In preparation for this article, I was sitting in Tisch Library writing questions for interviews when, either serendipitously or ordained by a higher power, I overheard a strikingly topical conversation.
One student said to another that they didn’t understand fantasy football before explaining that fantasy football couldn’t possibly be worth as much time as some students offer to it; after all, ‘fantasy’ is in the name.
For many students in leagues across campus, however, fantasy football a real source of entertainment and joy.
Tufts junior Aaron Dickson compared his fondness for fantasy football to an affinity for literature.
“I think it’s just something that’s consistent, and everybody ends up finding their passion somewhere,” Dickson said. “I might not understand someone that wants to sit here in Tisch and read books for eight hours a day. But if that brings [someone else] happiness, then good for them.”
Dickson, who, at the time of his interview, was first in his league’s standings, elaborated, saying that a large part of fantasy’s appeal lies in its ability to connect him to American football.
“I think one big thing is it helps me connect with the sport on a better level,” Dickson said. “Before I started fantasy, I didn’t really watch a ton of football. But now it’s a priority, almost, to tune into as many games as I can and see how my players are performing.”
Fantasy football is an online game based on the real-life performances of professional football players in the NFL. Users assemble teams of NFL players, who, depending on their in-game performance, score an arbitrary number of points week in and week out, which contribute to a user’s team’s total. Each week, the team you assemble is pitted against another team. By the end of the week, the team with the most points wins.
Senior Jordan Port said fantasy football’s unpredictability plays a large role in the draw and in what makes it so much fun.
“I think it’s just exciting. You never know what can happen,” Port said. “You get a little dopamine rush when you see your player get a huge touchdown.”
For fellow senior Jacob Kao, who, at the time of his interview, sat atop his league, the allure of fantasy sports, inaneness aside, comes at least in part from the feeling of responsibility a manager has over their team.
“It’s in the name. … It’s completely made up,” Kao said. “[But] it gives you the feeling that you’re the coach of a team and that you’re responsible for selecting a lineup.”
Kao added that the aspect of being in a league with friends makes the activity heavily appealing as well, describing his fantasy league as “a fun activity that we all can do together.”
Each interviewee noted that, while fantasy sports have a unique ability to create community, in many leagues, this quality often materializes in uncompromising trash talk.
Kao, for example, said that since his league’s members are largely Tufts students, chatter in his league happens both online and in person. With regard to the latter, Kao said the topic of fantasy football can often fuel face-to-face conversation between league members.
“It’s probably like the first thing we talk about,” Kao said. “[We say things] like, ‘I destroyed you,’ or ‘you destroyed me.’... It gives you an excuse to talk about something.”
Port, who is a member of the league in which Kao sits in first place, said fantasy football “is just another way for us to interact with each other.”
Similarly, Dickson said he occasionally engages in face-to-face trash talk with his fellow league members on campus. He recalled one instance of pride this season when one of his players, Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Tre Tucker, performed shockingly well for Dickson’s team, despite limited expectations that he would do so.
In some fantasy football leagues, pride isn’t all that’s at stake — money may be on the line, in which managers will “buy in” to the league at the start of the season to create a large amount of prize money for the league’s top teams to claim at the end. In others, humiliating punishments performed by the team in last place incentivize performance.
In order to prepare for the upcoming week, managers are tasked with proactively researching and understanding favorable statistics among their players, so as to hopefully predict which players might maximize their team’s weekly point output.
“You kind of get like a little dopamine rush when you see your player get a huge touchdown or something like that,” Port said. “[Fantasy football is] a harmless way to make watching football even more fun, because now you can really focus on specific players, even if it’s not your team that you’re rooting for.”
Even still, most players — Dickson, Kao and Port included — would agree that a large part of fantasy sports is inherently luck-based. Kao began playing fantasy football in middle school, while both Port and Dickson picked up fantasy football in high school.
Despite starting at different stages of their respective lives, all three have found success playing. Clearly, experience is almost certainly not a deciding factor in success.
“At the end of the day, it’s pretty hard to predict when someone’s going to get injured, or someone’s going to have a down day,” Port said. “Fantasy is pretty volatile, so sometimes you’ll have a really good week, and then the next week you’ll be terrible.”
To the notion that there is, inherently, an asinine quality to fantasy football, Port, like Dickson, described fantasy football as an activity that people feel strongly or passionately about that gives them joy.
“I’d say that a lot of the things that we do in life are kind of fake, in a way,” Port said. He compared fantasy football to collecting items as a hobby. “It gives you joy and you enjoy spending the time looking into it.”
What lengths would managers go to win their fantasy leagues? With egos, money and the prospect of humiliation on the line, for some, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Dickson put it best:
“You know sometimes you have to burn some bridges along the way,” Dickson said.
