Fantasy Sports, Why Do We Care?

By The Boinger

I sit here scouring the free agent list for a back up QB , TE and “FLEX OPTION”. Diligently examining the statistical analysis of J.T. O’Sullivan, Tony Scheffler and Chansi Stuckey, when suddenly it hits me – my daughter’s left fist! HA! She caught me pretty good too right across the side of my head painfully knocking my glasses into the bridge of my nose. After I sent her upstairs sobbing from a fairly ogre like verbal lashing I realized this article had been spawned. Why DO we care so much about sports?
Perhaps, like me, the rest of you are former athletes of some sort. You played sports at any cost from the minute you were old enough to swing a stick and hit a rock right up to either a realization of it having passed you by or a minor/major disappointment of some sort. At which point your passion for video games took over and you became a “gamer” or madden junky like me. Which later evolved into fantasy sports. Chances are somewhere in between there you were and maybe still are a beer league softball player or even a flag football coach or an assistant on the local varsity squad. At any rate even if it is just watching your favorite team on television every night for some reason we all care a great deal about sports.
Even as I sit here writing this I must have some form of sports entertainment channel siphoning in on the television. But why? It really makes no major difference in our lives does it? Sure it feels good to root for a winner. It is nice to see your team win. Even better to see them win a championship. But do they care as much about you? They would not play for free I guarantee you that. None of us would work for free, would we? Although the satisfaction you get from the feeling of accomplishment after actually playing and practicing and earning a win is second to none.
Now if you are out there playing and having fun regardless of the outcome and enjoying getting some physical release then good for you. You are way ahead of the rest. Yet there are still those of us who throw a bat in disgust when making an out in softball. I mean the ball is the size of a grapefruit and is practically put on tee for us it comes in so slow. We are the same ones who throw the “joy stick” down and hit the reset button when our life expires or digitally enhanced QB throws an interception. We were the same ones who broke a broom stick in half wrapping it around a pole after striking out in a stick ball game in the 5th grade. Hopefully we have all outgrown that stage or at least recognize that at some point that behavior is just plain silly even unnecessary.
Well, however it was you came upon this I just hope you can keep it all in front of you. Enjoy it. Have fun with it. Play to win but keep what is important in the foreground. Okay I have to go now and apologize to my daughter and teach her how to sneak an elbow in underneath the basket when boxing out.

p.s. I picked up Tony Scheffler and dropped Todd Heap.