I don't think it takes a genius to point out that America has an obsession with football. I come from SEC country, where a team that wears orange and co-opts a bluegrass staple as their fight song reigns supreme. While I'm proud of my homeland, I'm also a Vanderbilt fan, which led to a cynical view of reality, which I still possess, but I digress ... Upon moving to the Great White North (Christiansburg), I discovered that, thanks to this beautiful campus and those who fill it, college football is rooted every bit as strongly here as it is back in the Volunteer State. A friend recently sent me an e-mail comparing aspects of football in the North versus in the South, a portion of which follows:
Stadium Size: NORTH: College football stadiums hold 20,000 people. SOUTH: High school football stadiums hold 20,000 people.
Commentary (Male): NORTH: "Nice play." SOUTH: "Dammit, you slow sumbitch -- tackle him and break his legs."
Commentary (Female): NORTH: "My, this certainly is a violent sport." SOUTH: "Dammit, you slow sumbitch -- tackle him and break his legs."
It's all true. Football inspires widespread passion as no other sport in the South. Boston has baseball, Minnesota has curling, Maryland has lacrosse, the planet has soccer, but between August and January, from USC to Florida, Miami to Ohio State, nothing else gets us as riled up as college football.
OK, scratch that. Two things get us as riled up as college football: the NFL and fantasy football. Fantasy football has been around since 1962, when a few buddies in and around the Oakland Raider organization came up with the first incarnation. It has existed ever since, but has exploded since the Internet revolution of the 1990s.
To summarize the standard fantasy game: you own a team, and you select certain players through a draft at the beginning of the year. Depending on league rules, you are awarded points for touchdowns, yardage gained and/or receptions, with other point values for defense and special teams. You select which players to use on any given week to give you the best chance of beating your opponent. The best team at the end of the year typically wins a prize, whether monetarily or bragging-rights based.
Fantasy football now serves many purposes. It gives Lions fans something to actually enjoy on Sundays. When the sight of Al Davis, all 120 years of him, raises those self-mutilatory urges in a Raiders fan, a win in fantasy football provides the balm that allows them to put the lighter down and say "Hey, at least I beat Pain Train this week because Andre Johnson couldn't hold onto the ball."
Fantasy football also provides a whole new language that makes those who speak it feel special, e.g. "I picked up Torain on the waiver wire as a late-season sleeper," or "I beat Zorn's Trannies this weekend because he had Marshawn Lynch on a bye." To those unfamiliar with the fantasy football world, if you're walking across the Drillfield and hear people speaking in what sounds like code, they're either engineering majors or fantasy football fanatics.
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Great article, Daron! I got hooked a couple years ago myself. Every weekend is filled with multiple tv's on in the house and me bouncing back and forth checking on all my players and how my fantasy team is doing. I want to share with you a new site that I started playing on a couple weeks ago that has really changed how I look at fantasy sports. Its called www.365fantasysports.com. They run daily fantasy contests for fun or cash. I pick a roster (actually I get into several different contests each week) and at the end of the day, if I've won, I get paid. They have NFL and NBA games available and you can play in as many or as few contests as you want. I like it because I don't have to wait until the end of the season to get paid. I can (and have been) making money almost every day. Check it out for yourself, www.365fantasysports.com.
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This wasn't an opinion article until the following line: "I'm all for anything that keeps us interested and at least mildly happy during these volatile economic and political times" I agree.
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