So, we’re marching ahead with GMC’s Fantasy Football league. After a week one win, I lost this week. I don’t know how I won last week, so I didn’t put too much worry or analysis into losing this time.
To remind you, this league is generously hosted and sponsored by GMC for lifestyle journalists (…in this case, an automotive editor and men’s travel writer…) to compete for a season-ending trip to the Super Bowl. And, after two weeks, I’d like to remind you that I won’t be going to said Super Bowl.
I’ve never played in any fantasy football league before this, and I’m realizing why after a couple weeks. First of all, you have to me be very stationary to play fantasy football. It’s a game created for desk jockeys who have plenty of office chair time on their hands (or buttocks) and need something to look at to break up the monotony — tracking the stats of athletes with jobs they’d rather have.
With that in mind, consider my last two weeks of work on the road: I rode the 2014 Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Classic for three days and more than 300 miles through Montana and Glacier National Park. Then, I speed tested the 25th Anniversary Miata under track conditions at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca outside Montery, California. I then flew to Mexico with BF Goodrich for some amateur racing in specially built buggies down the Baja 500 course hit by the tail end of a hurricane — alongside professionals who’ve won the race multiple times. Currently, I’m on the back end of a Toronto, Niagara Falls, Baltimore travel junket with Radisson hotels. I get a couple days off this weekend. Then it’s New Orleans, London, Myrtle Beach and Las Vegas on the radar for late September into October.
Am I complaining about the schedule? Hell, no. Not while I’m still breathing. Good gig. I hope folks enjoy reading about whatever I find out there. Still, while I’m doing 75 mph in some flooded out desert wash in Ensenada, my would-be fantasy opponents are scanning the waiver wire. So, I’m not going to be scoring many exciting free agent pickups or suggesting trades to put me over the top in this league, If the options are drop a make believe game because I’m writing up real life adventures, I’ll take the faux loss and wave bye-bye as I throw it around turn eight.
Related: A Pilgrim in the Land of Fantasy Football
Also, I confess I just can’t get into fantasy football. GMC put on a hell of a show in Denver to get the league kicked off, and they offered me chances to test drive two outstanding vehicles while I was on station there. But, all fantasy football does is remind me that I can’t play actual football anymore with other men who really love the game. You’d think I’d hate football after it busted me up, but I would play the great game all over again despite the two rebuilt knees, a patched up shoulder and a once-broken ankle. I got all that having fun as a boy lost in the red mist — hitting and being hit on real grass (not on a computer screen). Pretending this weak online simulacrum of a man’s game is somehow related to football seems empty to me.
To prove my hypothesis, I can say without reservation that fantasy football is popular with so many males because it allows five-foot-nothing, 150 lb. weeds to pretend they’re somehow tough enough to connect to the game. The game would break their metrosexual asses in half. Besides, skinny jeans and Tom Ford t-shirts won’t fit over shoulder pads, and the bloodless manginas of the world are as lost without those fashion staples as Linus without his blanket.
You also can’t suck soy lattes through a face mask. See? It’s a disaster.
Now, I sit back and watch as these devoted, veteran fantasy players run their mouths to each other like they’ve got their big boy pants on suddenly. Fantasy football gives the downtrodden a chance to puff up and show the kind of aggression in a cyber environment that would get them laughed off the field (or, worse, badly injured) if shown in real daily life. Nose to nose, in game conditions, they’d be hopeless — and their chirping would get them hurt.
I boxed in the amateur ranks of LA for 10 years after I couldn’t land and twist in a game anymore. The best friend I made in sports was also my best sparring partner and the most naturally gifted athlete I ever competed against in any sport. He was an outstanding linebacker at Florida State, playing football at a level I could never approach. His thoroughbred gifts translated well to the ring, too. We sparred in a friendly and mutually instructive environment because he’d kick my ass in a straight up bout. I could match his power, but I could never hang with his speed and agility.
To paraphrase Larry Miller, the comparison of his athleticism to mine in the ring would resemble the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it.
That big bastard never plays fantasy football either. It’s not that he couldn’t. He’s an educated man who still follows the game. It’s just not the same for him, and being around the pale, flimsy ghost of something you love — or something you once loved — is a little heartbreaking.
Still, I approached this once in a lifetime experience from GMC with the attitude that I would learn something if I played along a bit. Such a league is a great idea for the automaker because it associates their big, tough, fun trucks with the big, tough, fun game of football. Perhaps there’s an experience coming along that’ll change this one man’s opinion — especially since the billion dollar business of fantasy football cares as little about what I think of it as I do of the nerds who twist up their panties with every week’s wins and losses.
