UNIVERSAL STUDIOS E-WALK – As I lick my wounds and brace for more disappointment from my teams, I’d like to continue the trend of talking about sports in the abstract and big picture, rather than dwell on more sorrow and ineptitude from the hometown NY boys. Today, I’d like to discuss something that has been bothering me for some time: Nobody Cares About Your Fantasy Team.
Listen, you want to play fantasy sports, have at it. You want to burn your hall pass with your family to fly to Des Moines and sit in a motel room all weekend to draft a team that does not exist outside of your mind? Fine. Go for it. You want to spend a whole season rooting for individuals over your team? Do it. However, rest assured, that NOBODY else cares and never will. I don’t care how many times you watched The League.
Sports are great and compelling for many reasons. The thrill of victory. The shared anguish of defeat, the bringing together of strangers to root for laundry. The drama. The heartbreak all of it. I dig it. All of it. But the main thing for me is the shared experience. You go to a game and suddenly you have something in common with 10’s of thousands of strangers. You support your fantasy team? Great, but NOBODY else does. The problem is that no one who plays fantasy sports seems to get this and its driving me bananas. How many times have you had this conversation:
ME: Hey, the Giants look pretty good last week…
FANTASY FRED: Yeah. I have blah blah blah on my fantasy team.
I have been sucked into that conversation OVER and OVER.
Fantasy team obsession is killing everything good about being a sports fan and reducing it to a self-involved exercise. The solution? Stop talking about your fantasy team. Sports fandom is great because you immediately have something to talk about with people you meet from all walks of life. Fantasy sports, not so much. And by the way you are not an OWNER and your team will never play a game. Move on. 
In other news…
The J-E-T-S have miraculously returned to the top peg on the NY dysfunctional sports pyramid, firing their GM following free agency, the draft and after the placed Gang Green in the hands of its Coach Bug Eyes.
Wow! That didn’t take long.
Maybe the Giants will only be #2 on the Ship of the Damned that is the NY sports landscape… The Knicks will find ways to f— up a sure thing this off-season and the Mets continue their middling ways, lost in a sea of despair and thinking signing 35-year-old guys to multi-year deals is prudent.. Hockey is our only solace and as David likes to point out; it’s a niche sport. He also says bragging rights of having a good hockey team only works when you are in Canada.
What a time to be alive! Come back tomorrow for more sports dysfunction and adventure with @JunoirBlaber, who will tell us why his column is late despite knowing it was due for a week. Till then, leave your niche comments below.
