Many people live their lives with addictions. Some people are addicted to social media. Some are addicted to watching endless hours of Netflix. Some are addicted to cigarettes.
I live with my life with a different addiction: fantasy football. I live for those moments when my players score miraculous touchdowns on Monday night. I am at my happiest sitting on the couch for seven hours on a Sunday watching every single game. I could not live in a world where checking on my fantasy projections wasn’t my first priority, ahead of homework, sleeping and overall general hygiene.
I know, however, that I am not alone in my addiction. Currently 50 million people from all around the world are addicted to fantasy football much like myself, including many UP students. These fantasy fanatics are all around us. They are our friends, enemies, acquaintances and professors.
It is the connections with my fellow addicts that make playing fantasy football so special. Fantasy football is something that I have in common with anyone who plays, and it is something that I can talk for hours about with anyone who understands. No matter what our background, race or religion may be, we can connect and agree that Peyton Manning is the best quarterback in the NFL. We can always talk for hours about the beast that is Marshawn Lynch.
Chelsea Olivas is a junior at UP who has played fantasy football since her senior year in high school.
“Playing fantasy football has helped me meet and form connections with people that I otherwise most likely would have never met,” Olivas said. “It has a way of being a sort of bridge for people, making it easier for them to get to know one another through fantasy.”
Currently, I play in a league with a group of my six closest friends here at UP. At the beginning of the year we believed that the league would just make watching the games a bit more fun.
However, it has developed into so much more. I think about our league constantly, planning how I can beat each of my friends into fantasy obscurity. Trash talk is not irrelevant. I spend most of my weeks yelling curses and putting down the players that play on my friends’ teams. Hopefully, none of those players ever hear some of the things that I have said about them, or I will be making some terrifying enemies.
It is the competitive nature of fantasy football that makes it so intensely gratifying. There is something fulfilling in absolutely demolishing one of your closest friends, that the correct path to enlightenment can’t be found by walking into the woods naked and renouncing all of your possessions, but rather that true happiness can only be achieved if Calvin Johnson is able to catch four touchdowns and end with a total of 329 yards.
"The reason that I love fantasy football is because it is incredibly competitive,” sophomore Michael Bonacci said. “When everyone in my league is able to put everything that is going in their lives aside and solely focus on football, that is when I have the most fun playing fantasy football.”
Fantasy football is a simple and easy concept to understand. At the beginning of each NFL season a group of my friends and I get together and draft our favorite players from all different NFL teams. Every Sunday I have a match-up where I play one of my friend’s teams. As all of my players play on ESPN, Yahoo keeps track of how many yards, touchdowns and receptions that they have. On Monday after all of the games have been played, all of the players statistics are added up and the team with the greater point total is declared the winner. This process is repeated 16 times throughout the season, eventually ending with the naming of a league champion.
I have played fantasy football since the beginning of my junior year of high school. At the beginning I knew next to nothing about any of the major sports. This has all changed drastically in the past few years. Watching sports has become a frequent and relaxing part of my life.
Fantasy football leagues have served as a connection with the new people in my life at college and those that are from my past. It doesn’t take any prior knowledge to start playing and compete. Everyone should sign up and play.
