My fantasy football career started when I was in fourth grade, a time when drafting players meant picking based off their "NFL Blitz" capabilities and the entry fee was two Zebra Cakes or one Kool−Aid Jammer, whichever was handy at the time.
I co−managed my first−ever fantasy team with one of my best friends in a league filled with high schoolers nearly twice my age. We picked Drew Bledsoe in the first round, traded him for Brett Favre and then swapped Favre for Steve Young, who promptly got hurt about three hours later in a preseason game.
The following season, I tried my hand at a solo career and drafted three Jacksonville Jaguars in the first four rounds because I thought their jerseys looked cool. In the seventh round, I took kicker Al Del Greco, then of the Tennessee Titans. Up until this past week, I was convinced that my sheltered fourth−grade mind loved the idea of having someone vaguely foreign on my team, regardless of position.
And then on Sunday, it dawned on me. The reason why I picked Del Greco 10 rounds before I should have suddenly became clear.
I'm actually quite terrible at fantasy football. No, seriously. I suck.
For the past three−and−some−change seasons, in my big−money, 14−team league in my hometown, I've accrued an aggregate record of 20−32, by far the lowest winning percentage in the league's illustrious history. What's more, in 2007, I went 1−12. This season? I'm 0−6.
And yet, the collective masses of poor fantasy football players — believe me, there's someone like me in every league — continue to subject ourselves to constant punishment, week in and week out, only to finish the season basically where we started — with an empty wallet.
Similar to how "(500) Days of Summer" (2009) broke down the existence of humans into two subcategories — men and women — so, too, can each diehard fantasy football player be pigeonholed into one of two separate definitions: The good players are sadists, and the bad ones are masochists.
For some strange reason, I keep funneling money into my leagues, only to emerge on the losing end every season. I seem to enjoy losing, almost as an art form, and my friends seem to enjoy relentlessly making fun of it me for it.
It's been a long time since I last had hope for actually capturing a championship; rather, each season has simply boiled down to the struggle to stay out of last place. If I can avoid being spotlighted in the cellar, then that year can be considered a sweeping success.
I know, I know. It's no way to go about living life. But that's the thing about fantasy football — the game and the players engaged in it exist in their own little bubble, shut off from the outside world and completely devoid of any sort of normalized social etiquette. For me, accepting the bare minimum has become standard in fantasy football, but I wouldn't ever consider stooping down to that level in any other aspect of life.
Consider this: Fantasy football is a lot like playing the slots. All it takes to win is a little luck and actions as effortless as dropping your arm in a vertical line. Sure, it takes smarts to not draft Al Del Greco in the seventh round, but the NFL is such an injury−riddled league that we pray every Sunday for our stud running back to stay healthy. Sleepers, furthermore, are simply crapshoots that we hope will ultimately pan out somewhere down the road.
The difference, of course, is that the teamwork and group enthusiasm for individual success at the slots doesn't transfer over into fantasy football.
Regardless of whether you define fantasy football as a game, a sport or an activity, it's the epitome of the every−man−for−himself mentality. As the kids say these days, "Go big or go home."
I, unfortunately, seem to have gone home a long time ago.
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Alex Prewitt is a junior majoring in English and religion. He can be reached on his blog at http://livefrommudville.blogspot.com or followed on Twitter at @Alex_Prewitt.
