[bacon]

i dont have much in way of sports. i only really enjoy watching football and mma and on occasion boxing. the rest of the sports out there are ok but i have trouble staying interested unless its a live event or im betting on the game. BUT SOMETHING WICKED HAS COME TO FOOTBALL. NO im not talking about female commentators which annoy me to no end. (thanks feminists for taking yet another bastion of maleness and demanding a place.) but no my gripe today is not with feminists but rather with the nerding of football. to me i look a fanasty football fans the same way i look at dudes who collect comic books they are nerds.

i dont currently live in the us but i recall last year drinking at a sports bar in arizona when i saw not one but several men in the bar using laptops. this bar had no less than 6 games playing at once on different flat screens placed around the bar but as i observed these guys they were missing great plays going on live only to check on their labtops and see "how thier team was doing"

now the haters may say well my team won $1000 last year. to that i say i have no problem with gambling if its betting on a game or doing a office pool but this is different. first these teams are imaginary so if you are say a redskins fan and romo is your quarterback(on your fantasy team) how do you root when the redskins play the cowboys. maybe that example is extreme but you get the idea. fantasy football perverts the simplisity of rooting for your team and hating your teams rival because you care about the performance of indivual players on an imaginary team. i remember hating kids playing fantasy games like dungenous and dragons as a kid to me this is worse because its bringing that element of nerdiness to football.

[dandylion]

It really is just Dungeons & Dragons for guys into sports. Nothing more, nothing less. The jocks are finding their inner-nerd.

[Timoteo]

Commissioner Goodell LOVES fantasy football. Anything that gets the fan to be more interested in the game, and watch more football is good. On ESPN, and magazines, there are fantasy football reports, etc. to cater to that crowd. It makes money for ESPN, publishers, etc. The injury report isn't so much for other teams around the league as it is for gamblers to set an accurate line on the games.

[bacon]

timoteo your right i hear they have magazines just for fantasy football

[Bacchus]

Yes, because people don't watch football for the fuckin' game anymore. They pay attention to stats. That's not football. It's math.

Plus, every dude wants to talk about his fantasy team.

[Jaydublin]

Don't quite a few players actually play fantasy football?

[_DC_]

Eh, I don't see the problem.

Its a useful tool to get you interested in games you otherwise couldn't care less about.

I think whenever FF players' teams are on, they are truly just interested in their team winning and don't care much for points. Most people only have one team out of 32, so it makes the game playing in the bar suddenly more relevant.

Harmless waste of time and possible money maker.

[Nonpareil]

I approach girls not to fuck them, but to test the quality of my negs, the righteousness of my value demonstrations and the timing of my number closes. If one of my value demonstrations falls flat, I can put it on the bench and replace it with another one, and it doesn't matter if I don't get laid as long as the separate, individual components of my game were good.

...is what Fantasy Football enthusiasts sound like.

[Sabra]

I agree that the whole FF craze has gotten a little out of hand. But the bigger problem with football ( as well as other US sports like basketball) is the commercials causing an interminably slow pace of game.

Scored a touchdown? Commercial timeout.
Extra point? Commercial timeout.
Kickoff? Commercial timeout.
First down? Commercial timeout.

It's getting impossible to watch a game anymore. And is it just me or do the commercial breaks get longer every year?

[Icepasian]

(09-11-2012 05:29 AM)Sabra Wrote:  

It's getting impossible to watch a game anymore. And is it just me or do the commercial breaks get longer every year?

I think commercial breaks are pegged(or estimated in the cases of games) to make up one third of all viewing time. This means that for every 2 hours that you spend watching television(unless the shows are on DVR or premium stations), you watch 1 hour of intermittent sales pitches. Television ratings and the amount of cable/satellite subscriptions have been falling for years courtesy of Netflix and the Internet so profit margins have likely followed that decline over the same period. The media corporations might be slowly tweaking the commercial breaks slightly to make up for the lost profits. As I'm pretty sure all of the marketers here know, less volume(or people watching tv in this case) equates to a lower value for ad time. I think that would partially explain it.

And on topic once again, I don't have anything wrong with Fantasy Football because I have never cared much for the sport itself(soccer on the other hand...) but if people want to nerd out over their sports, it's not a problem for me. Also, on another note, I remember playing Dungeons & Dragons with a few bros during summer camp in my youth and as far as I know, it was quite entertaining. I'm not sure where all the hate for it comes from.

[UrbanNerd]

I watch a ton of college football and another ton of NFL football every week.....

....and I tell every person who asks me about fantasy football "No Thank You".

I don't knock the guys that are into fantasy football because at the same time, I get into the whole college football weekly rankings stuff.

[Timoteo]

Sports want to pull in the "casual" viewer. They want to provide entertainment for the non-fan, much like the Super Bowl. Non-fans go to Super Bowl parties with the game as a sideshow. Stadiums and ballparks provide entertainment other than the game itself, like slides, swimming pools, stores to buy all kinds of merchandise, restaurants, bars, etc. Fantasy Football is all about pulling as many people into the game as possible, whether they're hardcore fans or not. I think only hockey doesn't try to cater to casual fans. Both football AND basketball has built in timeouts for tv, so their broadcasting partners can make a little money.

@bacon...yes, there are magazines just for fantasy football, and even Sports Illustrated has a column devoted to which players are good fantasy picks, etc.

[bacon]

maybe this is dated but my role model hunter s. thompson used to write random articles for sports iliustrated. that guy was a football lover and im sure he would share my opinions about fantasy football

[raliv]

I play fantasy football. I wouldn't really care about the NFL if I didn't play fantasy. I play against my old college buddies so its a fun way to keep in touch and have an annual party.

it's more fun than keeping up with politics. Is it nerdy? hell yeah. Is it fun? sure.

I am not that guy that brings a laptop to a bar.