Why is "Fantasy" Football not a dream come true?

My best score of the season. The team name is because every team I root for loses.

Fantasy Football provides an immediate topic of bonding between males through the sharing of virtual war stories: "Yeah, then Vick got concussed, Jackson's ankle got jacked, and with the whole front line of the Chiefs decimated . . . My whole team was wiped out." I finished my first season of Fantasy Football last week, but I was left wondering where the "Fantasy" part was. I ended up sixth in my league (out of eight), and that was after pulling a Tebow the last week: the clouds parted and three miracles occurred simultaneously. Even though I was ecstatic to make the playoffs by the flukiest of flukes, that moment of elation could not counterbalance all the psychic pain that plagued me the rest of the season. Sure, Notre Dame dashes my hopes every year, but it doesn't gallivant around under the optimistic name of Fantasy Football, which I thought meant that everybody would have their wildest dreams realized. I am left feeling that Fantasy Football is as far from fantasy as one could possible dream.

First of all, let's admire the name brand of Fantasy Football, which appeals to two primal urges of men. The first part of the phrase is "Fantasy", which connotes sex. Ask a guy what comes to mind when he hears the word, and I bet the top three answers are sex (<--you really want to click on this, don't you), football, and sex--and football is probably actually third on that list. Of course, one could argue that those are the first things that come to mind in response to any question put to a guy. The second part of the phrase, "Football", connotes violence--along with beer, greasy food, glory, and scantily clad cheerleaders (<--this one, too I bet). I don't know a better phrase for getting a man's attention. Maybe something called "Strippers, Cars, and First Person Shooters on XBox 360", but that certainly lacks the subtlety of "Fantasy Football". I will concede that "Fantasy" in Fantasy Football doesn't directly refer to sex, so I will use the definition "unrestrained imagination" for the rest of this post.

The season begins with the creation of a roster that is almost never the product of unrestrained imagination. During the draft process, each participant chooses NFL players for his (or her but mostly his) team. Each player can be picked once, leading to a roster that is far from ideal. I would bet that many people end up with a roster that they kind of hate right after the draft. (I didn't, but that's because I had no idea what I was doing.) So right away, you end up with something that is very restrained by reality. It is so restrained that you often curse your good friends for picking the player you wanted. While that pain is somewhat alleviated when you mock them for their idiocy on their next pick, your roster is never the one you dreamed you'd get.

As the season progresses, there are many points when excruciating psychic pain visits almost all participants. It may originate in a close loss or the loss of a key player to injury or personality. It may come from the realization that you have once again squandered money that could have been spent on real fantasies or real football. Whatever the reason, psychic pain is rarely associated with fantasy. (Maybe other types of pain, but let's focus here.) I, for one, certainly don't happily daydream about how my monstrous lead on Monday morning could be lost at the last second on Monday night by a blocked field goal. Ouch, it hurt just to write that sentence.

Fantasy Football also requires an average participant to spend an inordinate amount of time hunched over his computer managing his team. While one could argue that there are worse things to be doing on the internet, it's difficult to argue that an average person dreams of pouring over thousands of numbers and deciding whether Jason Wittens's 0.32 predicted point advantage is worth starting him over Tony Gonzalez. (The answer was yes a couple of weeks ago.) If staring at a computer screen for unpaid hours on end is part of anybody's dream world, well, you are a freak (said the somewhat aspiring writer).

Unless you made your entire roster members of the team you root for, then you will probably be forced to root against your own team. If part of your dream is hoping that something you love fails--sick, just sick. You may try to delude yourself and say you're not rooting against the team but the individual, but you are a liar. If you are rooting against any part of your team, you are not completely rooting for its success. And if that is not causing you pain in your heart and your loins, you have truly lost your soul to Fantasy Football and are less of a man. I cannot respect you, and you are probably going to burn in the first four letters of my last name. Sorry--you scumbag. Anyway, rooting against your own team is not fantasy material.

Finally, the season never ends in an ideal manner. The ideal season culminates in winning the Championship and taking all your friends' money, providing you beer money and bragging rights for an entire year. The reality is that odds are very high that you won't win the Championship given the number of teams in a league and will thus lose all your money and dignity. Any table in Vegas is a safer bet. In a nutshell, you are almost certainly doomed to failure. If this is the scenario that your unrestrained imagination has created, you have set the bar extremely low. But congrats on your dream coming true.

Sadly, Fantasy Football is completely restrained by reality, from choosing a roster to not winning the Championship. Psychic pain and financial losses are much more common than earning bragging rights for the year. Only one person or team in each league will win, just like all sports. But perhaps winning it all is the fantasy to which Fantasy Football refers and which is made all the more fantastic because of its unlikeliness. Perhaps the fantasy is saying that you emerged victorious despite an imperfect roster, injury set backs, and getting Tebowed. That's just like normal football and all sports, which is what makes all of them great and probably why I will continue to play whenever offered the chance despite the name and all the reasons I mentioned here. Because that one chance at living the fantasy is what makes the ride worth every year of hard reality.