The Football Fan's Manifesto

by Michael Tunison

  Con: The possibility of family members seeing you at your most man-childish.

  INTERNET DRAFT FROM HOME

  Pro: Can masturbate to your sexy draft class without objection, judgment, or arrest.

  Con: The flow and spontaneity of trash-talk is ruined by slow typing.

  COFFEE HOUSE

  Pro: Caffeine is superior to booze as a drug for maintaining steely focus on your fantasy team.

  Con: Paucity of far tastier booze, abundance of leering quasi-intellectuals who consider football fandom to be only marginally more respectable than pederasty.

  SAUNA

  Pro: No less homoerotic than a fantasy football draft in any other setting.

  Con: Wi-Fi connection may be compromised by steam.

  STRIP CLUB

  Pro: A setting where you get expensively teased is appropriate for an activity in which you foolishly delude yourself into thinking you’re an NFL general manager.

  Con: A member of your league inevitably gets thrown out for hugging a dancer after somehow landing Thomas Jones in the third round.

  VI.4. A DRAFT TRASH-TALK TIPS

  Laugh rapturously anytime someone selects a defense prior to the last round, no matter how much sense it makes.

  At least once per round, announce that a pick is a reach. If the person contests this claim, scream “rreeeeeeaaaaacccchhhhhh.” And hit them.

  When it gets to the point that someone drafts Jake Delhomme, make a point of getting out of your seat and declaring the draft to be over. An exaggerated gesture, like throwing your draft board over your shoulder, punctuates this statement.

  If you’re not stealing glances at others’ draft boards, you’re not trying.

  Defaming someone’s mom is the best way to deal with another draftee taking a player you were looking to take with your next pick. Even if you are related to this person.

  If you draft Braylon Edwards, you might as well castrate yourself on the spot. Though you’ll probably drop the knife.

  VI.5 Fantasy Football Magazines Are the Most Useless Things You’ll Reflexively Purchase Each Year

  Without question, the fantasy football magazine is one of the most disappointing consumer items on the market, right up there with rechargeable batteries and the Sham-Wow. Yet there remain approximately eight thousand different kinds available for purchase, and not a useful one among them. Thing is, most fans don’t want to commit the time needed to properly prepare for a draft. That’s an act bordering on studying. The one thing more antisocial than pouring your free time into managing your fantasy team is pouring copious free time into getting ready to compile your fantasy team. It’s like reading an anatomy book before going to Fuck Town. Sure, the detailed pictures are enticing, but it’s so creepy that even Sean Salisbury would feel dirty doing it.

  For the nine dollars you throw down for these prodigious wastes of ink, you’re inundated with hundreds upon hundreds of bland player capsules and tedious team previews, none of which actually assist with fantasy drafting in the least. What’s more, all of this information is easily accessible and, most importantly, free online. What it comes down to is that most of the buyers of these mags, lazy bastards though they are, pick them up only to remove the cheat sheet that lists the top 150 players and the best twenty at each position. Again, this is a commodity that can either be printed out in full or culled together using little effort via free resources on the Internet. And the resources online didn’t have to go to print three months before the preseason starts, making their advice as potentially outdated as a Peter King iTunes recommendation.

  The promise of identifying sleepers (players who have surprisingly productive or breakout years, better known as the guys you end up passing on in favor of Ronald Curry) is another hook that these publications use to bamboozle the ignorant and the research-averse. The conflict you run into here is that each magazine picks the same batch of players as their sleepers, be it a stud rookie running back, a third-year receiver primed to break out for a monster year, or a star looking to rebounding from a disappointing season. So by the time fantasy drafts roll around, everyone who did a modicum of preparation takes these players long before they should. Then the sleepers seldom deliver the big year that was promised. And you end up hating the player when you should really hate yourself.

  Fantasy football magazines also operate on the assumption that there is little to no volatility in player output from year to year, which is obviously ridiculous in a league where turnover is constant. According to them, whoever was hot the year before will remain hot, while whoever sucked will still be DeAngelo Williams. How did that guy get good so quickly? Some concessions must be made to the powers of random events. Certainly there’s no way to foresee injuries to major players, unless you have a good arrangement with a clairvoyant.

