My name is Marcus Mitchell, and I admit I have a problem. Over the past summer I did what most college students did and took part in a fantasy football draft, except I did this a total of 87 times.
I didn’t realize how far I’d fallen until I woke up one morning with my face on my keyboard. I stared at my laptop and saw my roster after the draft that I stayed up until four in the morning to complete. I had two of the most stunning realizations of my life at that moment: the first being that fake sports are running my real life, and the second was that I’m an idiot for taking Drew Brees in the first round.
If you are looking to live a life with hopes of a normal family and a normal job, then don’t enter the magical realm of fantasy football, because you will never go back. For those of you sheltered souls that do not know, fantasy football is the sport (That’s right, I said sport.) where football fans make “fantasy teams” that exist in “fantasy leagues.” These leagues are run by an almighty commissioner. They set up a draft where team owners draft real players onto their fake teams, and these players earn points for their fantasy football teams based off of their real-life performance in the NFL. The standard draft takes about an hour to complete and team owners typically spend 10 minutes a week updating their rosters, which is very manageable for most human beings. Most.
Things get out of control when you are the owner, general manager and coach of 87 fantasy football teams. My fantasy habit got out of control during the summer. Saturdays were regular draft days in which I would take part in about three drafts, each lasting about two hours apiece. There were times when I was drafting two or three teams at the same time. Drafts became second nature to me and I drafted with complete strangers, but eventually it was almost normal for one guy in every league to spot me out, thanks to my signature team name “Dad’s Warning.”
While most team names are clever puns of their favorite players (“The Reading Dwayne Bowe” or “The Walking Dez”), I prefer for mine to be about the first man who ever talked to me about fantasy: my dad. It was in 2010 when he and I were watching ESPN. Matthew Berry (AKA the prophet of fantasy sports) appeared on the television, spreading the good word of fantasy. I asked my dad what fantasy football was. He thought for a moment and said something that I will never forget: “Listen son, some of the people at my job have fantasy teams and it’s a lot of work and commitment and really hard to get out of, so if you are going to do it then you can’t quit after week seven.” I understood and started my fantasy football career with one team with some friends in 2011. I was instantly hooked and wound up as the champion of the league after dispatching owners who managed well (besides one owner who drafted broken necked Peyton Manning in the first round), but not at the intensity level that I managed. Next year, I found myself with eight teams and wound up winning six of them but my fantasy thirst wasn’t satisfied.
Now I find myself with 87 teams. Some call me crazy. Others wonder how I can actually enjoy it. It’s simple. I make every team into either a team of “usuals” or a gimmick team. Most of my teams are made of “usuals,” or players I genuinely believe can win me a virtual trophy, and these teams are built with the same personal draft strategy. The other teams are gimmick teams such as a team of players from only one division, or players who have been in the NFL for three years or less, or an all-risk team filled with injury prone players like glass-boned Darren McFadden.
Frankly, I’m addicted to fantasy football and I am fully expecting an intervention from my mom when I get home. But this life has taught me values of risk management and perseverance. The teams that I create may be fake but the determination and effort I put into these leagues are very real, just like the very real “Fantasy Football Champion” T-shirt hanging in my closet.
Marcus Mitchell can be reached at mitchell.marcus31@yahoo.com.