The Tao of Fantasy Football

“Tao- A: the unconditional and unknowable source and guiding principle of all reality as conceived by Taoists B: the process of nature by which all things change and which is to be followed for a life of harmony” – Merriam Webster Dictionary

The media inundates us with fantasy football information.  Everywhere you look, there is someone’s opinion, sleeper, preview, and prediction.  Who are these people?  As regular football fans, do we hang on the every word of our NFL analysts, the Steve Youngs and Chris Collinsworths and John Maddens of the world?

No, we listen politely, then forget everything they said, form our own personal opinions and biases, and viciously defend them.  We call complete strangers on radio shows to explain these opinions, yell profanities in the street at someone wearing a different team jersey, and argue with anyone willing to argue back. 

It's called sports, that is what it does, turns us into wild animals.

Yet, when it comes to fantasy football, we’re housebroken.  Our mouths water at the sound of an updated “cheat sheet”, a green upward arrow on a “power ranking”, the shiny gloss of a new magazine issue. Like worshipping a golden calf, we’re being conditioned to accept the doctrine of The Talented Mr. Roto.

Every year, a dozen or so separately well-funded publications release their guide to the fantasy football season.  Filled to the brim with “expert opinions”, more often than not these magazines inform you of how to dominate your league in areas like the draft, the waiver wire, and life in general. 

“Dominate”, what a forceful choice of words. If you’re truly obsessed with dominating 11 other male friends in an online hobby with keywords such as “foot” and “fantasy”, you probably even listen to these experts.

Listen: You’re going to lose. Regardless of how quickly you refresh Stat-Tracker, how often you switch between CBS and FOX to watch your various fantasy stars, how much you care, you will lose.  You will have the best quarterback in NFL history fall into your lap, and then he will get injured five minutes into the season.  And then you will lose.

Allow me to clarify.  With football, real football, seven guys on the line of scrimmage football, you can be perfect.  You can execute a play at the highest speed, with the biggest players, at the exact right moment.  Congratulations, first down, now line up and do it nine more times in a row.

Fantasy Football, on the other hand, is the statistical by-product of these actions.  In the cattle industry, by-product is a euphemism for bull-crap.  In the sports world, it’s the best approximation of measuring why a player, a play, and a team was successful.

 But it’s not exact.  The NFL MVP last year, Peyton Manning, was not the highest scoring fantasy football player.  He wasn’t even a top five scorer among quarterbacks.  What does that say about fantasy football?  It’s an imperfect science.  It’s bull-crap.

And here we are, smashing our glass coffee table because Brian Westbrook took a knee at the one yard line instead of rushing in for the score.  Relax buddy. Let’s count to three, take a deep breath, and think about what we could have done differently.

1) Open your fantasy football magazine to the Table Of Contents.  Find the page that has power rankings for Kickers and Defense/Special Teams.  Neatly rip this page out of the magazine.  I don’t care what you do with it, make a paper airplane, roll a joint, start a forest fire, just so long as the page is never used for fantasy football related purposes.

2) Find good reasons to draft players. If the reason why you draft, pick-up, or start a player cannot be used to explain why that player is a multi-million dollar NFL employee, you’re not thinking clearly. Think!  It helps.

3) Don’t sweat the technique. Players have unpredictable and unequivocal years of success.  Who knew Kerry Collins would be the starting quarterback of the best team in the regular season? Who imagined that the rookie receiver you picked up after the first week of the season, Eddie Royal, would turn out to be one of your best players? 

Things happen.  Tom Brady’s knee bending the wrong direction happens.  Be happy with the good, cry yourself silently to sleep with the bad.

Phew! I feel better already.  Still upset that you lost? Take solace in the meta-solution to Fantasy Football.  Trash Talk.  At the very least your team name should involve the name of the league champ last year, a Donkey Punch, and Eric Crouch.

If you're an Eagles fan like myself, Tony Romo should cry after reading your team name.  The guy in your league with the lazy eye? He's screwed.