Face-Off: Fantasy Football vs. The NFL
August 17th, 2006 by Levi MatthewsAs fantasy football has taken over every office cubicle in the country - and as the NFL sits atop the American sporting landscape - a pressing debate has emerged:
Would You Prefer a Fantasy Football Championship Over a Super Bowl Victory for Your Favorite Team?
I speak from experience. While I agonized along with every yard of the 49ers’ game-winning march down the field years ago, and while butterflies dart around my stomach during tense moments of professional contests every season, I’ve played in fantasy football title games. I’ve cursed, I’ve broken into sweats, into hives, cheered, booed and stood slack-jawed at the results on screen as my team - MY team! - rallied from deficits to bring home the championship.
This has occurred in each of the past two seasons and I can safely hold my head up high to state: you can have your Lombardi Trophy. I’ll take the gratification of superior drafting prowess and in-season decision making. My friends can eat it!
As Jerry Seinfeld once opined, cheering for a specific team is like rooting for laundry. Sure, I’m a 49ers fan. I grew up idolizing Montana. So now I should live and die with each pass by … Alex Smith? I should have rooted for Terrell Owens earlier in his career, but now it’s ok to bash him for the selfish cretin that he is because he’s no longer wearing red and gold? They’re only jerseys, there’s no more personal attachment to clubs. Especially in this era of free agency, you’re following a concept more than a franchise.
The opposite holds true with fantasy football. These are my guys, my squad. My decisions will drive the outcome of each game, as waiver wire pickups such as Joe Jurevicius and Samkon Gado helped catapult the team into championship contention last season. In the world of fantasy football, I’m personally invested in the results and players involved. In the world of professional football, other so-called general managers control who I’m rooting for. Where’s the fun in that?
Face it, when your favorite team wins it all, you never touch the Lombardi Trophy. You’re riding the wave of other people’s accomplishments, complete strangers, often times very spoiled ones at that. Pretty soon, I’ll forget the feeling of my father’s arms clutching his celebratory young son. Our smiles will fade from memory like the career of my boyhood idol. But I’ll always brag to my friends about the years I demolished their dreams of a fantasy football championship. No one can ever take that away from me.
– Levi Matthews
But here’s the thing. While this experience is one that I will not soon forget (or stop talking about, much to the chagrin of my friends), I would trade it for a New York Giants championship in a heartbeat. I might even do the same for a mere playoff appearance. While significant, the excitement generated by crunching numbers, managing a non-existent franchise and talking enormous amounts of trash to your friends pales in comparison to a team you have supported since birth making a run at the Super Bowl.
Being a fan involves more than statistics, wins and losses. It is about being a small part of an organization, identifying with something bigger than one’s self. It is growing up with a team and sharing its experiences, good and bad. When I hurt my knee and couldn’t walk for weeks at age eight, my Dad entrusted me with his prize possession - an original VHS recording of Super Bowl XXI. These weeks made me the Giant fan I am today.
Watching Mark Bavaro score the go-ahead touchdown early in the third quarter against Denver lifted my spirits over and over again. To this day, I can recall almost every play of the second half, from each of MVP Phil Simms’ passes (every one of them completed) to Bill Parcells’ Gatorade bath.
Fantasy sports are entertaining, but cannot measure up to the pure emotion. They don’t provide the elation that I experienced a few years later when New York won its second title, after winning the NFC Championship and Super Bowl by three points combined. They don’t give you the pure and innocent joy of lying awake at night, dreaming of sacking quarterbacks like L.T. is doing on the poster above your head. A fantasy squad doesn’t instill bitterness throughout high school as the Giants’ mediocrity sets in and many weak-minded counterparts have allied themselves with front-running Dallas.
There is no walking through the entryway and basking in awe at the synthetic glow of Astroturf, having travelled to New Jersey to see your favorite team play in person for the first time.
The victories are gratifying in fantasy contests, yet certainly don’t inspire tears of joy like when the Big Blue demolished Minnesota to claim the NFC title in 2001. Conversely, defeats don’t cause tears of pain, as when Baltimore did a similar number on my boys two weeks later. Nor do they make you nearly come to blows with members of your fraternity, who know how to push your buttons and simply won’t shut up about the damn game for weeks. If I ever see one individual in question again, watch out.
A fantasy team does not give you (somewhat fuzzy) memories such as watching Michael Strahan break the single-season sack record, yet being so annihilated that you don’t realize Brett Favre fell on purpose until the next day’s SportsCenter. Fantasy stats don’t capture the combination of disappointment and hope that accompanied Eli Manning’s rookie season. It’s just not the same.
But enjoy fantasy sports. God knows I do. They make the 14 games each week that don’t involve the Giants a little more interesting.
– Michael Stephens