  The dirty secret is that everyone is just as clueless as everyone else. Convincing yourself that you’re more informed than others is a pleasant fiction. Don’t fall into that trap. Save yourself the money and the trouble. The NFL offers the fan ample opportunities to squander money.

  The one exception is a recent version of Pro Football Prospectus. Sure, it completely botches a prediction every once in a while—its evaluation of Wes Welker before he had a breakout season with New England in 2007 comes to mind—but the book is chock-full of invaluable knowledge, even some so arcane that you might base your selections on the quality of a team’s training staff, which, though grounded in reason, is going way, way overboard. Unless, again, it’s a big money league. Then no amount of preparation is too much.

  VI.6 A Letter to Brian Westbrook Regarding His Questionable Playing Status for Sunday

  Dear Brian Westbrook,

  Even though I hate the Eagles and everything they stand for (being huge dicks, I think, is a major credo), I’ve enjoyed immensely the production you’ve given my fantasy team this season. I don’t think I’m being out of line when I say that you are among the better first-round picks I’ve had in some time. The 26 points you gave me in Week 7 against Seattle got me over the hump in a game I needed to win to stay in playoff contention.

  Because you are one of the league’s premier receiving backs, so much of Philadelphia’s offense flows through you. This makes a particularly appealing fantasy selection. Even if a stout defense is keying on the run against your team, there’s still a good chance that you will rack up decent stats because of your ability to catch passes coming out of the backfield.

  I have to say, however, that there is one habit of yours that has caused me some distress. I speak in reference to your tendency to sustain minor injuries, not practice all week, be listed as questionable for the following game, then downgraded to doubtful, then said to be a game-time decision (causing me enough concern that I put you on the bench thinking that, even if you play, it won’t be much)—only for you to play the entire game, run for 150 yards, and score two touchdowns.

  LISTEN FUCKTARD, EITHER MAKE IT CRYSTAL CLEAR THAT YOU INTEND TO PLAY OR I WILL SODOMIZE YOU WITH A KATANA. GOING THROUGH THIS SHIT EACH AND EVERY WEEK IS CAUSING ME TO DEVELOP A BITCH OF AN ULCER. I WILL RAKE YOUR EYES WITH A RUSTY NAIL, YOU DECEPTIVE SHIT-EATING CUNTWICH!

  That is to say, I find this habit to be most irksome.

  This week, again, I noticed you’ve sustained a calf injury that casts doubt on your status for Sunday. I understand that this is typically an injury that would create some difficulty for a running back. It is not a position in which it is easy to perform well at less than 100 percent. Officially, I see that you are listed as questionable, which means there is still a 50-50 chance that you could play. In keeping tabs on your status throughout the week, I see that head coach Andy Reid has said that you only went through limited practice on Friday and that your condition will be evaluated during warm-ups on Sunday.

  HOLY FUCKING CRUSTY CUMBUCKET, BRIAN! DO YOU THINK I HAVE A SOURCE IN THE EAGLES’ LOCKER ROOM? DO YOU THINK I WANT TO WAIT BY MY COMPUTER ALL DAY SUNDAY FOR THE REPORT ON WHETHER YOU’RE GOING OR
NOT? DO YOU THINK EVERYONE WHO ISN’T AN NFL PLAYER HAS TIME FOR THESE THINGS, YOU SELFISH ASS?

  Due to injuries to my other running backs, my bench is pretty thin at the moment. This game will go a long way toward determining whether my team makes the playoffs in my league. I would appreciate having a chance to recoup the fifty-dollar entry fee I paid at the beginning of the season. My friend, asshole that he is, has already acquired your backup, Correll Buckhalter, making him primed to collect what should be rightfully my points should you not be able to start on Sunday. If, in fact, you will not be playing, I need to know this ahead of time, so I can pull a quick trade for another back.

  DON’T THINK IT’S THAT HARD TO LOOK UP YOUR ADDRESS ON THE INTERNET! I BET I CAN GOOGLE THAT SHIT REAL EASY! JUST YOU WAIT! IF YOU COST ME THIS GAME, I’LL GARROTE YOU IN YOUR SLEEP WITH PIANO WIRE, BURY YOU IN DOGSHIT, AND LIGHT IT ON FIRE! DOGSHIT BURNS OKAY JUST SO LONG AS YOU POUR SOME GASOLINE ON IT! AND I HAVE PLENTY OF GASOLINE, BRIAN!

