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...