Angry Fans

Fantasy sports are almost ubiquitous in the modern sports scene, as hoards of savvy fans (mostly male) now flock to the web to worship the statistician gods. Every major sports outlet on the internet offers a wide array of different games and formats for every sport. Millions of players participate year round in work leagues, friend leagues, public leagues and beyond. People who care very little about sports will join up and instantly become a passionate fan. Is this good for the game? Is more interest always necessarily good? Maybe, but the way fantasy sports cause certain fans to follow the game can be considered blasphemous to the purists. While Brad is a vehement defender of the game, Spencer sees the other side and offers an opposing take. After reading, you be the judge.

Brad: Pretty much everyone who follows sports wishes they could play professionally. At the very least, they dream of coaching or making the key decisions for their teams. Fantasy sports allow that dream to became a (fake) reality. The inception of fantasy sports came when a group of journalists led by Dan Okrent figured out a way to measure their sports knowledge competitively. Since then, fantasy sports have created a culture of fandom that allows players to reach outside the bounds of their own city, to reach through the TV screen, and to interact with the sport in a greater, more tangible way.

Fantasy leagues encourage a deeper analysis and understanding of sports, forcing the casual fan to read into statistics rather than just the emotions of a win or a loss. Most importantly perhaps, in a sports world where the gap between the successful and unsuccessful franchise is large, fantasy sports make a Lions-Rams game in late September meaningful, and the more games there are to watch, the happier a fan I am.

Spencer: Look, I love playing fantasy sports. I have multiple teams in every sport and I mark draft days on my calendar months in advance. I do more work to find late round sleepers than I do for all my classes combined. However, I also think that fantasy sports have profoundly influenced the way I watch sports, and in a negative way. The most common complaint about fantasy sports is that you start to follow players instead of teams. It’s the most common because it is true. The strong emotional bond that you form with your teams is lost once you start drafting players from other teams. And that emotional bond with the players on your fantasy teams just does not come close to a team bond because of the inherent turnover year to year.

Watching games does not have the same meaning once you create your own fantasy team. In the same vein, even watching my own team has changed. It is not infrequent that I own a player on one of my teams, and that causes me to root for that particular player over the success of my team as a whole. For instance, if the Vikings throw to their fullback Naufahu Tahi instead of tight end Visanthe Shiancoe, it annoys me, even if they gain ten yards or score a touchdown. I should never be forced into deciding whether I want my professional team to win over my fantasy one. In terms of my net happiness, fantasy sports have added more to my life than they have taken away from my enjoyment of watching sports, but my connection to my teams is something I value above all else, and I’m not sure I can get it back.

Brad Becker-Parton ’11 is from Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.  and Spencer Wright ’11 is from Burlington, Vt.