Matt Glatt: This Seahawks-Rams game is really stressing me out. I can’t handle this!
Wiley Spears: Wait, why do you care? Can you even name three players on either team?
MG: Easy! Steven Hauschka, Austin Pettis, and the Seahawks D/ST.
Mikey Jarrell: So the only players that you know are the kicker, a random no-name wide receiver, and a collection of 20 players?
MG: No shit, Sherlock. Those guys are the difference between me winning or losing my matchup this week in fantasy football.
WS: See, this is a major problem. Fantasy is ruining the NFL.
MJ: How? Ain’t nothin’ but a peanut.
MG: I don’t even care about the actual games. They’re boring and take twelve hours—eleven of which are commercials.
MJ: Sounds like fantasy football keeps guys like Matt interested. Boom, ratings.
WS: All right, so there were 10 seconds to go in the Patriots and Saints game. Tom Brady threw a strike to Kenbrell Thompkins for the go-ahead touchdown. This should have been a moment of pandemonium, but instead half of America started taking a hammer to their laptops because Thompkins scored instead of Julian Edelman. This isn’t making football more fun. This is just dumb.
MG: I’m still mad about that. Thompkins was on my bench.
WS: See!
MJ: Boo-hoo, so some people watch the games for the “wrong reasons,” and you traditionalist, sentimentalist, back-in-my-day-players-used-waxpaper-as-helmets-ist folks can’t get your heads wrapped around this new-fangled technology. Welcome to the future, pal, where kids don’t have the attention span to get all the way through the five-second YouTube ads and enjoyment of sports comes from things like YAC and WHIP.
WS: This has nothing to do with fuddy-duddy Wiley not understanding the fun of fantasy sports. I have multiple fantasy teams; I get it. What I hate is that fantasy sports breeds uneducated fandom. Stats don’t tell the whole story—not by a mile. To the millions of fantasy players around the world, suddenly Tom Brady is terrible NFL QB because he’s having a “bad” season. Sam Bradford is a top 10 fantasy player, but I doubt anyone would call him an elite QB in real life.
MG: Tom Brady is worthless. He’s not even top 20 in my book.
MJ: Wiley, stats are evolving. Wins Above Replacement has revolutionized the way we evaluate baseball players, and comparable stats are starting to infiltrate the other major sports as well. Jonah Hill would be so proud!
WS: What do WAR or the other sabermetrics have to do with fantasy football? The only stats that matter to fantasy players are touchdowns, yards and catches.
MJ: So what stats matter to you, wins and losses? Yeah, like those really tell the whole story.
WS: Mikey, tell me which is better: your QB goes 13-18 for 205 yards with 2 TDs and no interceptions, or 23-54 for 430 yards with two TDs and four INTs.
MG: It depends, do you get points for breaking the 300 yard barrier?
WS: My point is this: a fantasy player wants the guy with four turnovers, and that is a problem.
MJ: No, it doesn’t matter at all. The fans pay for their livelihoods. They get to decide what to care about.
MG: You know what they should care about right now? Our No-Fail Predictions of the Week!
MJ: With the NBA season about to start, I predict Houston Rockets will lose to the Miami Heat in the Championship this year.
WS: John Wall wins the NBA MVP Award.
MG: Michael Turner will have a breakout season next year. Take ’im early!