As I am sure everyone has loved (hated) listening to me talk about fantasy sports over and over, here I am again with a write up on the subject. But this time, it’s about what I think is the difficult part of the activity. We here at On The Bench Report, as our readers have been able to follow, have spent the past baseball season playing in a fantasy baseball league. We split our time as managers week to week and somehow fell into taking 2nd place. Please hold your applause for later. I can tell you I had very minimal to do with our success. Anyways, as we took our exit from the league, something was brought to my attention. Something that was also brought to my attention heading into the fantasy football season. Fantasy sports make it very difficult to watch your favorite sports team comfortably.
This originally came up when my fiancee and I were putting together our inaugural Squirrel Framily Fantasy Football League. We put a list of friends and family (Framily) that we wanted to play fantasy football with (that weren’t already involved in our wedding league). Our first to add to the list were family we knew LOVED football. My fiancee’s uncle was one. We played with him in a league last year and it was a lot of fun. When asked to join, he respectfully declined…his reason was because he found it very difficult to watch his beloved Steelers, cheer for them, and somehow still root against their players due to a fantasy football matchup that week. Unfortunately…this is 100% the way it is.
I am a Chargers and Dolphins fan…I face Ryan Tannehill in one league and Melvin Gordon in another. So while I will be cheering for the success of my teams, I will have some ill feelings if and when these players succeed this week as it may cost me a fantasy football victory. I’d love for Tannehill to just go off and get the Fins back into the win column after the last two week collapses. But if he goes off, I could be facing another weekly loss. (Yes…another).
Now, I am not saying that one should put all fanbases aside and just curse your opponents players every week regardless of your alliances. What I am saying is I agree with this difficult problem that fantasy sports presents. All I can say is, if you enjoy fantasy sports, you learn to look beyond that. I am an extremely competitive person and I do not enjoy losing. I hate losing more than I enjoy winning, but in the end…as much I hate to admit…it’s…just…a game. We as fantasy sports players are not directly responsible for the outcome of these real life games. We are all playing a pretend game and these teams do not direct their effort based off us starting them in my 10 person friends and family league called The Squirrel Framily. It is all in fun.
Trust me…if Melvin Gordon scores a TD this weekend, I will probably say a small expletive, but I will also be happy that San Diego’s new rookie is getting into a groove finally. It’s the separation of fiction from reality. My fantasy team is minimal to the success of my Bolts and Fins. I don’t own a jersey for my fantasy team (although that would be cool), I own jerseys to my real life teams, regardless of their 1-2 start.
With all that said, I understand some people not being able to enjoy a Sunday afternoon watching their team. While I’d love to think every single person in this world should play fantasy sports, it’s not reality. And neither is fantasy sports. So I praise those who have chosen real life over a pretend game for 17 weeks.
But I’d love to hear everyones thoughts on this subject! Leave a comment, hit my twitter @TheRobbeo, whatever. Tell me how you deal with this or if it is your first year playing fantasy sports, have you encountered this yet?
Well, it’s almost kickoff for the Thursday game, so on that note…time to check on my boys, time to fall into my little fantasy world. I know I’m not the only one.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.