According to a 2015 report by Forbes Magazine, 33 million people are signed up to play fantasy football this season. This astronomical number marks an all-time high for the fantasy industry. While leagues exist for other major sports such as basketball and baseball, fantasy football has become the fantasy behemoth, towering over all other fantasy sports. To put the 33 million users into perspective, that outnumbers the total populations of the 18 least populated states in America. Combine the populations of Kansas, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Hawaii, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming, and Washington, DC, and you still have not reached the total number of fantasy football competitors in our country. It’s worth examining the myriad effects that this relatively recent phenomenon is having on what it means to be a fan in today’s fantasy-driven NFL landscape.
Fantasy football most obviously changes fandom by tearing you from any team allegiances you may have previously held. No longer is it important which jersey players wear; all that matters is if they rack up points for you and score touchdowns on a regular basis. As a devout Redskins fan, I am embarrassed to admit that in the midst of blowouts last season, I was rooting for my fantasy players to further embarrass the Redskins and help me out in my fantasy league. If you become invested enough in fantasy, you no longer have a favorite team and simply root for your fantasy players and become a fickle and capricious sports fan.
Football used to be all about passing down love for a team through generations. My grandma, even at 84 years old, sits down in front of the television on Sunday afternoon and cheers on the Redskins. I worry that this allegiance to individual teams may begin to sputter and die as fantasy becomes more and more pervasive. You are beholden to an assortment of players throughout the season that are on your roster, but that roster will change next season, undoubtedly. There is no true emotion involved, simply a rotating door of faceless statistics. Instead of living and dying with your team, you are constantly jumping ship and investing your stock in a new player, who will hopefully lead you to victory over your opponent.
Fantasy football is eroding the soul of the American sports fan, but also, on a more personal level, I’ve found it to be an elusive and maddening endeavor. It seems that I can spend countless hours in July and August researching fantasy strategy and still somehow finish deep in the cellar of my league. Now, there is obviously some personal sadness here, but I’ve come to believe that a lot of the fantasy advice out there on the Internet is bogus. Does Matthew Berry really know if Duke Johnson is going to be this year’s breakout star? No. Is it legitimate that when I search “fantasy football experts” I am met with an endless list of full-grown men that list this as their job title? Also, no.
This brings me to the crux of my complaints with fantasy football: Gambling on NFL games is illegal in the United States. Granted, you can get past that rather easily by sending money to Las Vegas and betting through a proxy in Nevada, where it is legal. However, in all 49 other states, it is illegal. Fantasy football has gained amnesty from this law because it is not classified as a game of luck, but rather a game of “skill.” Fantasy football certainly has elements of skill, and I will admit that making trades and your first three draft picks are all important strategic moves. Past that, however, you are dealing with a game of chance. Weird, unexplainable things happen in the NFL and I would argue that the reason that “that guy” in your league who spends the most time on research finishes last is because it’s too damn hard to know what is going to happen in the NFL.
Perhaps there is something poignant to be learned in the world of fantasy football. It’s possible that we play fantasy every year because it represents some of the qualities of life. It’s possible to pretend like you know what tomorrow—or next Sunday—holds, but in reality, everyone is equally in the dark. It’s a tantalizing and frustrating game, but one that holds some serious rewards, such as eternal bragging rights over your closest friends. I’m not sure it’s quite worthy of being a $11 billion industry, as reported by AdWeek in 2014, but obviously it has some carnal attraction to the masses. My hope is that we can enjoy fantasy as NFL fans but also transcend the game at times so that the tradition of supporting one single franchise does not become a relic of the past.