By The Hudsonian, Joshua Hudson
The struggle is real people.
Fantasy Football is a powerful, multi-billion dollar industry, one that has shaped the way fans enjoy – and NFL executives promote – arguably the most popular sport in the country. During the fantasy football season, people call out of work because they are deep in trade negotiations; they stream games on computers behind the work they are supposed to be doing; they even go so far as to create leagues that bring fantasy football to us year round.
To current and future significant others, sorry not sorry.
This once-simple game has become a lifestyle for some, including me. I started playing in my freshman year of college in 2002. I have played other fantasy sports since then – baseball and basketball among them – but none of them compare. I love baseball, but the long season prevents much fantasy enjoyment. Baseball is such a long season, and as much as I love the sport, playing fantasy baseball is just tedious and boring. (I died a little inside while writing that.) Basketball has limited scoring formats, which is the primary appeal of fantasy sports.
That is where fantasy football separates itself from the pack.
Fantasy football allows for never-ending enjoyment. Yards, touchdowns, fumbles, interceptions, return yards, defensive touchdowns, sacks – you name it, you can score points from it. Hell, you can even make shit up now for scoring. Vegas officials have Super Bowl prop bets. Fantasy football degenerates can get points for endzone dances, penalties for taking someone’s head off for crossing the middle of the field, chop blocks, and even for how often Tom Brady cries foul to a referee.
This must be what little kids feel like when they enter a candy store.
For those of us unlucky enough to have careers in fields other than sports, fantasy football provides a way for us to live vicariously through our favorite athletes. It is a way for us to feel a connection with the players, for us to be one, for us to be a team.
It is also a way to create and enhance friendships. Little did I know that a simple invitation to join the Skrip Club in 2007 would create a group of degenerates bound together by a common desire to pretend we owned a football team and talk shit about it with fellow league members. What started as a simple fantasy football league has evolved into a family of friends.
If only our many gatherings could be remembered. It’s like a weekend long hangover.
The Commish and I want to spread the story of the Skrip Club and how all our members help make it fun. It’s contagious really. And we want all of you to spread it to you friends – kind of like a venereal disease. There are plenty of those floating around Skrip Clubs, after all.
We hope you join us for our articles and podcasts where we talk about things we do to spice up the league, players we like, players we despise, and plenty of self-deprecation, especially focusing on how we lose our paychecks playing Daily Fantasy.
Yes, much self-deprecation.