THE NFL SEASON is about to begin. This may mean guacamole spilled on the couch, a promise to throw the ball to the kids at 7 a.m. or 10 p.m., before and after game-time, and vacuuming relegated to commercials, of which there are tons.
Lin Due with her dog. (Bay City News)
For me it means poring over my fantasy teams and the waiver wire, where I might pick up a diamond in the rough that my fellow managers have overlooked. This takes an astounding amount of time, since my teams can be made up of players across the NFL, so I must know every injury, revenge match, and defensive scheme.
Our leagues also feature IDPs, or individual defensive players, so during the August draft, I choose starters and a bench from the entire landscape of players.
I have played fantasy football for at least 10 years, in what are known as keeper leagues that continue season after season. Last year I did very well in fantasy football: out of eight leagues, I won five and came in second in two.
The one I bombed
And then there was “Baby Boomers and Gen Xers,” a league restricted to managers from those age groups (to be honest, I don’t think there are any Xers). In true boomer fashion, I forgot the initial draft date in 2021, so Yahoo chose players for me. Yahoo bases its choices on last year’s performance. Doesn’t matter if the guy’s 32 and washed-up, if you hate the new coach, if the schedule is a disaster: he’s now your star.
And 2021 featured wonderful rookies: Ja’Marr Chase, Trevor Lawrence, Jaylen Waddle, Kyle Pitts and more. Yahoo couldn’t care less, since those players had no previous record. When I looked at my auto-drafted team, I just about cried. My team hasn’t recovered. Still, there’s nowhere to go but up with the Baby Boomers league and nowhere to go but down for the other seven.
(Illustration by Joe Dworetzky/Bay City News)
Fantasy football demonstrably adds stress to my life. So why play at all? I am a competitive person. I used to play softball and swim rivers and heft giant sacks of feed. Now bocce ball is about my limit. But I get my competitive jones on with fantasy football.
I don’t know any of the guys in my leagues (and they are almost all guys), but they are as competitive as I am. The drafts are hard-hitting, everyone ignoring Yahoo and NFL site suggestions to pick players with underlying reasons for success this season. We know the second team running back who is likely to ascend to stardom, the wide receiver who will break out, the rookie tight end who overcomes that position’s conventional slow maturation.
That’s the easy explanation and while true, it doesn’t complete the answer.
Fantasy football is a window into sanity, an outlet that gives me a vacation from the world we find ourselves in now, where dystopian novels seem naïve.
I need an outlet that gives me a vacation from the world we find ourselves in now, where dystopian novels of five years ago seem naïve. I need a respite from the Sixth Extinction, from wildfires, from worry that we have now entered a whirlpool of doom in which many will suffer and die and we either watch in horror or suffer and die ourselves.
Instead, I stare at my players and wonder if Anthony Richardson will demand a trade now that the Colts opted to start Lazarus-from-the-grave Daniel Jones. Should I take a chance on rookie Travis Hunter or play it safe(r) with Jaxson Smith-Njigba?
Fantasy football is a window into sanity. God help us.
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