[thenightwriterblog] The Night Writer: The end of an era

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Posted by The Night Writer:
The end of an era
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1198209901.shtml


   I started playing Fantasy Football in 1984, back when Cliff
   Charpentier's fantasy season preview was the Bible of preparation,
   even though it was little more than a compilation of players ranked by
   the previous season's statistics. We tried to track our scores from
   tantalizing snippets on the evening news and had to run outside early
   Monday morning to grab the newspaper in order to check the box-scores
   by hand to find out if we'd won or lost. Walter Payton was my
   first-ever first-round draft pick and I finished out of the money that
   year.
   Things have changed a lot since then. Fantasy Football is a billion
   dollar business and every channel with a football game but Fox runs
   continuous individual player stat lines across the bottom of the
   screen to help you keep track. Not that it's necessary, because there
   are multiple services and websites that keep score in real time and I
   merely have to look over my shoulder at my computer screen to check
   the score of my fantasy game while I'm watching a real game. Oh, and
   for the third time in the last four years, my team is playing in my
   league's Fantasy Bowl this weekend (as I write this I'm already down
   12-0 since my opponent had Ben Roethlisberger playing Thursday night).
   Win or lose, this is also going to be my last game.
   It's not that I've grown bored with my success or with the game. For
   the last 23 years I've been in at least one league every year, and
   often as the Commissioner. To some extent it's been a year-round hobby
   as I've tried to stay on top of off-season moves and their
   implications and overall it's been an interesting and often passionate
   pastime. I've always enjoyed the combination of luck and skill
   required to build a winning record: the pre-draft preparation and
   hunches on who were going to be the best players in the coming year,
   the way the best-laid plans could be thrown out the window by
   capricious injuries, and how you had to hustle to come up with
   alternate plans and players as a result. This year, however, it has
   all been more of a chore for me than entertainment.
   To some extent it may be due to those nagging distractions called
   "life" getting in the way. My personal life has had a fair amount of
   tumult since last spring that left me with relatively little free time
   to dwell on football, and little inclination to do so when I could
   have. I think the biggest issue, however, has become the carnage on
   the field.
   As I said, luck and injuries were a wild card in every season and
   something you simply expected (hoping that it wouldn't happen to your
   team) and accepted as part of the randomness that made the game
   entertaining. Somewhere along the line, however, it started to work on
   me that these injuries weren't just an inconvenience I had to work
   around, but something tangible, painful and even devastating to the
   real person involved. Not that the existence of fantasy football
   contributed to these injuries in any way, but it started to bother me
   that this was my "entertainment."
   Strangely enough, the turning point wasn't a football injury. Last
   summer when pro wrestler [1]Chris Benoit killed his family and himself
   there was a lot written about the wrestling culture and steroids and
   about how many wrestlers had died young or had serious personal
   problems. There was a lot of media hand-wringing about who was to
   blame -- the promoters, the personality types drawn to being
   wrestlers, the lifestyle, etc. No one seemed to touch on what seemed
   to me to be the obvious: if people weren't paying out big money to
   watch the shows, go to the events and buy the merchandise then there
   wouldn't be the incentive for the performers to try to make a name and
   physique for themselves, travel 300 days a year and resort to drugs to
   buid themselves up and to ease or mask the pain and debilitations that
   came from being a human torpedo. As I self-righteously scoffed at
   wrestling fans for being enablers I had a chilling revelation of my
   own fandom.
   No, it isn't fantasy football that's driving young men to seek fame
   and fortune in exchange for their bodies in the NFL (speaking as one
   who gave up a knee playing the game for free), but my attitude has
   shifted and I don't know if will ever go back. I still enjoy watching
   the game and the big hits, but I can feel myself pulling back.
   I made my "retirement" announcement to my league at the end of our
   regular season, before our play-offs, so the rest of the owners can
   start thinking about finding a replacement Commissioner now, when the
   season is at it's peak, and not in the dog days of summer. I received
   a very gratifying email from one of the owners thanking me for the
   entertainment value I brought to the league (via weekly game
   summaries) and asking me to reconsider. In the message he said my
   passion and commitment would be missed and couldn't be duplicated. I
   told him that I thought the passion and commitment may very well be
   duplicated by someone else -- I just knew that I couldn't duplicate it
   any longer, and that was the surest sign that it was time to hang it
   up.
   It's been a bit odd going through these final weeks as I've advanced
   through the play-offs. I've caught myself filing away mental notes
   about players for next year out of habit before realizing, wryly,
   there won't be a next year. Oh well, wish me luck this weekend! I've
   got a 12-point deficit to make up and a decision to make of which two
   players to start between Ryan Grant, LenDale White and Brandon Jacobs,
   all while praying for good weather in New England so Randy Moss can
   catch three touchdown passes.
   Other than that, it's back to reality.

References

   1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit