DO FANTASY FOOTBALL PUNISH MENTS GO TOO FAR?

Do Fantasy Football Punishments Go Too Far?

Fantasy Football: a “fun” game to play with friends in which you basically become the manager, coach and owner of your very own football team that you draft just before the start of the NFL season. The players you draft accumulate points (hopefully) each week and you compete against other teams in the league to see who wins or loses. Sounds lovely… Right? Well, as the regular NFL season dwindles down, fantasy football season ends as well. Let’s say, for instance, you see yourself leering at the league scoreboard because a dead-last finish is imminent. Typically, finishing last in your league comes with a punishment, regardless of how “unlucky” you were or how many injuries your players acquired over the past 18 weeks. So, how bad have these Fantasy Football punishments become? A common and easy punishment for a league to do is the “shave your head” punishment. It’s pretty self explanatory: one unlucky soul who found themselves at the bottom of the barrel will show up to school or work with a fresh new “cue-ball cut.” Another Fantasy Football favorite is to be forced to perform on the street until you earn 20 dollars (it’s harder than it sounds). Like always, some punishments go way too far. For instance, according to Bleacher Report, a Fantasy Football participant was forced to attend a football game fully decked out in his team’s jerseys and merch, only to watch the game from the middle of the rival fans’ section. These Fantasy Football punishments quickly became increasingly popular, as ESPN saw their Fantasy Games participants increase by over 115 percent, allowing over 17.6 million people to try their hand at arranging and editing lineups in an effort to crush their opponents. Within these 17.6 million players lies roughly 1.5 million losers (average of 12-player leagues). In all of the different Fantasy Football sites combined, including ESPN, Yahoo! Fantasy, CBS, NFL and DraftKings, there were over 4.1 million losers just in the United States alone. This means that if you were to find the percentage of U.S. inhabitants that became subject to a bottom of the table Fantasy-finish, it would equate to around 1.3 percent. Mathematically speaking, one in every 83 people in the United States have hit rock-bottom on their Fantasy luck. So, why do people still do Fantasy Football if they know there’s a possibility of them being punished? Most people do Fantasy Football as a bonding opportunity with their friends. But the reason the punishments began is based on overconfidence. Right after draft day people look back on their team and think, “No one’s beating me this year! I have the best running back in the league and two great wide receivers.” Well, a couple of below-par performances and injuries could land yourself as the league caboose. Regardless of how unlikely or impossible it seems, nothing is concrete in Fantasy Football.

ELI FLEISCHER, staff writer