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The NFL 1997 season gets under way this coming weekend. As the king of spectator sports in the United States, the gridiron game should draw millions of viewers to television sets, and hundreds of thousands of ticket holders to stadiums. I'll be one of them watching at home.
A good number of these people will watch rather attentively, tune in to the post-game shows, and delve into the newspaper on Labor Day morning to check up on statistics. I'm not talking about the die-hard fans, or the avid gamblers. I'm thinking about the fantasy leaguers.
The fantasy leaguers draft their own teams, selecting players from around the NFL to form their own megalomaniac amalgams. They watch to see how the combined performances of those players stack up against the teams of other people in their league.
This is what it means to be a fan in the era of free agency and overexposure. Faced with players bouncing from city to city in search of better contracts, and entire franchises that do much the same thing, the fans have not rebelled, but complied.
Instead of tearing up season tickets when management lets a player go, just draft that player on your fantasy squad. Then watch for the highlights on SportsCenter. Make those meaningless stats meaningful. When Stuart Scott asks for a witness from the congregation, stand up and say, "Amen!".
And Stuart, I have a bit of advice for you. As cool as it is to use the slang as spice, remember that if the dish is just pepper, people will choke on it. Used sparingly, the flavor keeps you hip. Used ad nauseum, and you sound as pathetic as a group of white suburbanites reciting entire Monty Python routines from memory.
Along the same lines, watching four or five football games in two days can prove tiring. If you have a player from your team in each of those games, though, the fun never stops. Forget the anger you may have felt in the past when a head coach goes for a field goal rather than a touchdown. Now you can experience the agony of waiting to see what receiver gets the ball as well.
I criticize fantasy league for accomodating the actions of players and owners by displacing team loyalty with individual performance monitoring. It turns ordinary fans into agents, really. Don't bother with a team player like Wayne Chrebet, take his petulant teammate Keyshawn Johnson, someone who will whine to the press all week if his numbers don't look good. But fantasy league mirrors the real game. Why should Jerry Jones get to be the only bastard able to snatch up high priced players and have all the fun?
So I can see its appeal. Hell, Fantasy League Ultimate is a blast, and a great heckling activity. Arguably, this is not about complying with owners and players at all, but a way of makinng do with them. No matter what the ugly business of sport does to the game, the fans will persist in finding a way to reclaim it. So why should I be such a stick in the mud?
I guess I just like to think I don't pay that much attention to football. Not that I'm fooling anyone: I watch plenty of games and hours of coverage on ESPN. There just isn't any documentation of it. Nowhere am I reminded of how much time I may waste away doing it. I like it that way.
There is another part I don't like. Most of the leagues require some sort of entry fee. The money is then pooled together and goes to the winner, after however much goes to paying for whomever keeps the league's numbers together. This prize money must also help to keep things interesting. Entry fees may be 50 or 100 dollars.
Well, that sure is penny-pinching if you ask me. If you really want to gamble, bite the bullet and lay a yard on a game every week. Now that would keep things interesting.
In that spirit, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. Or at least my prognostication skills. Every week, I plan to pick the Monday night game, and you can watch my progress. Now, I'm not really laying bets with anyone. I don't have the green and I really wouldn't want to risk real money. I'll just risk the derisions of anyone watching my running total slip below zero.
Besides, gambling is illegal.
Last Updated: 28 August 1997
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