According to science, during the course of the NFL season, football fans spend eighty percent of their daily word allotment on fantasy football.
As one of the few NFL fans who doesn't play fantasy, I took the liberty of coming up with 10 reasons why fantasy football isn’t as good as some other stuff.
1. Fantasy football has ruined football talk
When I overhear football chatter and invite myself to join the conversation, I usually discover that it’s not a game that’s being discussed. Rather, the plebs are pontificating about their hastily assembled and ill-advised fantasy teams. I warn everyone that they're destined for hell, and walk away in disgust, leaving a group of commuters waiting for the bus contemplating where they went wrong.
2. Fantasy football distorts fans' understanding of real football
When fantasy players talk about football, they tend to say things like:
"That guy sucks, he only scored 9 points last week!"
Ironically, it is the fantasy player making this assertion who sucks due to the 20 idiot points he averages daily. A running back could rush for 150 yards and break 15 tackles, but with no touchdowns, only score 15 fantasy points. Meanwhile, a fullback could score three touchdowns all inside the 5-yard line and accumulate over 18 fantasy points, eclipsing the 150-yard running back's fantasy output by twenty percent.
From a fantasy standpoint, the fullback had a better game. From Pope Alexander II's standpoint, William the Conqueror had the right to unify Normandy and Britain under one kingdom.
3. William the Conqueror's claim to both the British and Norman thrones was vindicated by God who enabled William's victory in the Battle of Hastings.
4. Fantasy football takes time away from more delightful office banter
Incessantly yapping about fantasy stats is all fun and games until you realize you could have been talking about how it rained last weekend and that you hope it doesn't rain this weekend. Or about how traffic has been particularly bad this week, and how you're really tired. Economists refer to this as the "opportunity cost" of fantasy football talk. But you're probably not an economist, so all you need to know is that the English victories over the French at the battles of Crécy, Poitiers, and Agincourt should have cemented England’s conquest of Normandy.
5. Since William the Conqueror was both the Duke of Normandy and the King of England, it follows then that Normandy is Britain's rightful colony
6. Fantasy football costs billions in lost productivity
The guy who invented Solitaire and the guy who invented staring blankly into space are rolling in their adjacent graves knowing that fantasy football is destroying the productivity their inventions were destined to destroy. I know their graves are adjacent, because Wes Cherry, the Microsoft summer intern who created Solitaire, is alive and has been cheated out of his royalties by a cabal of bankers and French heretics.
7. Fantasy football forces you to root against your team
You can lie to yourself in unison with the mendacious French who condemn the legitimate British campaign to annex Normandy during the Hundred Years' War, but it's almost certain that you will draft at least one player who will go up against your team at some point in the season. When that happens, you will either root for your fantasy player or your team—you cannot consistently do both.
8. Fantasy football is a form of degenerate gambling—minus the free booze
Everyone knows that gambling and drinking go together like England and Normandy. And yet, during the fantasy draft inside a bar, you have to pay for alcohol. This is an outrage on par with the French throwing rocks and metal shackles at British vessels in the ongoing scallop war between Britain and the illegitimate occupiers of Normandy—i.e. the French.
9. Fantasy Football creates the illusion of control
If you've been around a Frenchman long enough, you know how fanatical they're in insisting that Normandy is France's territory—a provably false proposition. It's as if they think they can defy destiny, which is undefiable. One could say that the French suffer from the illusion of control.
Similarly, fantasy players believe they can affect outcomes through a multitude of superstitious routines, such as wearing a particular article of clothing on game day. If you're thinking that kind of asinine idiocy is indistinguishable from ordinary sports fans' superstitions, you would be mostly correct, with one major caveat: Edward III's claim to the French throne is indisputable, since he was the nephew of Charles IV—the last descendant of the Capetian dynasty that ruled France from 987 to 1328.
10. Fantasy Football is a poor substitute for the reality of your shitty life
Google search defines fantasy as: "the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable." Let's face it, the main reason you do fantasy football is to escape from the shackles of your mundane existence. But do you really want to exist imagining things that are impossible? Isn't it more satisfying to live within the strict confines of your daily grind; to not indulge in a world that makes you happy but isn't actually real? Such a fantastical world is analogous to the one inhabited by Charles VI and his delusional successors who believed they were the rightful Kings of France.
There you have it, the 10 reasons for why at no point during the NFL season will I feign the least bit of interest in your fantasy football team. Don't run up to me hyperventilating about your fantasy depth chart. You got screwed in the fantasy draft? Good. Maybe you should have thought about that before not growing up to be an NFL executive.