Can Fantasy Football Save NFL Sundays?

by Kevin Burton

    How starved are you for NFL football?   Did you watch the game last night?

   People you’ve never heard of wearing Dallas Cowboys uniforms vs people you’ve never heard of wearing Pittsburgh Steelers uniforms.  Watered-down exhibition junk. Did you watch that?

   If I put on the uniform of one of the NFL teams would you watch me play?

   Well if you’re jazzed about the return of football, don’t let me rain on your parade. By all means, enjoy your nachos and sarsaparilla. Guess I’m just in a foul mood. 

   The team I chose, Cincinnati, passed on drafting a generational offensive lineman in the first round to take a wide receiver.  This after their franchise quarterback was knocked out for the season because of inferior offensive line play last year. That told me they aren’t serious about building toward winning. 

   So my early-season enthusiasm isn’t exactly bubbling over. I am beyond sick of Tom Brady too. If the whole thing boils down to him, I just don’t want to be bothered.

   These things and more (I am sparing you most of them) have me thinking about the unthinkable.

   Fantasy football. 

   I have always rolled my eyes at fantasy football.  My brother’s stories about the multiple leagues he is in are amusing. But they never made me eager to sign up.

   Well my friend Rob Weigand, after the beepball world series, mentioned the possibility of having a fantasy league for players on the USA Legends team. 

   That was a team of older beep baseball (baseball for the blind) players we put together just for 2021.

   The Legends experience was such a good one I said I would break my rule and play fantasy football if there was enough interest among the Legends.  What was I thinking?

    I haven’t heard anything since the series. I’m not sure whether I am hoping there will be a league or there will not.

  Honestly I don’t get it.

   So for my fantasy football info, I turned to Lawrence Davis III, writing on www.spectacularmag.com.  He says the appeal of the game is all in the knowledge.

   “In its most basic format, fantasy football gives players the control they want over creating the ultimate professional football team,” Davis writes. “Using knowledge of the teams, players and performances, fantasy football fans select the athletes with the best performances from that week to play in their team.”

   “To be successful, fans need to have the business savvy of a manager, the knowledge of a scout, and the strategy of a head coach. Combine this with understanding of the variables, such as weather conditions and injuries and it’s easy to see why fans can get so involved in their fantasy league.”

   “Players pay a nominal fee for each game that they enter. They then need to select players from a list based on their expectation of how well they will perform that week. If their fantasy team outperforms others then the player wins money, the prize being relative to that of the win. While it might sound straightforward enough, newcomers to the world of fantasy football often reference cheat sheets to get started,” Davis writes.

   If this is just sports fan jonesing for competition, I sort of get that. But there must be an easier way to go about it.

   Could I just be an absentee team owner, or maybe hire a general manger to deal with the details?  Oh, and I only want former Ohio State players. 

   This violates the spirit of what little I know about fantasy leagues. 

   I just entered “fantasy football” in the search engine on WordPress to see what my fellow bloggers are saying about it.  I had to scroll past maybe three dozen serious draft advise type blogs before I got the first wacky fun draft post.  So I don’t know if there is room for a joker like me in fantasy football. Would the Legends league even let me in?

   Mainly I would just want to hear from my Legends teammates.  I want to hear the inevitable moaning about the Bears, Broncos and other teams that have fans among the Legends players.  

   Hey, maybe to stick with the Legends theme I should just draft all the old players.

   Anything to get my mind off Joe Burrow running for his life behind a Swiss cheese Bengals offensive line.