Terry Flanagan: Fall Flights of Fantasy Football

It’s that bittersweet time of the year when summer is drawing to a close and it’s time to shake off the cobwebs and hit the books hard. No time for lying on the beach, biking down the trails, or just sitting back and enjoying a cool one. It’s time for serious study as you prepare for the grueling autumn schedule ahead. Second year law school and pre-med will seem like a cake walk compared to the challenge you now face—the Fantasy Football draft.

Fantasy Football is not for the faint of heart. There are depth charts, position rankings, scouting reports, injury reports, trade reports, cheat sheets, sleeper reports, keeper reports, head-to-head game analyses,  and dozens of projections by experts. There are game day reports, sit ‘em or play ‘em recommendations, and bye week considerations. There are enough statistics, probabilities, and variables to make an actuary weep. Former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld could have been describing the Fantasy Football player’s dilemma when he said,

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”

Every year at this time millions of people devote more hours of research to player selection than all of the hours spent on medical research over the last decade. OK, that may not be true, but I bet it’s not far off, which would be sad. The Fantasy Sports Trade Association projects that 32 million people will participate in fantasy sports this year. Participation not only seems to be growing, but a lot of participants are serious players who play in multiple leagues. A couple of the guys in our league seem to have done enough research to have earned a PhD in the subject. My head would explode if I had to learn that much.

And yet no amount of research seems to help when it comes down to the realities of the game. That fact, combined with my uncanny ability to pick the wrong players at the wrong time, guarantees almost as frustrating a season as the 2009 Detroit Lions. Some of my stellar picks have included Tom Brady in 2008, the year in which his season lasted approximately ten minutes. I also picked Plaxico Burress, who wound up being the Giants problem child that year. Burress ended his season on a high note by accidentally shooting himself in the thigh at a nightclub and being suspended for the remaining four games. Neither of these incidents was even considered a remote possibility in the volumes of research included with the draft kits.

One guy in our league decided to sit out last season. He said he no longer felt he could enjoy the game. And to some extent that’s true. You often wind up watching your players instead of the game. Or you find yourself in the awkward position of needing a fantasy player to do well against the home team, which is not Green Bay. Just a reminder for my friends who are misguided Packer fans.

So I find myself on the verge of beginning another season with the usual bit of reluctance. There is the lure of a football season without the distraction of deciding which players to start each week. But there’s also the camaraderie and the enjoyment of a little friendly competition. And that’s how Fantasy Football should be played.