**** you, Fantasy Football. **** you.

First things first, we are angry, and thus we are cursing in this one. So, if you are averse to a little colourful language, then go here instead. Right, moving on. A friend of mine posted the following simple yet evocative statement on Facebook today

‘’God I hate Fantasy Football’’

Well you know what friend, so do I.

Why do we put ourselves through it? Think about it. There are millions upon millions playing NFL Fantasy Football. Take away the guy that wins your league, and ask yourself, does anyone actually enjoy it? It is nothing short of a Sunday night headache coated in a dressing of statistical anxiety. You know what, when you are losing sleep over Jabar fucking Gaffney, well, you shouldn’t be allowing yourself to be involved in whatever it is you are doing. Let’s just underline that, if you are laying in bed thinking about Jabar Gaffney, there is something wrong with your life. Particularly if you are a dude.

Fantasy Football is nothing but an anger stimulant. A catalyst towards epic Kenny Power's like melt-downs. This column threw a remote control on Sunday night. Yes, my name is Cormac and I am an angry person today. Kenny Powers fucking angry.



Why are we Kenny Powers angry? Because of Fantasy Football.

Fantasy football is worse than heroin. There it is. I said it, and I stand by it. Fantasy Football is a time wasting, energy sapping, money wasting exercise with no peer. It is the Sarah Palin of hobbies. Full of gloss and bluster, yet ultimately as meaningful as a fish riding a bicycle. Worse yet, it is a lonely path. Let’s get one thing straight, not one human being in the known World cares about your fantasy football team.

Nobody cares. Nobody. There is not one single person that cares about your fantasy football team other than you. Sure, there are people who pretend to care, but they are doing so only to either not hurt your feelings, or in order to be able to then regurgitate a similar boring story about their fantasy football team to you. That’s it. Everyone else could care less. You know what, let’s reiterate that again, because it is simply astounding as to how many male conversations start with ‘Hey you wouldn’t believe what happened to my fantasy team this week!’ Nobody cares. Www.nobodycares.com Take this quarter and go call someone who cares, only problem is you are going to get a dial tone because, nobody cares!

Break it down a little and there it lays in front of you, naked and exposed for the blithering idiot that it is, this Fantasy Football we partake in. There are approximately 20 million people in the United States playing NFL Fantasy Football at time of writing. That is, approximately, 2 million Fantasy Football leagues. So, by the end of this ‘fantasy’ season, a pathetic 200,000 will have won their league. That tiny percentage will have ‘enjoyed’ their Fantasy Football experience. For the rest of us Muppets, this fantasy season will be remembered as a painfully frustrating few months of staring at stat-trackers watching players like Chris Johnson ultimately fail to live up to expectations, high draft picks disappearing into the scrap heap before week five, bad free agent choices, good free agent choices getting freak injuries, and opponents players coming alive the week they play you, you know, just to screw with you, as your opponent tips you by a half a point that given week.

Seriously now, if I had seen one more player that had done nothing for my team, The Tusken Raiders, break out immediately the next week for fifty fucking points for the Chug Monkey that picked him up after I dumped him, the laptop was taking a five-and-dive out the apartment window. Narrow escape, laptop, narrow escape.

You would be better off slapping yourself in the face with a rubber chicken for three hours than running a Fantasy Football team. Seriously, what is the point? It stops you from enjoying NFL games. It does not promote camaraderie amongst friends, let’s just go ahead and debunk that right away. It does nothing of the sorts. It promotes hair loss, anxiety, stomach ulcers and sleeplessness.

As a committed Fantasy Football owner (God even saying that and admitting it to myself I feel like punching myself in the face until my teeth start to bleed for wasting so much time and energy) you are no longer able to enjoy NFL games in the traditional sense. The sometimes majestic ebb and flow of the game is completely lost on your idiotic head. A brilliant, explosive game could be erupting right in front of you, yet you are gormlessly hoping some half baked clown of a receiver gets one more catch so you get those crucial couple of points. Who actually won that game? You don’t even know, as you wallow in your stinking pit of completely ignorant tar. At least Jabar Fucking Gaffney caught that pass (Or, as in my case last night, not one single pass)!



Camaraderie? There is more camaraderie on the trading floor of the stock exchange. Maybe you are in a new, fresh Fantasy league with guys who are pretending to like each other for now. Well, just wait. Give it time, my son. Pretty soon you will be reading bible-length angry emails from this guy to that guy or those guys, cursing and screaming about your league. Pretty soon you will be shocked at the sniping, angry, vicious comments in the matchup section of each game. In my league, going several years now, we don’t even trade anymore. There was no trades in my league this season. Not one! Not through lack of moves, there were hundreds upon hundreds of moves. My theory on the lack of trades? Nobody wanted to give up anything, they would rather rot with the dross they had than potentially help anyone out, even if they were helping themselves out in the long run. The KGB would be stunned at the icy, Iago like machinations in my Fantasy League. I would describe it as a place completely absent of any camaraderie whatsoever. Even amongst the few friends in it.

We know all this, we know how stupid and facile Fantasy Football is, and yet we beat on, boats against the tide. We know how futile the exercise is, and yet we churn hundreds of hours annually into it, like particularly stupid Lemmings casting themselves off the cliff sides.

There probably is no help for us. If you don’t partake in Fantasy Football, please, run away from it, forever. If you are ever in doubt, just think that this person wants to go home and crawl into bed with the covers over his head, but only after punching himself hard in the face a billion times.

Fuck you Jabar Gaffney. Fuck you Fantasy Football.

When’s next season’s draft?





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