Is fantasy football good for the sport?

Anyone who has played fantasy football before, tell me if this sounds familiar. You’re watching your favorite team in a tight match, however, your opponent has your favorite team’s starting running back. Before you know it your team in down by three points on the one-yard line in the final play of the game. You have no clue who to root for because if he scores your favorite team wins but your fantasy team loses. What do you do?

Although this is a pretty sticky situation, it certainly does bring more entertainment and tension to your Sunday viewing experience. But the fantasy football rabbit hole does not end there.

Here is another situation that might sound familiar, a young player comes out of the woodworks to put up an extremely large amount of points the year prior, naturally he is drafted first in the fantasy football pickups. Then the player struggles to perform in the following year.

Does this apply more pressure to the player? Is any amount of his performance related to the millions of people depending on him around the world? The answer, probably not but we fantasy football players like to think that we are important enough to have this type of effect.

At the end of the day does fantasy football bring fans closer to the game or push it away from us? Are we able to come together to enjoy any given game on any given Sunday or is the competition between us so strong that we are only focused on what is happening on the ESPN app on our phone? Does fantasy football truly bring us together? Or does it tear us apart?

One of the biggest issues with fantasy football is how one player can cost a whole season. To elaborate, in bigger leagues where talent is more spread out, an injury to your first draft pick may be the difference between 10-0 and 0-10. This thin line is experienced by every person who signs up for fantasy football increases the tension of the game greatly especially when there is a reward for the winner, or a punishment for the loser.

In my case, being a broke high school student, my league resorts to the cruelest punishment possible to inflict on the loser of the league. This stems from spending twenty-four hours in a waffle house, to being trapped in a dog cage while syrup is poured on you. To be sure, you never want to find yourself at the bottom of the league win/loss record because although nobody did anything to truly deserve a win or loss. Every last one of us were sitting on a couch watching the game and not playing in it, we all feel a sort of pride in our victories and must then shame the loser.

To conclude, I feel like fantasy football is overall a positive feature of the NFL season and will most likely endure for as long as the NFL is around. Having a way to take the season into your own hands despite the record of your favorite team gives all NFL fans something to root for on Sundays, and when it comes down to it that is all that truly matters.