The Football Fan's Manifesto (13 page)

V.9 Gamble, Because of Course You’re Smarter than Vegas

You don’t need me to tell you that gambling is the refuge of filthy degenerates, which explains why reasonable football fans gravitate to it so eagerly. Just as fantasy football heightens the importance of individual achievement, gambling ratchets up the significance of team effort, whether that be losing by no more than six points or helping to push the point total of the game above 42, thereby earning you a cool three grand and the chance to see your daughter again.

The NFL maintains an uneasy relationship with gambling. Seemingly every mainstream publication that covers the league prints the lines that Vegas gives on the games each week, as well as providing picks based on those spreads, yet includes the disclaimer that such odds are for recreational purposes only. Which is kind of like when Hollywood puts Jessica Alba in a movie and expects me not to jerk it in the theater. Why the hell else would I be there?

The government is no more receptive toward our yearning to worship at the altar of Gamblor, the six-penised polytheistic deity of wagering. Big Government makes it its business to quash every sports gambling opportunity that exists outside of Vegas, just because it’s a haven for organized crime, though certainly less of one than the underground structures that form in lieu of a legal betting system. Besides, hating the mafia is sheer lunacy, because there’s nothing Americans love more than organized crime, especially when its depicted in movies and
TV shows. Just take the word of 49ers fans, all of whom would give their left one to get Eddie DeBartolo and the mob back in the front office.

By falling back on shoddy appeals to morality, the government’s stance on gambling makes as much sense as its war on drugs. It’s been estimated that the underground sports betting market in the United States hovers around $150 billion. Think of all that potential revenue squandered. It’s enough to turn people into libertarians, but then they’d have to agree with insufferably smug Bill Maher.

In fact, Montana, hardly a state known for its tilt toward innovation, has recently instituted an NFL-based fantasy football lottery game. Granted, along with Delaware, Nevada, and Oregon, it’s one of the four states where sports betting is legal, but this is still a daring step in the right direction. Naturally, the lottery game isn’t approved by the NFL, which should signal all the more that it’s something people will enjoy. Until legislators come to their senses (which is usually right around the time it becomes politically expedient to do so) football fans will be forced to keep alive hope that their credit card doesn’t get rejected by Bodog. The Nanny State and the NFL may tut-tut its existence, but people are going to find ways to gamble, like it or lump it. As for strategies, I’m no Brandon Lang. I don’t have the secrets to gambling success, other than that you should always bet against whichever team starts Rex Grossman at QB or has Marvin Lewis patrolling the sidelines. Also, stay away from road favorites in
the playoffs. And I’m pretty sure wagering big on your favorite team is a money pit from which you’ll never escape. That said, sweeping secrets to gambling success are hard to come by, unless you pull a Biff from
Back to the Future
and swipe a sports almanac from a far-off year. The one nugget of advice is, don’t think you’re smarter than Vegas. Down this road of thought lies financial rack and ruin. If a spread looks ridiculous, it’s that way for a reason. After all, Vegas was built on compulsive types who thought they were smarter than Vegas. People like Charles Barkley.

V.10 Probably Should’ve Known Before You Bought Those Season Tickets: Watching a Game at Home Is Far Better than the Stadium Experience

For better or worse, we’ve entered a golden age for the couch potato. Gyrate your flabby appendages in celebration and count your blessings, if not the calories. Just as advances in home video technology have ruined much of the draw of heading to the multiplex, so too has the great leap forward in the fan experience for the homebody been brought about by the rise of the Internet and improvements to television broadcast production, which has coincided with how NFL owners have done everything in their power to ruin the live experience.

While seeing the game in a stadium packed to the gills with rabid fans is the purest and most glorious experience in fanhood, one must be prepared to stare down hours of traffic, fight with drunken assholes, pay impossibly high ticket and concession prices, accept poor sight lines,
and endure Russian-breadline-like queues to the bathroom. And that’s before you get ejected because someone squealed on you to security for offending them by yelling that T.J. Houshmandzadeh is a rat-tailed queef goddess.

The dirty secret of fandom is that going to an NFL game can really suck ass sometimes, at least compared with the experience of watching from the comfort of your home or a good sports bar. It seems counterintuitive to those raised believing a seat in the stands beats a seat on the couch, but it’s true. And it’s doubly so if you’re a fan of a team that has decided to dump their stadium out in the middle of an inaccessible sprawly suburban hellhole or in New Jersey.