  I hope we can reach a speedy resolution as it pertains to these lingering issues. Our association, I think, has been a beneficial one, and I would like for it to continue as such. Also, I don’t want to go to prison for killing you. I hear bad things.

  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go write the same letter to Willie Parker. Then mail a letter bomb to Mike Shanahan for the whole running–back-by-committee thing.

  Yours in Christ,

  Every Brian Westbrook Fantasy Owner

  VI.7 Issue Threats to People Who Veto Your Fantasy Trades

  The world of fantasy football is one of cutthroat gamesmanship. Accordingly, you’ve got to cut some fucking throats to get ahead, especially if it causes one of those amazing arterial sprays. Because of the fierce competition that marks fantasy, trades are a particularly sensitive maneuver. The implications they have on the standings mean any proposed transaction is scrutinized in a manner so stringent it would make Supreme Court nominees cringe.

  The need for this process is manifest. When a fantasy owner who is impossibly out of contention offers up his best player to another owner who is in the thick of a title run, it’s time for the others in the league to rise up and bellyache until that trade gets invalidated. For such a transaction may put the beneficiary on the road to a league title due to the collusion of the down-and-out owner who has nothing to play for.

  Often, though, when you find yourself on the business end of these refusals, which are done either by a vote of the majority of clenched-rectum owners in your league or the sole ruling of an imperious power-mad commissioner, no one can blame you for being aggrieved at the spite of others who were not savvy enough to rip off a suffering fantasy owner whose hope is lost but whose willingness to fuck others over remains startlingly intact. If you can coax a dying man to fork over his best assets before he expires, it is your right, nay, your obligation to do so. And, once having acquired those assets, the act of turning them on others as an instrument of fantasy football doom is enough to give you a glorious hate erection (these are the only kind Bill Belichick gets) for weeks.

  Examples of lopsided trades are not always clear-cut, mind you. Not every rejected trade is as obviously rigged as Jabar Gaffney for Clinton Portis and Drew Brees. In many instances, people will overrule your trades even when they are relatively evenhanded. In such cases, an iron fist is required to guide these deals through the approval period.

  Forcing through your proposed trades is going to take all of your cunning and all of your diplomatic dexterity, as well as an unstinting capacity for malevolence. The other owners in your league need to learn to fear your wrath, lest they get in their minds that it’s okay to veto your deals, just because your stand to gain Steve Slaton and Matt Forte in a keeper league for a kicker. Let them worry about their business.

  Try mailing any of the following sample threats to fellow owners in your league once one of your trades has been submitted for their approval. Be sure to cut all the ill-fitting letters out of various magazines, not so much to conceal the source of the letters (everyone knows they’re from you) but because it makes you look cinematically deranged. And everyone knows actual crazy people love to copy the tactics of crazy people from movies.

  “Approve my fucking trade of Greg Camarillo for Brandon Marshall or I’ll bayonet you in the nuts. My antique weapons collection has been itching for some use. If I forgot to get the rust off first, what’s the difference?”

  “You know that scene in s? Fargo where the dude gets fed into the wood chipper? Well, approve my trade or I’ll kick the shit out of you and then go watch that movie and laugh about what I’ve done.”

  “Do you like pits of serpents? Shit, you weren’t supposed to say yes. Well, once I find out what animal you’re deathly afraid of, I fill the pit with that. And in you’ll go!”

  “I’ll chain you to a radiator and force-feed you Grady Jackson FUPA sweat.”

  “Tank Johnson lent me his weapons cache and I’ve only gone through a couple dozen grenades. That still leaves thousands more, fuckstick.”

  “Only interested in keeping things fair, you say? Well, I’m only interested in jamming a scalding fire poker in your eye.”

  “Five words: live wire in your urethra.”

  “Once I’m done with you, they’ll never find the body. Unless investigators follow the lengthy list of obvious clues I leave in my wake.”

