Keeping Fantasy Fun

My friends love fantasy football. So do I, but there’s a problem: I’m really bad at it, and it’s causing problems in my league. The league is full of great guys: my friends here at school, plus various friends of theirs from their hometowns. They all take it really seriously--more seriously than I do, to be honest. They do a lot of research and build really good teams. This year, I got beat badly almost every week. As a result, I started to kind of lose interest. I didn’t always set my lineup, and people complained about my team being an easy win for their competitors. I’m worried about getting kicked out of the league, because my friends seem mad that I’m so bad and that it’s messing up the league. What can I do to get better next year, so that I keep my spot in my league--and the respect of my friends?

Fantasy football should be fun. It doesn’t sound as if you’re having a ton of fun, and the question is: why?

You say that it’s because your team is terrible. If that’s the case, then your friends need to lighten up--or you need to find a new fantasy football league. Sure, there’s a lot that you can do to get better: you can turn to online fantasy football resources, for instance, which offer mock drafts, tips, previews, and picks before the season and each week during it.

But fantasy football involves a lot of luck, too. What if your best player gets injured? What if you make all the picks the experts recommend, but still lose? There’s nothing fun about a league in which people berate the owners of bad teams.

To be fair, though, there’s something else in your letter that may help explain your dilemma. You mention that you stopped setting your lineup entirely. Experts tell us that can, indeed, make your team a rather easy opponent: you may have left in players who were injured or did not have games that week. And if your league operates in a “head to head” style (as many teams do), this could mean that you’re playing opponents tough early in the season and then handing other opponents easy wins late in the season. Now, that’s not a crime, but it does seem inconsiderate to do this in a league in which so many players take things seriously. There’s a reason that people don’t like it!

Fantasy football should be fun, so if your friends are taking the league too seriously for your tastes, just find another league--your friends, if they are truly your friends, will not stop spending time with you just because you defect to another fantasy football league. But if you think the criticism you heard was primarily about the way you quit on the league, disrupting other people’s fun, then you should reconsider your commitment and, if you want to stay in the league, resolve to keep setting your lineup and putting in at least some effort even if your team ends up being lousy.

“Thank you...fantasy football draft, for letting me know that, even in my fantasies, I am bad at sports.” -- Jimmy Fallon