I’ve always hated the NFL for as long as I could remember. It always had to butt its head into every holiday, every family event and every Sunday of my life. The team I “like” is purely based on the fact that they’re the rivals of my family’s favorite team because of how much I resented them sucking up the attention of my family and their merch/pictures/presence being all over my house; I was plain sick of them. I could take high school games, they were an opportunity to hang out with my friends, but NFL games were a different story. And then I joined the Newsstreak fantasy league.
My family had played fantasy as a competition the year before, and I was mystified as to why they liked it so much; they talked about it constantly. Naturally, I was curious. Shout out to Lil Stew for helping me out with that. Long story short, I ended up loving fantasy football.
First of all, I’ve learned a lot. When I started, I barely knew the positions in football and the big, big names I had picked up from my family. Now I know many more names, all of the teams fairly well and more. I’m still a little sketchy on the point system, but I’ll get back to that.
Secondly, I actually care about football. It’s more fun for me to watch the high school games, and I actually enjoy the NFL ones besides finding out that the Cowboys won.
Thirdly, extensive knowledge of the NFL wasn’t required. There are a variety of ways to play it, whether basing your starters on who is projected highest, or trusting in the teams you believe will deliver. I went the first way because of how little I know concerning the league, but it sort of worked out. Sure, I’m currently 4-5. Not great, but I’m not absolutely, positively terrible. Plus, it’s basically luck (and no, I’m not saying that because I’m salty about my ratio). Yes, it’s strategy, but everything depends on injuries and bye weeks and just plain performance. I remember my starting defense one week was rated at a 10 and they ended up giving me negative four points. Negative four! And then other times, I’ve made it less than 10 away from 200 points. That’s really good. There are so many variables, and you’ve just got to play it right, but you’ve also got to be lucky.
So is football my new favorite sport? No. Do I know every single player on every single team and their position? Not even close. I didn’t even pay attention to what they get points for…yeah, I should probably learn about that. Regardless, I’ve had a lot of fun, and I didn’t have to know a lot about football to participate. Whether with family or friends, I’m certain I’ll be playing in the years to come.