GARRETT WAIT
Sports Editor
I can already picture the dreaded situation in my head. It’s a couple of years from now, and I’m sitting in a room filled with a bunch of men, some younger than me, some older. They all look to me and the room goes quiet. That’s when I stand up and say the words I never thought I’d say:
“Hi, I’m Garrett, and I’m a fantasy sports addict.”
Just a few years ago, I was adamantly against fantasy sports. I thought they were for pseudo-fans, people without a favorite team who only enjoyed sports because it very often involved large sets of numbers. I pictured fantasy freaks as balding middle-aged men with protractors and calculators littering their desks. Oh how wrong I was.
I am so glued to my computer these days trying to think of trades and free agent moves to better prepare my team for the long season ahead that I often forget to do simple things like shower or eat. It’s a bad sign when the option to pick up Drew Bledsoe affects your health in such a negative way.
Even as I write this piece, I’m on Yahoo! looking at a trade that would give me the Patriots’ Deion Branch and the Chiefs’ Eddie Kennison in exchange for the Buccaneers’ sensational rookie tailback Cadillac Williams. If you caught yourself saying, “There’s no way he should make that trade,” you may have the addiction, too. And of course, I’m not going to make that trade. Don’t be silly.
My fantasy addiction didn’t start with football. It was NBA basketball that hooked me. I started a pay-to-play league with a few of my high school buddies and quickly sank into a dark world filled with every kind of stat imaginable. It’s scary to think that somebody could manage more than one team at a time because I literally spent eight hours a day scouting opponents and going over my starting line up again and again.
I didn’t win that league, but I came close. And the idea that I could have garnered monetary gain only led me to go deeper into the figurative rabbit hole. I quickly became part of a fantasy baseball league that lost steam at some point and fizzled. That league’s decline brought actual angst, which sounds so dumb that even as I’m typing this, I’m thinking about what an idiot I’m turning into.
But this is my fate. I never should have started down this terrible path, but now that the journey has begun, I know I won’t be able to stop. It’s accelerated quickly, too. I used to be just a lowly league member. Now I am the commissioner of my fantasy football league. It’s a slippery slope, friends.
I have the power to allow and disallow trades. I can sanction the other “owners” and set the scoring options. This has given me an unbelievable sense of power. I haven’t used any of my newfound influence for evil yet, as can be seen by the fact that after two weeks, I sit in dead last. But just having the option is almost too tempting.
Some of you are reading this with smiles, thinking to yourself that I’m writing this in jest, but you have no idea of the dire straits I’m in. Others are reading this and noticing eerie similarities between my situation and your own. You know my struggle all too well, for you too are battling the same demons.
My grades are slipping; my work is becoming shoddy and poorly written. I haven’t shaved in several days and probably won’t shave until after this weekend’s games. I won’t get a haircut until the season ends. My fingernails are unkempt and eyes are heavy at all times. And I’m sure I’m not as bad as some of the guys in my league.
It’s a nightmarish scenario, I know, but it’s the one I have chosen. My mom will surely call me later this week to have a “talk” about my problems. She’ll kindly suggest that I quit the league. By “kindly suggest” I mean “threaten to stop writing tuition checks,” of course.
But I will not stop. Not until that fateful day I described at the beginning. Even after that, I’ll sneak a peak at the ESPN “fantasy glances” every once in a while, dreaming of my old life. But all that will have to wait. I just thought of a trade offer.
Marvin Harrison and DeShaun Foster for Deuce McAllister and Eric Moulds. What do you think?
09-22-2005