  “If you don’t think I can transfer flesh-eating bacteria over an Internet chat, you aren’t paying attention to your rapidly disappearing midsection.”

  “You know that Wu-Tang track where Method Man says he’s gonna staple your asshole shut and keep feeding you? Well, I’ll do the same thing, except I’ll be feeding you gasoline.”

  “Ever had your lower lip nailed to a railroad track? Well, it’ll stay that way so long as you’re smart enough to keep your trap shut about my acquisition of DeAngelo Williams for Drew Bennett.”

  “I think a daytrip to the mountains could help us clear our heads and settle our differences. Sucks for you that I’ll be dragging you from the back of my truck on the way there.”

  “Ever had your head slammed in a car door? Well, I don’t have a car, so you’ll have to settle for a regular door.”

  A few of these and you’ll have your trade clear with no fuss at all. Sure, you’ll get booted out of the league for improper conduct, but if you were in a league that doesn’t permit wanton threats of violence, you weren’t doing the fantasy experience justice in the first place. Also, don’t include threats over e-mail. The less evidence to present to the cops, the better. It’s just common sense.

  “I think a daytrip to the mountains could help us clear our heads and settle our differences. Sucks for you that I’ll be dragging you from the back of my truck on the way there.”

  “Ever had your head slammed in a car door?

  ARTICLE VII

  A Fan for All Seasons

  VII.1 Seventeen Weeks of Sweet Delusion

  For most fans, the football season is an endless stream of gut-punches and curb-stompings, interspersed with the odd moment of deceptive euphoria. But in the heady days of early September before that first kickoff, all is still joy and wonder. Now is time for the airing of the unreasonably bold prognostications! 19-0! 19-0! After all, there is parity in the league. Sweet, sweet parity. Which means any team that builds chemistry, stays healthy, and gets a lucky bounce here and there can go from 6-10 one year to 13-3 the next, no sweat. Will this necessarily occur? Probably not. But what’s important is that it has the potential to occur. And that’s the sad hope you’ll stubbornly cling to like Tony Sparrano does to the Wildcat Formation.

  Week 1—The opening game of the NFL season is exponentially more important than that of any other professional sport. The sixteen-game schedule amplifies the significance of any regular season contest compared to an eighty-two or, god forbid, a 162-game season. In the NFL, careers can be made and undone in single weeks. A Week 1 win can be the springboard to the top of the heap. Or it can be a mis
leading precursor to a horrible joke of a season. Either way, everybody wants to start the year on a positive note.

  Week 2—Oh, no, your team lost on Kickoff Weekend! You’re already in the hole after one game. The club is tied for last place in the division, for Pete Rozelle’s sake! Breathe deep. Give your balls a reassuring pat. One loss isn’t going to screw the season. In fact, sometimes teams need to lose to expose fixable flaws in the game plan and to keep players humble. There are good types of losses, or so you repeat to your bloodshot eyes in the mirror at 3 a.m.

  Week 3—Analysts begin ticking off the short list of teams that have made the Super Bowl following an 0-2 start. The recitation of this fact scares you to the sphincter. A must-win game in September? Here goes…

  Week 4—“Oh, God, oh, shit, the team is 0-3. All is lost. All. Is. Fucking. Lost. The plane has flown into the mountain! Someone direct me to the tallest building with a street-level awning unlikely to cushion my fall. But, wait, what? The 1998 Buffalo Bills made the playoffs after an 0-3 start? So…there’s still hope? Yeah! You’re right. I mean, sure they’ve lost all their games, but they were all closely contested. They can right this ship!”

  Week 5—Doom and gloom falls heavy on fans of the 0-4 team. By now, you’ve put up Craigslist ads shopping your tickets for the rest of the season and considered developing a second drinking problem. What’s more, the team becomes the butt of every gag on the pregame shows. Wearing your team’s jersey in public is suddenly a more daunting prospect. As is listening to the haunting voices in your head.

  Week 6—Hey, your team got its first victory of the season. Happy day! You get to show your face in public again. Vegas still has your guys as a touchdown underdog next week at home, so you know it’s a tough road ahead, but there’s a sign of life. Might want to power down the suicide machine for a spell.