Quiz #62. Football Fantasy
Why won't I be playing fantasy football in 2020? Steve's Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz for June 28, 2020.
I will not be playing fantasy football in 2020.
I wore black socks for sports long before they were made popular by the Fab Five in Michigan. My time in fantasy football lasted longer than my time in Pee Wee football. I only played one season.
Why am I telling you this—at the end of June? Football is months away, teams have not even reported for training camp and, with billions of dollars at stake, surely the NFL will figure out how to have its season during this pandemic—especially with the NBA and MLB leading the way with shortened seasons starting in July.
I still don’t think any of these major sports will be able to pull off even the scaled-back seasons planned for basketball and baseball. The virus remains. If May and June have taught us anything, it’s that the coronavirus has not gone away--despite wishful thinking to the contrary. Acting like things will be different in July and August is, well, fantasy.
The coronavirus spreads easily and even with regular testing of players, staff and family, there will be more and more confirmed cases. That will prompt a need for isolation (and treatment) that would disrupt any business—but especially one built on mutual scheduled competition. With rainouts, baseball games are postponed but rescheduled. How can such a schedule proceed with coronavirus? If players on one team test positive, will that team need to isolate and skip scheduled games? When and how are they made up? Especially in a shortened season? What if it happens during the playoffs?
I know that young, healthy athletes are likely to have mild or even asymptomatic cases--and asymptomatic cases will be readily identified by constant testing--but players will still get coronavirus. With smaller teams, smaller courts and games planned to be played in an isolated bubble (a Disney resort in the middle of a state seeing a huge outbreak), I think the NBA has the best chance of pulling things off--but even with the NBA, I don’t see how they make it to a full season, even with fewer games and in a bubble.
In announcing the NBA’s “Comeback” on Friday, June 26th, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was honest and direct in saying that we all need to learn to live in a world where there will be infections from the coronavirus.
We know that COVID-19 will be with us for the foreseeable future. And we are left with no choice but to learn to live with this virus. No options are risk-free right now. We have developed a safe and responsible plan. We're coming back because sports matter in our society. They bring people together when they need it the most.
I believe this thinking will be very hard to defend if just one athlete gets very sick, permanently disabled or even dies. (And that ignores the broader public health hazards--and public relations nightmare--if (when) the virus spreads to Disney workers, family members or someone else outside the bubble.)
Silver defended the decision to begin the season in Orlando but said that with regular testing and isolation, he’s confident that the league schedule and playoffs can proceed with coronavirus being treated just like any other injury. If a player tests positive, he sits out.
What if there is a wider spread?
If we were to have significant spread of coronavirus through our community, that ultimately might lead us to stopping. But we're working closely with the players' association, with Disney, and with public health officials in Florida as to what that line should be. And it hasn't been precisely designed. I think we want to get down on the ground and start to see how our testing's working and how the protocols are working and then we'll make decisions as we go.
With no Disney bubble, much bigger rosters and much more physical contact, I simply do not see how the NFL does it come September. It’s a football fantasy.
And yet, I know I could be wrong. I know I am always fast-forwarding to the worst-case scenario. And, yes, I know that there are billions of dollars at stake for the NFL.
As for me playing fantasy football, why not hope for the best? Why not try to play fantasy football? Why not “make decisions as we go?”
The basic idea of fantasy is that you get a group of people together in a league, everyone picks players from real-life NFL teams based on a set of rules and roster requirements. In a 10-team league, for example, every team might need to pick 1 quarterback, 2 running backs and 3 wide receivers. Once a player gets picked by a fantasy team owner, he can’t be added to another team Each team gets points based on what their fantasy players do in the real-life games each week. If your quarterback throws for a touchdown, your team gets 6 points and so on. If your team scores more points than others, you win. Typically, fantasy teams compete in games against one another throughout each week of the NFL season. Undrafted players can get added to any team through waivers--designed to give each team a fair shot at new players each week and to give teams a chance to replace injured players.
There is usually money in fantasy football--and it’s become a big business--but the real point of any fantasy game is to win. To show you’re smarter and know more about football than the other guy or gal. To beat the other teams and crush their owners.
Fantasy football is a game for people who love to compete--and in any competition, rules need to be set up for every contingency. What happens if a player gets hurt? Can teams trade players? What if the trade is unfair?
And, just as in real life, people who win in fantasy, know the rules inside and out, bending or exploiting them to gain any competitive advantage. I’ve been playing fantasy sports for decades--and disputes in some leagues have shattered even family relationships. It gets ugly with both sides thinking the other has gained an unfair advantage.
In 2019, I played in 6 different fantasy football leagues. I ran 5 of them. As a lifelong commissioner, I try to set up rules that govern every possibility. In 2020, I don’t see how to set up rules that will work for a season where the coronavirus is sure to impact, disrupt or even cancel games. If two Week 3 games get cancelled for four teams and one game is rescheduled for Week 7 and the other for Week 9, do the fantasy points scored in those games count in Week 3, Week 7 or Week 9? What roster do you use? Week 3, 7 or 9?
I simply don’t know how to make rules that will work for what I think will be a mess of an NFL season (if they play).
