This weekend apparently marks the last Sunday of the regular NFL season (I have lost track of time) and because of this, I find this to be the perfect time to reflect on my fantasy football team/league that my friends and I started months ago at the start of the season. Considering that I don’t know the NFL season schedule well and that the fantasy football app uninstalled itself from my phone after weeks of neglect (and my phone has no space), my fantasy team is not really very important to me. But, now that the season is ending, I’m thinking about it again. And if I have a thought, it’s going to end up in this newsletter.
To say that I don’t enjoy sports is a lie, but to say that I know much about sports or consistently follow them would also be untrue. Most of my NFL consumption is at my dad’s house, but I would never say no to going to a game. I say that I’m a White Sox fan, but I usually just let the guys on my improv team give me the news on who’s leaving and such. There’s just too much knowledge in the world, and I need to know too many things about American Girl dolls that important things like playoff games very much fall through the cracks. That’s why we have friends to give us the information sometime later!
So a few months ago, one of my friends in the group chat proposed for us in the group to start our own fantasy football league, just for fun. We weren’t even going to pick players based on any merit of their playing ability, but choosing with some other arbitrary trait. This is perfect for a group like us, where I (who knows basically nothing) knows more about football than most of my friends. Also, it’s fun to think about what kind of random group of people would somehow do football best.
Even though this was completely for fun, no competition, no dare for the loser to complete, no prize for the winner, the draft was shockingly stressful. We did it remotely, and being newcomers also were just not ready for how fast the draft was going to go. You only get like two minutes to pick your person, that’s not enough time when you’re experiencing a learning curve! But that’s just what sports are, baby!
The teams went as follows: players with a criminal record, all astrological water signs, the heaviest players, the worst players, random pull, the hottest players, the best players, and my team: all Daves.
I thought that having a team of Daves would be fun. My coworker’s boyfriend told me that was a very good idea. Think about it: an army of Davids storming the football field in their tight little pants and silly little helmets, conquering all who try coming for them. Except for one thing: there are a good amount of Daves who play for the NFL but pretty much none of them are good. If you want to have a child who is going to be a good football player, if anything else don’t name them fucking David. My best player isn’t even named David, he’s named Daniel and he’s also not even that good!
But we’re not here for a competition. This fantasy football league is more of a social experiment to see what arbitrary traits might do football good than actually caring about winning said fantasy league, right? Right? Please note to two paragraphs above where I mentioned that someone in our league just purposefully picked out the best players in football. Being the best at football isn’t an arbitrary trait for a football player—it is really the only thing that’s important! The person who did this egregious act is a frequent reader of this newsletter and for the sake of this social experiment I have to disqualify their team as an outlier. Sure, you won the league but at what cost?
So if we disqualify the Best Players Team, who actually won the regular season? It may come to no surprise that the true winner of the league was the team of all the hottest players, otherwise known as the Gridiron Heartthrobs. In a world where I like to tell my average at best self that being hot isn’t the only thing, looking at this fantasy football team it seems as though being hot is actually the best way to succeed in football—and when applying the transitive property, in all of life too.
I won’t let that bring me down too much though. The friend who did a random draft ranked the next highest, followed by water signs and players with a criminal record (no domestic violence). While the hot team winning put my spirits down a bit, knowing that the water signs and criminals are just average makes me feel a little better. I am a water sign, and while I have never been arrested, I still have a lifetime of potentially getting arrested for something stupid. Being average is sometimes all you can ask for. It’s at least better than being the worst.
And then we have the bottom three teams: my team of Daves, the heaviest boys in the league, and the worst players in the league. While I wished for my Daves to do better, they at least did better than some other people. This isn’t a competition, but everything is always a competition.
Looking back on this fantasy football league, I had fun with it. I may even be wanting to draft another team next year with some different (maybe more well thought-out) arbitrary traits, if my friends are willing to continue this tradition. I have learned nothing about this experience, and it did not make me watch any more football than I normally would watch. It did leave me making wild conclusions about what traits make you successful as a person, which is never healthy nor good, but I am not a perfect person.
If you have any ideas for next year’s team, let me know what I should draft next. Do we do baseball next?
Check out another Date Night with the Rats show this Friday, 1/12, 10:00pm at the Bughouse Theater. It’ll be a great time as always! Buy tickets here.
Also! Please vote for us in the Chicago Reader for “Best improv/sketch group” and “Best comedy show.” Voting closes January 14th!