Fantasy Football Favoritism

Definition:
Fantasy Football Favoritism- The act of rooting for one particular player on an offense and not caring for, or actually rooting against the other players on said offense. It can even go as far as to root for a player on the offense, and rooting for the defense said offensive player is playing against.

Fantasy Football can be a good thing, it can even be fun, but it goes too far when Fantasy Football Favoritism comes into play. Drafting your favorite players, scouting out the stats, deciding which players should be on the bench, and which should play; it’s all very exciting to some. And, some would say there is skill involved, but I would argue that once a certain level of football knowledge is reached, the rest is all luck. Some would even argue that I’m a bitter fantasy footballer with a grudge, and that’s probably correct, I got screwed off of three injuries, one was the best RB in the league up until his injury, the second was one of the top 5 Wide outs, and then lastly my Quarterback got injured, thus my fantasy football team was done. I’ve digressed. This is not supposed to be about my bitterness.

Let me explain FFF this way. I was with some friends, watching a great first week football game, a rematch of two super bowls ago, the Bears at the Colts. Exciting story lines, big names, and early season jitters made this a game to watch. However, my friends, with whom I was watching this football game, had different agendas. Each of them, let’s say Ted, Juniper, and Suze (names changed to protect those involved) had different players on each team they were rooting for. I don’t remember exactly, but Ted wanted a Colts receiver to only catch passes, and Juniper wanted the Colts to run the ball. But Juniper’s wife Suze had FFF the worst. She wanted Peyton to throw the ball, but not too much because she was also rooting for the Bears defense. So as long as Peyton doesn’t torch the Bears D, he can get some solid stats. Maybe worse than that, I heard Ted mumble that he picked up the second receiver on a particular team, so he wasn’t sad at all about the primary receiver on that team getting hurt. That’s just nauseating.

My problem with this is that the Fantasy Football Favoritism compromises my ability to watch and enjoy good football, without the random yelling that he (Peyton) should be throwing to Marvin Harrison instead of Reggie Wayne. (No he shouldn’t, Wayne was open, so he should have thrown it to him if he had thrown it to Harrison it wouldn’t have been complete.)

I’ve heard it said that the key to getting into a sport is to pick a team to root for. That proverb does not mean, pick a player on each team to root for. Doing so, spreads your ability as a fan out too much, and creates a false sense of attachment to more than half of the teams in the NFL.
Not growing up in a big city, and not really caring about, and/or getting tired of Chad Johnson, means that I don’t really have one big team that I like. This absence of one big team to root for, allows me to pick about four or five teams that I would like to see do well, and on most Sundays, if I’m able to find one of these teams playing, I watch, and root for the their victory. When I was playing Fantasy football I made a conscious decision to not allow myself to succumb to Fantasy Football Favoritism. I made sure that I did not root for one particular player, but in fact, one entire team. Fantasy Football Favoritism takes the most team sport in sports, and perverts it into a disgusting individually driven game.