Why I Play Fantasy Football In Garbage Leagues

Know Your Role

In several weeks, I will sit down at a video call and work on a Web site that will work, if past precedent has anything to say about it, barely and not at all. I'll use this besotted site to select players I have likely never heard of, in a contest for no money, to see which of us knows the most about...

A football league that, again, if the past is any precedent, will fail to make it through its first and only season.

It is, of course, delightful in every way, and if you don't also want to do it, I have to say -- I'm disappointed in you.

At its core, fantasy sports are nitty nerd bets. You are making dozens if not hundreds of decisions for stakes that are usually trivial on a per-hour basis, and the single biggest winner in the whole enterprise is the site selling ad impressions. Who wins and who losses is usually determined by fluke and injury, but the times when your big old brain comes through (me this year in fantasy basketball -- Tyrese Maxey and Desmond Bane), you'll live off the dopamine for months.

Which means a periodic drawing of names at random -- and the meta trash talk, which is the whole point of the exercise, really -- is just what the doctor ordered to remember that, well...

Nitty Nerd Gambling is just not that serious.

So picking a team of randos randomly?

I'm so going to *crush* this league...

God's Plan, and your role as Object Lesson

God's Other Plan: Hot Dog Sales

"Maybe pain is just His way of hurting us" - The Firesign Theater

Recently, one Carson Wentz, vagabond quarterback and owner of the greatest fall from grace in recent Philadelphia sports history, only for the world to say Ben Simmons a lot...

Said the following in regards to his latest incident of changing postal addresses.

"I said, 'Okay God, I'm just going to take the next right step. I'm going to be obedient wherever you have me."

There's more, but I'm clearly too much of a heathen to be able to spread more of that. Besides, the crop's going in nicely without it.

Now, a few points that should be obvious, but check the data, folks -- things that should be obvious get missed a lot. 

> Why is Carson obedient to his special magical sky friend, but not the coach who employs him and would prefer that he doesn't go Late Stage Brett Favre on every play?

> Is there, I don't know, perhaps even a percentile of a chance that God's Ineffable Plan actually doesn't, you know, think about Carson's changing postal addresses very much

> And if that chance is less than zero, then it would stand to reason that said magical sky friend might think Carson to be, how shall we say, spectacularly vain and self-glorifying in his own warped way as to be the exact kind of person who would get a big surprise in the next life...

> Um, Carson? You might want to double-check the idea that the Daniel Snyder Football Experience is "the next right step"

There's probably some meta-ironic way to read that.

Anyway... Well, far be it for me to say, I'm just a simple country sports pundit.

Who is looking forward to the brief but memorable Donovan McNabb II, Washington Edition Electric Boogaloo career we are about to watch...

A small point about sports sanctions

No Sports For You

In the ever-increasing amount of the world that is Not Game, decent human beings are insisting on the removal of Russian athletes from competitions. Amazingly, FIFA did the right thing (of course, in the worst way), followed by a do-se-do for the Special Olympics. Given the doping and child abuse circus that was last month, perhaps the IOC shouldn't just take away a flag next time.

If public sentiment among the Russian people is starting to wonder if they are the baddies here (hint: the rest of the world sure seems to think so, and is willing to pay more for gasoline and the four other things that tragic land still exports), sports is going to be yet another distraction that is no longer available. The same as first run movies, pornography (Pornhub, once again doing the Lord's work), stock market trading and much, much more.

Now, there will come the inevitable Devil's Advocate / Hi, I'm A Public Asshat take that all of this as just virtue signaling or, SHUDDER, cancel culture.

People who really just love telling you (yes, you) how to act, what to watch, and so on. First they made you stop spreading a pandemic with masking and vaccines, and now they are going to keep you from being able to escape your sad existence with Politics in Game. Shake your bony first in anger.

So, as a public service to people who desperately need it, this:

If we don't stop despots from using force to take whatever they want, they will.

If you want to live in a world where might makes right, and you that anyone who disagrees with you is a liberal cuck, please stand up for your principles and enjoy your upcoming time in prison.

You also don't get to play or watch sports, since those activities involve following rules.

In a world where might makes right, eventually the mighty find out they aren't the mightiest. If to no other opponent than age or numbers. But not without a lot of undue suffering.

Back the bans. Extend them to China, AKA the only country that seems to be Pro Vlad, and yes, I may also be covering his own damned country. 

Seize the yachts, the teams, the cars. Evict them from their homes and properties. Show that when you no longer have the ability to live in decent society, it's not better for you. Support the Ukrainian people in their efforts to keep their own damned self-governance when they are not militarily occupied, and to sabotage the living hell out of the ill-gotten ground when they are.

You may not think you are at war, but maybe look at your gas and oil bill, or your groceries. 

Not sanctioning sports is tone deaf at best, compliant at worst.

Refusing to associate in any way with a nation that allows its armed forces to be used in the service of a despot is not despotism. It's a defensive move that speaks to the greater consequences of bad behavior.

And that's all that anyone should have to say about that.