Hola to my fellow degenerates. I’ve been thinking about this from time to time over the past couple of years and I’ve come up with a few reasons why this game (fantasy football) in particular is quite toxic and why I will be taking a step-back from it next year (if not outright quitting most of my leagues).

Detracting from your team / football in general - Lately I have found myself caring a lot more about the fantasy aspect of football vs. what’s actually happening on the field and it’s even been extending to my own local team as well. I’ve noticed that I didn’t care at all if my home team (Bears) lost if the opposing team had players from my fantasy lineup that put up monster games. While that’s concerning on its own, fantasy has also taken the joy out of a lot of typically exciting football matchups throughout the season. (One quick example is what was an amazing regular season matchup between the Eagles and Chiefs; my brain just remembers it by AJB laying a fantasy goose egg). While this issue isn’t really the end of the world (I’m replacing one source of happiness with another), it’s definitely not how I want to experience football in the future.

The illusion of skill/control - This one is a bit hard to articulate but it’s probably what I find the most frustrating about fantasy football. If you’re in leagues where everyone else is really active (and you can’t just cheese wins by getting every good player on the wire or facing people that forgot to bench bye week players), then any type of competitive edge from “skill” becomes next to impossible to get. The game becomes almost entirely based on luck and while that is fine in a vacuum, there is something about fantasy football that gives off an illusion of skill/control that is extremely difficult to overcome, especially if you are a competitive person. Doing research, looking up a bunch of fantasy sites, checking updates on your players, digging into the depths of the waiver wire, etc… are hard to avoid with a competitive mindset but they only amount to at best, like a 1% edge (if that) which makes it all that much more frustrating when you lose to someone that forgot to bench an injured WR. It’s like if you went to the casino every weekend to play slots with your buddies, but the couple of days beforehand you spent a few hours researching exactly which particular slots paid out the most over the course of 3 months and watched videos on how to pull the lever in the exact right way. To top it off, after losing your money for the weekend, your friends started talking trash about how bad you played that day and you spent the next day thinking about how you could have won money if you just timed your lever pull a second quicker. Apologies if this analogy doesn’t make any sense. The last way I can explain it is if you lose in bingo, you can chalk it up to luck; if you lose in chess, you can chalk it up to your opponent playing better and you come away with what to improve upon for the next time. If you lose in fantasy football, it feels like you lost in chess but you actually lost in bingo which just creates a weird cocktail of misery.

The marathon nature - This goes hand in hand with the second point but the playoff format/ week 14-17 season nature of fantasy football makes it extra draining, especially if you end up with a bad team. Many of my leagues went to dynasty/keeper or implemented some type of loser’s punishment which on paper should motivate you to “try” for the entire season. In reality, if you got unlucky in the draft or had some crucial early season injuries, you’re stuck dragging your corpse of a team from week to week. If your local team is rebuilding, you can tune them out for the season and focus on other games. If you have a bad couple of weeks on FanDuel, you can give up gambling for the season but if you have an awful fantasy team, you’re “stuck” with them until the end of the season. It’s almost as if before the season, everyone drafted one team that they have to bet the moneyline on every week and you ended up with the Jets. Now after the Rodgers injury, instead of just quitting gambling until next year, you’re stuck rooting for the Zach Wilson/Tim Boyle experience every damn week in the hope that the team can kick enough FGs, and play good enough defense to miraculously come away with a win. The misery around the Rodgers injury is now spread out over 14 straight weeks.

To close this out, there is one massive benefit that trumps everything I said above and that is this game has allowed me to continue friendships with buddies that may have died out without it. There’s nothing like a groupchat for 4 months where everyone is sharing memes/trash talking etc… It’s the reason why I most likely won’t be quitting outright but I definitely will be taking a step-back when it comes to some of my other leagues.

So anyways, curious to hear some thoughts from everyone.