Some of our readers are having a heart attack just from reading the title of this article. For some, the just the words Football and Geek do not go together in any form. I will use this space to demonstrate why I think Fantasy Football can be geeky and why I believe in Fantasy Football Geeks. If you can open your mind for a few minutes and give me a chance, I think some of you will look at Fantasy Football differently.
I know that some of us were ridiculed by the football players in middle school and in high school. I had to stand up to a football bully or two in my day. Some of us were down right tortured and scarred by some of those lugs. Now that we have talked about the bullies, let us get past it and realize not all football fans were those guys.
Let me state this for the record, I AM a Fantasy Football Geek. In high school, I played basketball and was in track. I was never a gifted athlete and usually sat on the bench. I was able to be my geeky self while being involved with sports. I did get teased for my love of cartoons, comic books, and sci fi but I put up with it from those with less taste in entertainment.
Fantasy Football started for me when I was invite by a geek friend to join a fantasy football league 19 years ago. This was in the infancy of Fantasy Football. I joined the league that was filled with other geeks and we had a great time. Most of us were (and still are) into comics, video games, board games, and any geeky movies. The members of this fantasy football league has changed over the last 19 years but the majority of us are still huge geeks.
Just because certain geeks are also into fantasy football doesn’t equate that fantasy football is geeky. I am in 5 different leagues and well over half of the members of each league are geeks. That is a small sampling but it does lend credence to my suggestion.
Fantasy Football is inherently geeky in nature. As a fantasy football Owner (Participant), your goal is to build the best possible team to score points and match up against the other competition. It is similar to building a deck for Magic or the old school Star Wars: Customizable Card Game . It focuses on statistics of the player to give you points. There is a huge amount of strategy and chance to this game . It is like many other geek games such as Axis and Allies, which requires good strategy but can be undermined by the chance rolls of the dice. Owners essentially role play as an NFL Owner to pull in players (your characters). The fantasy draft reminds me of a huge game of Dungeons and Dragons with food and fun while the Game Master (Commissioner) attempts to keep everyone focused.
The fantasy football owners can be quite obsessive about their teams. I start preparing for my drafts no later than July 1st. My drafts occur between mid August and the beginning of September. I spend uncountable hours in that month and a half examining the players, looking at new players, projecting statistics, and reading other experts. I walk into a draft with a customized list to the rules of the league and to the temperament of the league. I could tell you the best players on the board at anytime in the draft- usually without looking at my sheet. I spend hours each week examining ways to make my team better. Not all fantasy footballers put in this kind of time and effort. But those of us that do, are extremely geeky about our fantasy football.
Fantasy football lends itself to the geek community. Many fantasy football owners are already proud geeks. Fantasy football is a game similar to many other geeky games. Many of the owners approach their teams like they would playing other geek favorite games. Those of us that are Fantasy Football Geeks fit right into Simon Pegg’s quote below.
“Being a geek is all about being honest about what you enjoy and not being afraid to demonstrate that affection. It means never having to play it cool about how much you like something. It’s basically a license to proudly emote on a somewhat childish level rather than behave like a supposed adult. Being a geek is extremely liberating.” — Simon Pegg
The point of this article was not to convince more geeks to join fantasy football leagues. Just like anything geeky out there, if you have an interest, check it out and see if it is for you or not. If you have no interest, then do something that gets you excited. My point was to educate our readers on this geek subculture that they may not have known about.
I hope no one feels the need to challenge my geek cred since I have come out as a Fantasy Football Geek. If you do, then we can compare our geek Pedigree. Mine is quite extensive from reading comics from age four to watching anything sci fi or fantasy based to role playing to quoting great movie lines to writing about geek culture. But if you want to take my geek card, you better be able to school me in Stars Trivia Pursuit.
Stay Geeky My Friends!
