By Andrew Ericksen

Let’s get things straight.  Being an avid football fan who checks box scores of every single NFL game every single week without a doubt helps your chances in being successful in your fantasy football league.  But what comes into play more than any other factor in a long fantasy season is luck.

All you can do from week to week is give your team the best possible chance of winning.  You never know when you’ll be head to head with a guy who gets 200 yards and three touchdowns out of a random slot receiver who hadn’t yet posted either of those numbers on the season to date.  You never know when your star running back is going to have to leave a game in the first quarter and you have nothing in your power to stop it.

So what is there to do?

The truth is that you just have to handle it as it comes.  Fantasy sports operate a lot like actual sports – obviously without the ability to give advice, list of needs to the players on your team, or the ability to control how many minutes your players log – where the best team doesn’t always win the championship at the end of the season (see Super Bowl XLII).  You just have to take things week by week, enjoy yourself when your players show up for those big weeks and not worry too much when your star WR fails to catch a pass.

So many people that I’ve discussed fantasy sports with admit that if it weren’t for their fantasy teams, they wouldn’t follow sports nearly as much – if at all outside of their home teams, actually;  And to me, that’s really what the beauty of fantasy sports is.  Sports have the ability to bring communities together.  These days, a city’s economy can flourish or plummet based on the status of their local sports – any downtown Cleveland bar owner can attest to this.  There’s always a commonality you see between unexpected teams that make playoff runs: their stands are filled with fans. 

What fantasy sports does is it builds unity; it keeps you in touch with that weird college hall-mate that maybe routed for the Arizona Cardinals and was up in arms during those couple years where they actually made a run at NFL legitimacy (sorry Arizona fans, at least there’s always hope when you have #11 out there).  Perhaps you don’t want to always remain friends with this guy, but I think there’s something special about always being able to have a source of discussion between people who have started to live otherwise completely different lives: “How you feelin’ ‘bout your team this year?” –“A lot better than I would be if I had yours.”

The nature of sports is competition.  There will always be one champion at the end and then a group of people who were not the champions.  I myself have never won a fantasy football league but come more prepared than any of my friends each season we draft.  I love going into Sundays knowing there’s more on the line than just the success of my hometown Lions in their constant struggle for respect.  With the existence of fantasy, we have new players to route for; not just the players on our home teams or that went to the same colleges we attended.  We route for guys that are on teams we otherwise would have no business watching and in that respect, fantasy sports gives us more of a connection to the world of sports.  It may not always involve winning and championships, but when it does, it feels extra special.