The advent of HDTV and satellite programming packages has made the difference all the more pronounced. What you see on your flat screen looks as good, if not better, than what your view would be from a $150 seat in the 500 Level, though seeing ESPN NFL reporter John Clayton in high definition has been known to result in irreparable orbital occlusion. Still, the advantages to home viewing are innumerable. At home, you can gorge on the finest in meats, libations, and Cheez Doodles without an inflated price or fourth-quarter liquor cutoff rules. You can make it to the bathroom during timeouts. You can totally whip it out and jerk it to cheerleaders without being arrested. It’s great.

One hitch in the deal is enduring the platitudinal ramblings of play-by-play announcers. Oh, Eli Manning is actually an ice water–veined field general, is he, Dierdorf? Mike Tomlin’s bravado just oozes out of him, does it?
Philip Rivers hasn’t thrown a misplaced floating pass in his life? Die. They’re enough to make you jab stretched out paper clips into your eardrums. There are a number of potential solutions for negating their brain cramping prowess. For a local game, there’s the popular option of muting the TV while listening to the game commentary on the radio. Or one can ignore commentators altogether and watch the game while blasting your favorite music. Unless the dulcet tones of Cris Collinsworth’s nasally breakdown of a quarterback hitting the checkdown receiver is like birdsong to your tin ears, in which case you’re already fanatically bankrupt.

That isn’t to say the live experience doesn’t still hold appeal. Certainly nothing at home or at a bar can touch the palpable energy of a packed stadium during a tight game. We as fans would prefer the live experience to the televised one, but given how it’s priced beyond our means and that our behavior is being restricted more and more every year, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to muster the will to get out to the stadium. At this point, being able to tell people you attended an event is, for many, is about as important as how much fun you have while you’re there. For the league, or any entertainer, the benefit of exploiting that basic human need for anecdotes to share with others cannot be understated.

Purists will wheeze the claim that television’s rise has always come at the expense of the live game. Not that there’s no truth to that. In person, TV timeouts are a frequent but jarring break in the action, in which any fluid pacing of the game is broken up. Meanwhile, the time
outs encompass too little time to do anything but make small talk with the person next to you in the lovingly constructed full-body bird costume.

Before proponents of other sports start getting all fussy, affirming that this proves the NFL is nothing more than an overblown, plodding spectacle, know that this argument is just as true for their, ahem, games as it is for The One True Sport. With the exception of baseball, of course, which is actually better to watch in person than on television, but that’s only by virtue of baseball being so excruciating to watch on TV. Stupid languid baseball broadcast camera. I need frantic cutting and animated dancing robots, not one camera angle from center field. When will you learn?

Owners aren’t idiots, of course. All right, Mike Brown is. Some of them may not be able to run a winning franchise, but the policies they set as a collective tend to work out well for them in terms of the whole making-money-hand-over-fist thing. They wouldn’t have spent decades bleeding you dry if they weren’t good at it, willing though you may be to let them.

Will there ever be a breaking point? Many franchises, even as they hike prices and restrict what you can do, have waiting lists for season tickets measured in years, if not decades. Should the televised experience supplant the live one as the viewing experience of choice for fans, won’t that only serve to increase the number of commercial interruptions? Possibly. But then, I envision a breaking point when fans head to luxury boxes with sharp sticks and torches. After that, everything should be alllllll right.

VI.1 Fantasy Baseball Is for Geeks but Fantasy Football Is for Men

In just the span of the last decade, fantasy football has gone from being the dominion of tens of millions socially backward statistics-fixated sports-enthused geeks to a widely celebrated veritable superorgy of man-children.

Because only football is badassed enough to make a geeky pursuit like rotisserie leagues a phenomenon that has become even quasi-acceptable in mainstream male culture. According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, more than 80 percent of people who played any fantasy sport played fantasy football. Naturally, they could have played in other sport leagues as well, but, uh, RAWR, FOOTBALL!

In many ways, fantasy has come to shape the rudiments of football fandom and challenge some of our most basic
assumptions about rooting interests. Though no real fan would ever wish for a fantasy football victory if it comes at the expense of a defeat to his real-life team.

