of long field goals from the Packers but we don’t want Aaron Rodgers to get much yardage to drive them into field territory. Ideally a series of tight end sweeps or halfback options, so long as Devante Adams doesn’t catch a pass…typical Sunday game thought process.

The boys aren’t as involved with the team management as we had planned, but quite frankly I’m not really relinquishing the steering wheel. In fact, I’m very much like the dad taking over design and construction of the Pinewood Derby car even though it’s officially the Cub Scout’s entry. I think they’ll get their chances at fantasy sports soon enough. Perhaps when they get to college, there will be degrees offered in fantasy sports ownership and management. I assume these programs will be part of the economics departments and class offerings will include Streaming Quarterbacks 101 & Advanced Statistical Seminar of LaDainian Tomlinson’s 2006 season. I’ll try to help the boys with their homework, but my methods will be horribly outdated. As Chase and I video chat to discuss his thesis he’ll complain, “Dad, that’s not how Professor Pizza John told us to do it.”