On leaving fantasy football

So this year, for the first time in decades, I won't have a fantasy football team. Combine this with a while ago giving up on baseball, and last year giving up on basketball, and I am well and truly out of the game for the first time in my adult life.

There are many reasons for this.

1) Time. I spent the last two years without a FT gig or enough consulting clients to be very comfortable, and the reality of fantasy sports, at even just the competitive owner level, is that you've got to do the prep for any real chance of it working out. Especially in the kinds of leagues that I frequent (auction), you can't cheat the process. Especially when you usually serve as the commish of the league. There are way too many projects (yard work, garage, general cleaning and maintenance) that matter more than nerd gambling right now.

2) Money. See the above.

3) A general falling out of love with gambling. It's everywhere you look, and the over-exposure has not done anyone any favors. It's also really doing a number on young people, who aren't exactly getting a lot of favors from society in general. Promoting it, even indirectly, just feels gross. (Note: I still gamble, if you call playing poker with friends gambling. My family calls it my social life. They're probably right.)

4) A general distaste for the way it's changed how sports are covered. No one cares about your fantasy team but you, but you'd never know that from the way the media covers football. So many players are genuinely overrated for wins that don't exist in reality. A game where you are rewarded for ranking Dak Prescott higher than Jalen Hurts rankles, and not just because I'm an Eagles fan.

5) A desire to just watch games the way that, well, I used to. I listen to one football podcast now, and it's only focused on my actual team. Same with hoop. Baseball is good on the radio, which is where I consume the majority of my team's games. I don't know the players on other teams, and I don't have to. I can't recommend this enough; it makes the games more interesting, because you don't know everything about the other laundry, and you aren't ever tempted to root for them.

6) My actual teams are watchable. The Phillies are on track to win 90+ games for the fourth straight year, and being local enough to them has gotten me back into the franchise, along with an ownership group that actually is trying to win. The Sixers have, miraculously, become intriguing after looking like they were going to spend the next decade being Knicks Fan's second homme. The Eagles have been so good for so long that I feel like questioning whether any fan who is younger than me has actually earned this era.

7) The NFL really doesn't need me to watch any more of its product. Especially when it's such a goddamn chore to figure out which game is on which date is on which streaming service. Hard pass.

Will this be for, well, good? Probably not. There are always people who need someone to take a team to fill out a roster, and it's not as if I've forgotten everything I ever knew about this. I won my league for the last two years, so it's not even a matter of not being good at it anymore. Eventually, my real teams will turtle up. It's cyclical.

But right now, I only care about real teams, and those teams are, well, worth watching. Go Birds. And only them.