What’s more, I don’t want to play in a game where I know that the rules are going to need to be “decided as we go.” By whom? A majority vote of the league? A two-thirds majority? The commissioner? A committee?
And yet, I can hear people saying that the coronavirus will be treated just like any other injury in fantasy football. Even the smartest fantasy owner can have a season ruined by a player being sidelined by a torn ACL. Players missing games for coronavirus will be no different. Fantasy games mirror the real-life sport--and if your players don’t play, you don’t get points. That’s just part of the fantasy game.
The virus is not just another injury--and that’s why I suspect the whole thing will break down in real life and, by extension, in fantasy. Imagine if concussions were contagious? If one offensive lineman on a real-life team tests positive, what if he infects the rest of team’s linemen, including the backups?
What’s more, what happens if a star player like Tom Brady gets infected? He makes millions. He’s made millions. What if he decides it’s not worth it to continue to play? Especially if his infection is late in the season when his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, is out of the playoffs? What if other teammates join him? Other star players on other bad teams? In both fantasy and real life, fair competition only works when all teams and players try their best to win at every junction, in every play and in every game.
There is an entire fantasy football industry designed to help fantasy owners predict which players will breakout and which will regress. Who to draft first and who to wait on? In 2019, I signed up for 2 services, Rotoviz ($60) and Establish the Run ($200, co-founded by Evan Silva who used to work for another service that I’ve used called Rotoworld). I simply do not want to invest that money for fantasy football in 2020.
Each week in 2019, I used a Google document to track the players on each of my 6 teams plus the players I might want to add from the free agency pools in each of those 6 leagues. It’s a lot of work. It takes a lot of time. I’d rather not spend that time on a game that I think won’t work right--and will be marked by controversy and confusion.
The Google doc I used in 2019 to track my 6 fantasy football teams.
In 2019, I ran 5 of the 6 leagues that I played in. I want people in those leagues to know that they’re on their own--and will need to find other leagues or find someone else in the league to take things over. I don’t want the headaches--and that’s all I can foresee at this point.
My ESPN home-page for Fantasy Football. As explained in Quiz # 30. “Slugger,” all my fantasy sports teams are named after Lewis Oil—my first Little League team.
Believe it or now, open leagues that start drafting in July. The most popular of these is the Scott Fish Bowl which starts on July 8th. On Twitter, this goes by SFBX as it’s the tenth year of the Scott Fish Bowl. Fish runs the leagues for charity and over the last ten years, it’s attracted every industry leader. It’s invitation only.
With summer drafts, you use a slow draft via email with other owners in your league getting 8 hours to make a pick once notified via email. Drafts can take weeks. Summer leagues have also spawned something called “Best Ball” leagues. Once the email draft is over, you’re done. No trades. No changing players. No setting your lineup each week. You draft 20 players with 11 other owners randomly gathered together on the internet. Each week, depending on the rules, you get the score from your best 9 players. Beyond my 6 regular season leagues, in 2019, I played in a Scott FIsh league (finishing 4th out of 12) and also played in four $10 Best Ball leagues. I finished first in one of those leagues and won $100. These leagues are drafting now--and I will not be part of them in 2020.
What makes fantasy football great is precisely that it’s unpredictable. In 2019, drafting Lamar Jackson was a badge of courage. Would he be an MVP or a complete bust? Making your own predictions by staking claims on players you think will be great is a fundamental part of the game. There’s nothing more satisfying than getting it right.
But unpredictability is one thing--instability is another.
Why play a game that you suspect will be broken?
I’ll find other things to do.
Scan more photos.
Read more books.
Write more quizzes.
What did NOT happen?
A. Last week, on Friday June 19th, I made my first trip to the doctor’s office--my first trip inside a public facility since March. That week, I had developed a small head cold (no fever, no cough and no loss of smell). The cold moved to my ears. I’ve had similar problems before and I could tell that my left ear was infected. The doctor’s office took my temperature at the door, everyone had masks with a lot of distance in the waiting area. My ears were drained and I got ear drops for the infection;
B. At the doctor’s office, I also used a public restroom for the first time since March. It was limited to one person at a time with an attendant waiting outside the bathroom to maintain social distance;
C. Already a little hard of hearing, the infection combined with the ear drops to make it especially hard for me to hear during this last week. I joked that I was like a deaf Mr. Maggoo and know it was frustrating for Sara;
D. With coronavirus surging and an explosion of articles on the virus, racism and politics, I’m again having a hard time sleeping late. This Saturday, June 25th, I woke up at 5:25. I did the dishes and finished a deep clean on the stovetop before joining my siblings for a 1 hour and 38 minute phone call to check in. During that phone call, I accidentally muted my phone for 20 minutes and could not figure out why my siblings were ignoring me every time I tried to talk;
E. After 20 minutes of me not talking on the phone call, I warned my siblings that I had a list of things I wanted to discuss. My brother Richard joked that it would be in the form of a quiz--with me telling them five things, four of which I had wanted to discuss and one which I did NOT.
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Want more?
Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #63. “Says Steve.”
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #61. Beyond the Bubble.
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
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