I Hate Fantasy Sports

I hate fantasy sports.

I also hate technology, but I only hate technology because it negatively affected my fantasy sports. Two Saturdays ago, we were having our BWC NBA Fantasy league draft, scheduled for 4 p.m. This was no problem, in and of itself, and yet it became a problem. A large problem.

The problem was that at 3:30 p.m. my computer wouldn’t work. That’s right, a half-hour before the draft I experienced a computer freeze that would make a Yeti cold(er). It locked, and wouldn’t do anything for 45 minutes. After many attempts, I made it to the draft just in time! Just in time to make my 12th round pick (I selected Mike Conley Jr.).

This is why I hate Fantasy Sports; because it felt like the end of the world that I was missing this draft, that I didn’t get to choose my assailants. I mean, I was really bummed. But it got me thinking; why do I care? What are Fantasy Sports anyways? Everybody chooses a team, we pick only relevant players from a pre-ranked list, and then we sit back and hope that we’re the lucky one whose players out-perform the other players (made up of similar talent) by a small (or large) margin on a weekly basis. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what grips North America.

I also hate fantasy sports because they now precede the importance of the actual sport itself. I’m in a hockey league with my buddies, and we can’t watch one game, or see one highlight, without someone obsessing over their fantasy status. It dominates conversation. I’m left longing for the good ol’ days when we used to get together for a few beers to watch the game and grunt about attractive women, or our various problems with automobiles. Or when we used to discuss the actual games, and how we’d be so much better than the guys playing, if all we did was train and practice all the time.

Again, it really falls back to this false sense of accomplishment people get from winning fantasy sports (I get it too). Congratulations genius, you picked a team from a list of ranked players with virtually no surprises (we pretend that we picked a dark horse, or an up and comer, but really we’ve heard roughly 7,640 analysts say that guy was going to have a breakout year). Hey, you should be a GM! No, really, I think that’s how Scott Layden and Rob Babcock got started.

The thing about this rant is that I’m also addicted to fantasy sports. I embody the very thing I complain about. I need some feedback on this one because I can’t figure out to save my life why we’re all so obsessed with it (unless it’s for a large sum of money, then it’s pretty clear).

The other thing I’ve learned about fantasy is that it brings out our real personalities. You know what I’m talking about, the little GM inside you rears its head and you realize, so this is how I do business. These personalities have inspired a list, derived from my personal experience in the fantasy hockey league Hockey + Beer = Canada. So, without further ado, here are the various different types of fantasy GM’s.

The Perennial Disaster- You know this guy. When you’re talking to him (or her, but I’m going to use male references in this piece since all the people in my league are guys) he clearly knows enough about the sport. Yet every year he drafts a horrible team and then finds various ways to sabotage himself. Last year our perennial disaster drafted a star player only to see him get injured in the first game. Rather than waiting out the injury, or placing him on the IR, he placed him on waivers. I’m serious, without thinking he set the guy free, only to have the first nosy rival GM pick him up the next day. No matter what this fantasy owner does, he finds a way to do it wrong.

The Waiver Wire Monster- This guy will spend hours on the computer each day, each week, searching over the statistics and splits to see who he should add to his roster. This guy makes roughly 200 waiver moves in a fantasy season and gives himself ulcers over how these fringe players perform each week. He comes to social events muttering about how he could have sworn Hedo Turkoglu was going to light it up, and if it wasn’t for Kobe Bryant, Smush Parker could average 30 ppg. Every week, he could just feel it. Well he was wrong, as the only thing Turkoglu lights up are his frosted tips. Word is he retired from basketball to start a Turkish boy band.

The Drastic Measures Guy- This is my personal favorite. This is my buddy Scott every year. We hold our hockey draft in person, with everyone in the same room, and every year Scott feels good about his team when he’s drafting them. Then, when the draft ends he looks over the roster sheet and says (out loud), “my team sucks!” And every year he sounds just as shocked. Scotty then proceeds to offer everyone in the league one-sided trades, always with an air of panic surrounding him. No matter how many of these ridiculous offers get rejected, Drastic Measures Guy keeps sending out the trades. It’s like that episode of the Simpsons, when Lisa does the science experiment to see whether or not Bart is smarter than a hamster. Bart kept touching that cupcake no matter how many times he got zapped. A perfect analogy for Drastic Measures Guy.

False Sense of Security Guy- One successful week of fantasy has this guy gloating to everyone about his team and how good he is for picking said team. This guy gets all his self-worth from the successes (or failures) of his fantasy team. This means he’s either on cloud nine singing their praises, or down in the dumps complaining about which player screwed him or what he should have done to be better. False Sense of Security guy drives me batty with his mood swings and obsessive-compulsive behavior.

Stingy No-Trade Guy- We’ve finally arrived at my spot in the list. I’m Stingy No-Trade Guy. I have never made a fantasy trade. Not a single one. Part of the reason is that most of the offers I get come from Scotty (see above), so they’re not worth my time. But the real reason is that once you draft your team, you’re really only making trades out of a) necessity or b) boredom. Necessity happens to some people, like my buddy Cal State, who purposely didn’t draft goalies so that he could trade for some later. This doesn’t happen to me, as I drafted my goalies in the normal manner.

Boredom trades transpire when people are tired of looking at the same names on their roster and want to make some basic changes. The reason this doesn’t happen to me is that I have a strict policy that allows me to draft only the players that I like or enjoy watching. I would never draft Jaromir Jagr for instance, because he is a whiny sissy-pants, and even though he gets a lot of points, I hate his guts for being a whiny sissy-pants. The boredom trade does happen a fair bit though. I believe it was the Sports Guy who said after making a trade in fantasy baseball, “I wish I could have held a press-conference so I could stand there and say, ‘I have no idea why I did this.’” That’s the boredom trade in a nutshell.

The truth is, why make trades in fantasy unless you’re getting a killer deal? This would work in theory, if you had a person in your league whom you could swindle, but there’s no one in our league like that. At best you’re getting an even-up trade, so I don’t bother wasting my time.

The Firesale Guy- This guy is so fed up with his team that he’s willing to sell anybody for 40 cents on the dollar. His frustration has been growing steadily since the season began, and Firesale Guy gets whooped regularly. By the halfway point of the season he’s getting pretty sick of it. He stops caring, starts drinking, and lets everyone go for next to nothing.

BWC Sports would love to know: Why do you love fantasy sports?