Gambling Addition: How Fantasy Football May Already Have Changed the NFL

John Dewey said, "As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance." 

He might as well have been talking about Fantasy Football. The above quote was meant to say that as long as politicians are in the pocket of corporations, changing Presidents won't change anything. In this case, Fantasy Football (hereafter called "FF") is the shadow cast by the NFL over the fan base. And as long as FF remains but a shadow, nothing that happens in FF should effect the NFL.

Except that it hasn't remained but a shadow. It is now a parallel dimension that threatens to spill over into the "real" world.

FF may have started in somebody's basement, an innocent and diverting exercise in stat-mongering, but it has long since ceased to be anything of the sort. Once there was money to be made from it, the fans were removed from the equation as participants. I use the word "participants" to mean people who are engaged in directing the activity on every level.

What the fans and FFers are now are spectators. That is, they get to play the game they love, but they do not get a voice in how it's used. Whether or not they should get that voice is a different question. The material point in this case is that FF has a life of it's own, is a multibillion-dollar business, and is not in any significant way controllable by the fans.

So how does this have anything to do with how the NFL conducts it's business?

Did I forget to mention the multi-billion dollar part? Let's try an example.

Before FF, players flung themselves around the field willy-nilly, and that suited everyone just fine. Well, as long as by "everyone" we mean "everyone but the players". Players have been concerned for a good, long time about their health and safety. Some retired players felt that they weren't told the truth about the long-term health risks of the game, and some active players felt that they were given bad advice about the nature of their injuries, continuing to play their way to career-ending heath problems.

These players weren't exactly idle about it, and for a long time, the NFL and the players have had a silent struggle over player safety and health. The result of that struggle has been better equipment and a few tweaks to the rules, curtailing some of the more egregious and dangerous situations. What did not result was any kind of substantial commitment to player safety and health — the kind of commitment we're seeing today.

It's not a coincidence that recently, the concept of players remaining on the field and racking up stats like mad became very, very profitable to someone(s) not directly connected to the franchise(s).

Let's not mince words: FF is gambling. More accurately, it's a come-one, come-all end-run on gambling that serendipitously fell into the laps of private enterprise. As Shelly Marcone said to Joe Hallenbeck, "Legalized gambling is about the only thing that'll save the beast. You follow me, Joe? We're talking about some big bucks here. We're talking about billions. That's nine zeroes, son."

Of course, this isn't The Last Boy Scout, and again, I'll leave the debate on the ethics and morality for another time.

What I mean by all this is that the harmless diversion (FF) now has legs, teeth, and demands. Maximizing profits — that all-American pastime — requires control over the product. And profits take a hit when Peyton Manning sits on the sidelines.

Don't get me wrong: this isn't a vast, criminal conspiracy. The recent spate of rule changes and concern over player safety isn't entirely the doing of FF. But FF is a part of the equation. How could it not be?

Also notice that in this case, the effect is positive. Who wants to see their favorite player (or in this case, their FF point-machine) snapped in half? Who wants to see their favorite player in a wheelchair 20 years later?

It's not my purpose here to condemn FF or demonize it. My purpose is to acknowledge it. For good or bad, it has become large enough to make it's presence known to the NFL. I want people to be mindful of this fact, not to be angry about it or afraid of it.

Some of the changes in the NFL since the advent and near-saturation of FF are a product of natural evolution. In regard to my above example, players are bigger, stronger, and faster than they used to be, and appropriate responses are necessary. But some changes are the result of the overriding need for profits — for the NFL, for the players, and for the private interests who stand to make millions from Fantasy Football.

This does beg the question: what happens when the interests of profit clash with the interests of the game of football? (It's kind of a foregone conclusion, isn't it?) What happens when teams — who already have their fingers in this pie — begin to worry about the profit-column effects of on-field decisions? Or even off-field decisions?

Or, to put it into an immediate context, is Kyle Orton a top quarterback in the NFL, or is he a top quarterback on too many fantasy teams to ignore?

Just something to think about when you're watching the games, spreadsheet open and ready to compute the fate of your FF team.