But what if it’s Week 13 and your real-life team is impossibly out of playoff contention and, if the superstar receiver of the team you’re playing that week can just get a touchdown and at least 70 yards, you’ll win the money league for the first time ever? Sorry, still got to support the team. Fantasy football, by its very nature, invites you to consider rival players as individuals, as people. And that can simply not be. Rivals are not to be empathized with. That you even have rival players on your fantasy team is a horrible slight to your fellow members of [
insert team name
] Nation.

Your real life team always takes primacy in all non-gambling matters. It should be noted that there is a small but critical difference between gambling against your team and rooting against them with fantasy in mind. In gambling against your team, you’re finding a clever way to recoup money in exchange for your suffering. If it’s a big game, you may do it to protect against the huge kick in the nuts that will result if your team loses. It’s a small consolation you’ll be glad to forfeit if it means you’re jinxing the other team.

It’s astounding how much fantasy has permeated the entire football experience. Some players in the NFL admit to playing in fantasy leagues. Hot-pants-wearing Redskins tight end Chris Cooley dolefully reported that his
three-touchdown performance in a game in December 2005 caused one of his four fantasy teams to be eliminated from playoff contention because his opponent had started Cooley.

Believe it or not, but fantasy football was the first good thing ever to come out of Oakland. Had to be something. In 1962, Raiders co-owner Bill Winkenbach, Raiders PR employee Bill Tunnell,
Oakland Tribune
sportswriter Scotty Sterling, and editor George Ross, trying to entertain themselves during a three-week road trip, formed the first fantasy league. Taking their cue from the long-established baseball rotisserie leagues. They named it the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League. Surely this occasion needs to be honored with some sort of federal holiday, preferably one in late August, so people can more easily brush off social and business obligations in favor of holding the draft. This needs to be a national priority.

The emergence of the Internet allowed it to take off, as football fans aren’t so high on math, and having automated live scoring done by a computer helps take the time commitment issue out of it. That and it puts fantasy sports and porn in one handy little package. Thank you, magical Internet box.

Fantasy has become so huge that networks and august sports news publications have hired supposed experts for the sole purpose of discussing the fantasy implications of each NFL game. Of course, this has nothing to do with
the studies that show that fantasy players on average buy more tickets to sporting events and spend more money at stadia than do other sports fans.

And why not? Fantasy improves all facets of football. A December game between the Texans and the Rams is an otherwise unwatchable affair between two clubs playing for draft picks. The players don’t care. Even their fans don’t care. No one cares. That is unless the game has fantasy implications for you. If so, you’ll be spending the entire game in rapt attention, you’ll formulate at least thirty game scenarios that result in Andre Johnson getting the 21 points you need. Of course, you’ll find your head in an oven when he only delivers 20, after he fumbles the ball on his final garbage-time catch with the team already up three scores.

The popularity does not dilute the passion that most bring to fantasy football. In fact, all signs indicate the first fantasy-related homicide is near. Last year, a thirty-eight-year-old Florida man held a knife to his roommate’s neck and threatened to kill him in a dispute that began over fantasy scoring. Alarmists will decry this, but fantasy-related violence is typically relegated to imagined scenarios where fantasy players exact ghastly revenge against NFL players who performed well during weeks they were benched by their fantasy owners.

VI.2 Know Your Fantasy League or Know Draft Defeat

When diving headlong into the choppy waters of fantasy football, it helps to know that the act of drafting is an in
tricate science. Sure, for the uncommitted, there’s always the option of auto-drafting to your heart’s content and getting whacked on a weekly basis by every other owner in the league. Whatever works for you. Those who are ready to sack up do their homework. Every league wants a couple patsies to pony up entry money they have no chance of winning back.

Before even deciding on which format to enter into, you should know there’s no reason to ever get involved with a public league (unless it carries a mammoth prize, but even then you should supplement it with private leagues). What’s the point of fantasy triumph if it’s not something you can lord over someone you know? Someone like a friend or a coworker who has no choice but to absorb your vicious taunts with quiet resentment. You simply can’t get that satisfaction in a public league. And make a point not to sign up for any league that doesn’t offer head-to-head contests. League-wide rotisserie formats are the worst idea a group of people has entered into aside from cuddle parties. Even survivor leagues, where a team need only not be the lowest scoring team in its league to advance from week to week, don’t provide a sufficient rush. Fantasy football isn’t a war of attrition. It’s supposed to mirror the NFL itself by being a series of bitter duels to determine who gets to advance to meaningful bitter duels.

