Fantasy Addiction

Not sure what you’re expecting to read here, but it has nothing to do with sex or drugs.  So, if that’s what you’re hoping for or dreading to find you’re either out of luck or pleasantly relieved.  This topic is much less lethal and provocative, but yet I do find myself thinking of it in terms of addiction.  Come late summer I start becoming very preoccupied with it and by the middle of September I’m pretty much consumed and will continue my involvement for months despite adverse consequences that may result from it—like having to sleep on the couch. I have a dependence that reveals itself by the withdrawals I go through in January and tolerance I’ve reached by needing more and more each year.

If you’re thinking college football, you’re really close and that most certainly is my sport of choice to watch.  I don’t have to watch a lot but there are a few teams every week, pretty much all in the PAC-12, that I really feel compelled to follow--along with no more than one game of national consequence.  As I don’t think Washington will have a problem with Illinois this week, I’m most interested in UCLA vs. Nebraska and Texas A&M vs. Alabama.  Sometimes it just comes down to who I hate the least and as despicable as Johnny Football’s behavior seems at times, I’ve decided I actually hate Alabama even worse--so sick of hearing about the great SEC.

Anyway, back to the addiction I was really writing about—Fantasy Football!  It started out so innocently.  My son introduced me to it a few years ago while he was going to school inside the corporate headquarters building of Nintendo, attending Digipen in Redmond, WA.  After he came back down to Southern California I got into a league with his friends from school.  We’d have live drafts at the pizza parlor, come up with creative names for our teams, talk trash on the website, and grant the overall winner bragging rights for a year.  The 2nd year I played in the same league but decided to join a couple of other leagues in addition to the one I was in with my son.  Skip ahead to this year and my son has moved on to more adult endeavors and I find myself in 10 Fantasy Football Leagues—all with total strangers I’ve never met or talked with save my buddy Ron from work who I'm trying to drag down with me.  Addiction loves company.  No more pizza parlors, the drafts are all done on-line, and the players are located all over the country.  I spend all week long looking at injury reports, checking out players available on waivers--hoping my fellow team owners didn't notice that unknown Denver Tight End that played so well the first week--and looking at match-ups so as to field the highest scoring team possible.  It feels like a job and it used to just feel like fun. 

I guess that’s how addictions go—even virtual ones.  They start out simple, make you feel good, and seem like a nice addition to your life.  But over time you lose sight of what made it fun in the first place.  As I peal the layers of this one back I can see that it really wasn’t the football at all that I cared about.  Playing Fantasy Football on-line with a group of folks you don’t know can be fun, to an extent, but no matter how many leagues you join it will never make up for having personal interactions with those you love and care about.  I think next year I’m going to scale back a bit.

Dwight S. Wilson is an aerospace engineer, freelance writer, and part-time Gig Harbor resident.