Well, it's early September and that means one thing:
Football purists complaining about Fantasy Football.
Dave Kindred at The Sporting News came out early with a column on August 1st entitled, “What's the harm in a little fantasy? Lots.”
His general concerns are run-of-the-mill this time of year for sportswriters: People get carried away with fantasy football and, horror of horrors, they stop loving football for the love of the game.
Kindred cites one Philadelphian who said, “I got out of serious leagues because it takes away from real football; like it was all right for the Eagles to lose if my fantasy league quarterback, Daunte Culpepper, throws for 400 yards.”
Any time a person sells out loyalty for the sake of gambling, that's a sad thing.
But all the hand wringing?
Save it for your son's coming out announcement.
What do the sportswriters think built today's sports world into a billion dollar industry? Great games? Pure athleticism?
Not quite.
Try all the accoutrements around the games: franchises, contract squabbles, trademarks, advertising, marketing rights, branding, Sports Illustrated, sultry cheerleaders, ESPN, Fox Sports.
And perhaps most important: Gambling.
Gambling is absolutely huge. I have no figures, but if we were able to stop all gambling, I'd guess that the sports TV ratings would drop by at least 50%.
Think that's an exaggeration?
I bet the NFL wouldn't disagree: In 2003 the Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimated that between 15 million and 20 million people owned at least one Fantasy Football team and spent $4 billion doing it.
That's over 5% of the entire U.S. population. When you take out the demographic groups that aren't particularly targeted by the NFL--women, the elderly, children--the percentage of the NFL's target audience that plays Fantasy Football probably increases to over 25%.
And if you don't think that has a huge impact on ratings, you've never played Fantasy Football.
For years, I could barely care about the NFL, except to watch my pathetic Detroit Lions (I'm a former season-ticket holder). When I got roped into my family's Fantasy Football League, my interest in all the NFL games spiked significantly.
Almost everyone who does Fantasy has experienced the same thing.
Indeed, Fantasy is almost addicting.
If there's a reason to avoid to avoid Fantasy Football, it's because it can turn into a colossal waste of time. Its participants begin to live and eat Fantasy, perhaps to the detriment of more important things.
But to give up Fantasy so we can partake of some sort of “higher art form of sports”? That ain't gonna happen.
If I'm looking for something higher, I'll look to the Church, the Bible, Aristotle, Pascal, Augustine, charitable works, prayer.
I'm not going to look to the “pure” sports realm of Terrell Owens, trash talking, and end zone gyrations.