The type of league you join will dictate which type of draft you go through. It’s not only the draft that your choice affects; it has other long-term consequences as well,
forcing you to select players with an eye toward more than just the immediate future. Matt Millen hates those.

There are generally two types of drafts: the normal kind and the incredibly involved kind that makes you focus on numbers and hurts your thinkin’ box in ways that have nothing to do with polluting it with booze.

Okay, okay, this last type of league doesn’t technically exist, but it needs to happen. Enterprising fans of the world, let’s do this. For the betterment of fankind.

Once settled on a league, the first concern of a draftee is the structure of the team being put together. How many receivers, running backs, and flex players (a slot on the lineup open to either a back, a receiver, or a tight end) are set in your lineup? Next, you have to know the scoring value assigned to each statistic. Are you in a points-per-reception league? If so, are you content salivating over underneath-route-dwelling receivers like Wes Welker? Does the league give points for return yardage on special teams? It does? What kind of bullshit league did you join? How many do you get per passing touchdown? How many yards does your quarterback have to throw for you to get a point? Arcane though they may seem, the answers to these questions will go a long way toward determining your drafting board and ultimately the gang of disappointments whose names you will curse until the end of days, or at least the end of the season.

The league commissioner will ultimately make these calls. The job of commissioner is a thankless one in which the poor sap thrust into the role will have to preside over petty complaints of unfair trades, deal with people who are slow to pay their membership fees, and perform the rest of the administrative duties only a type A personality could derive pleasure from. But with great responsibility comes, well, not a whole lot of power. You could abuse your authority to change league rules in your favor, but there’s also nothing to stop your league mates from beating you with socks filled with nickels if you do.

VI.3 Naming Your Fantasy Team, or Which Anchorman Reference Shall You Go With?

The naming of your fantasy team is an act of equal, possibly even greater importance than naming your children, and deserves at least as much thought and intoxication to nail down. This may come as a painful realization, but almost certainly your team isn’t going to triumph in its league. In addition to loss of pride and countless hours of work, you will also forfeit whatever money you paid to enter your league. You should be prepared for this.

In the face of such excruciating failure, your only hope for saving face, besides blaming the randomness of injuries and shady waiver deals for ruining your otherwise fantastic drafting performance, is the genius of your team name.

There exists but one inviolable rule for fantasy team
naming: be funny. This is a tall task for any football fan because, on the whole, football fans are overly serious dipshits.

It’s easy. Dick jokes, fart jokes, tit jokes, fat jokes, movie quotes, fantasy violence, violence, mockery of the poor, epithets both racial and religious, contempt for the wealthy, sexual deviancy, blind anger, focused anger, low-grade homophobia, mild cripplephobia, intense xenophobia, sexism, retards, and even SIDS can all be funny, given a deft enough touch.

If you happen to be in a league with work colleagues or women, you should probably knock that list down to movie quotes. Also, why the hell are you in a league with women?

Ultimately, the greatest challenge for any fantasy team name is braving the test of time. Most often, a name has enough humorous oomph to survive maybe a few weeks of laughs before becoming incredibly tiresome. You must strive for a name that can endure over the course of a season.

Chances are, that timeless resplendent gem of hilarity isn’t going to come to you. That’s fine. You’re just a boring asshole is all. At the very least, you can try to be topical. Beware though. While it may be tempting to riff off the biggest story of the off-season, the key to being funny is being original. And deeply offensive. But mostly original.

For example, remember back in the beginning of the 2007 season after Michael Vick was sent to prison for run
ning a dog-fighting ring? Sure, it was an endless source of laughs. However, every other doucheweasel had a fantasy team name playing on an aspect of that scandal. It was “rape stand” this and “Bad Newz Kennel Club” that. A month into the season and a Michael Vick joke was as tired as “I’m Rick James, bitch.” Beware that trap by anticipating the longevity of a crude reference. Think long and hard before cursorily submitting Visante Shiancock for your fantasy team this year. Surely there was some obscure player who got in a hilarious drug bust during the off-season from which you can draw material. The police blotter is the stuff of which great fantasy names are made.