If it's late Sunday morning during the NFL season, you know where to find me: on the couch, frantically second-guessing every thought I've ever had in my life as my cursor hovers over the 'Submit' button on my fantasy football lineup page. I'm fucked.
Don't laugh. You've been there, too. We all have. Nowadays, it seems you can walk up to your cousin or uncle or garbageman or Congressman and know you've got fantasy football in common.
But it didn't used to be this way.
I remember a time when fantasy football was an insiders' game. Something fun you did with your buddies. A not-yet-frowned-upon way to gamble. A veritable wellspring of things to talk shit about.
Not something you discussed with your pharmacist or your girlfriend.
In fact, your girlfriend probably thought you were a loser for following the game so close, for acting like you had some -any- real skin in a professional football game played by professional football players and coached by professional football coaches, none of which involved you in the slightest. And she wasn't alone.
Over the last handful of years, fantasy football has exploded into the mainstream. Mothers and daughters play it, grandfathers and grandchildren play it. It seems like damn near everyone has been let in on the secret. Our secret. My secret.
In a day and age when we have several television shows, not to mention myriad other consumables, dedicated solely to the subject, it's naive to think we're ever going back to that simpler time. It's sad, I know. But it's the (fantasy) world we live in.
And should it come as much of a surprise? Now more than ever people are trying to escape into the Internet to try and convince themselves they are something they aren't. A wizard, a model, a sportswriter. Anything but the man in the mirror.
As the tangible and digital worlds continue to blend, it's no wonder people seem to be losing their sense of self. We can act anonymously, impersonate another or even assume a fake name when roaming the Web, and nobody's the wiser. (Well, kind of.)
When people start to lose their sense of self, things often start to get ugly. Fast. History has taught and fantasy football has followed suit. Already this season we've had stories of players being harassed and threatened
And to be honest, it's hitting closer and closer to home.
Just this past Sunday, my own fantasy team was vying for a spot in the championship game when my hopes were dashed by Jamaal Charles touchdown after touchdown after touchdown after touchdown after touchdown. Needless to say, I was pissed. Real pissed. Me, a flesh-and-blood adult male, vehemently upset that my fantasy team (repeat, fantasy team) had lost.
Wait, isn't this supposed to be fun? When did this get so serious? When did I get so serious?
After a brief moment of reflection (and another 10,000 moments of anger, if I'm being honest), I calmed down and put things into perspective. I'm lucky to even be in a position to play fantasy football, much less have the fortune to be in the semifinals, I realized. It was all very kumbaya.
But then I saw the real news headlines, and like so many Sundays this fall and winter, they were loaded with tragedy. But not just the usual plight-of-the-world tragedies we've become numb to thanks to Barbara Walters and the like. These were football tragedies. No, check that. These were actual tragedies involving football. More accurately, these tragedies were likely caused by football.
Tragedies like stabbings, stabbings, and more stabbings. Even stadium deaths shrouded in mystery. Fans so drunk they fall out of the upper deck. These are violent and mindless crimes perpetrated almost exclusively by NFL fans against other NFL fans, and are often, if not always, assisted by alcohol consumption. What the hell is going on here?
Now, I've never been a fan of bleeding heart, pie-in-the-sky diatribes, but something is definitely happening with the culture of football and the way fans, umm, express themselves on Sundays. And something's got to be done about it. People are dying at our football games. Yes, that's plural. People are dying. At football games.
And there's this: Why haven't we heard more about it? Shouldn't those above links look at least a little familiar? What the hell is going on here?
The Rolling Stones still catch flack for Altamont, where Hells Angels stabbed a fan in the crowd during the band's final show of their United States tour in December of 1969.
That was one guy, 44 years ago. Still tragic, to be sure, but that's a lot of sand through the hourglass.
So why is it, exactly, that more people aren't talking about the deaths occurring monthly at our NFL stadiums? What the hell is going on here?
This is where I'm stumped. In the age of not one, but two major television news networks operating around-the-clock with programming dedicated solely to sports, you'd think something like this would get covered pretty much non-stop. Or until it stopped. Just like every bullying incident or PED scandal or anything else not involving loss of human life at a football game.
And from what I can tell, it's the tragedies occuring around NFL events that manage to stay off the radar. Or at least somewhat so.
We all recall the horrible summer day in 2011 when fan Shannon Stone fell from his seat in front of his son at a Texas Rangers game in Arlington, dying from his injuries. The story was front-page news at the time and frequently followed up on, until the Rangers dedicated a statue in Stone's honor at the start of the 2012 season.
But these deaths in football culture seem to somehow slip through the cracks of the news cycle. Sure, there will be 18-inches in the local newspaper and 20 seconds on the nightly news, but that's about it. It's all X's and O's by the following Sunday.
How many fans need to fall victim to this violence before we've got a real pandemic on our hands? Or at least before the talking heads and powers that be start to take notice?
Of course, death is an all-too-familiar narrative in the NFL these days. From suicide to CTE to concussions to the physical toll taken by the game on so many of its own, the NFL might as well be running a wildly profitable morgue. Shoot, commissioner Roger Goodell might be the Grim Reaper for all we know.
But one thing we do know is that America is as football crazed as ever, setting records for the loudest stadiums in the world and making Goodell and The Shield heaps and heaps of cash.
If more people are involved in the NFL than ever in some way, shape or form, then stories like these should carry more weight, not less. We've seen the media force Goodell's hand before with concussions and replacement refs, so why can't we start a conversation about making our NFL stadiums family friendly again? Or at least a place where you don't have to fear for your life.
The question, much less an answer, is all much too large for me or any one man, (Goodell included). But the narrative has to begin. There's got to be more urgency here to right these wrongs. We haven't even mentioned the on-field side of this. The blows to the head, the bounties, the blows to the knees, the PEDs. The 10-plus guys per game dragged off the field as we cut to commercial. The player in jail on first-degree murder charges.
There's just so much worthy of discussion within the culture of football as it stands today. And if fans and analysts and the league itself continue to keep quiet, the game will be what suffers most in the end. Already parents are steering their kids clear of the gridiron and toward more health-friendly sports like soccer and basketball.
It's a difficult conversation, to be sure, but there's no doubt it's an important one. Perhaps the most important in terms of football's longevity as America's game of choice.
It's time we stop talking fantasy and focus on what's really going on.
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