Fantasy Football is Crap.

You know what I've decided? That Fantasy Football is for nerds who don't actually know much, care much, or much like the game of football. I'm through with it. I think it's most popular among people who've never played football, and therefore don't understand the value of things that aren't calculated statistically. For instance:

1. Tom Brady's garbage-time touchdowns, or any quarterback's garbage time touchdowns, have no value to the actual winning and losing of the football game, but have fantasy value. That's crap.

2. A tipped or dropped pass that goes for an interception is weighed as heavily as a red-zone pick thrown into triple coverage. Statistics tell an imcomplete story, which is why Marc Bulger and Carson Palmer have been reliable fantasy studs for a few seasons while at the helm of crappy, underperforming teams.

3. A guy can fumble seven times in a game, but as long as they're all recovered by his teammates, they have no statistical value. Similarly, a defense can do jack shit all game, but fall on a couple of bad snaps and take away points for the turnovers.

4. A quarterback on a team that elects, stupidly, to throw on every down inside the ten yard line might have a putrid quarterback rating in the red-zone and el-zilcho for accuracy, but if the sun shines on a dog's ass a few times, he can walk away with multiple touchdowns and a load of fantasy points. Similarly, a quarterback that marches his team down the field in a balanced offense that elects to pound the ball into the endzone is fantasy crap.

5. Wins and losses have no value in fantasy football. That's crap.

6. A receiver is not penalized for dropped balls. Also, penalties have no statistical value. So if, say, Chad Johnson drops a couple of balls, does a ridiculous endzone dance and costs his team 15 yards on the kick-off, and his team goes on to lose by 5 points, he still had a great day because he scored. What a crock.

Furthermore, fantasy football does not encourage fanhood, nor does it encourage football knowledge, nor does it encourage sportsmanship.

1. For the first time in my life, I found myself rooting against Brian Westbrook doing well in a game because someone else had him on their team. Brian Westbrook is one of the two or three most exciting, most explosive players in football, and I've loved every minute of watching this guy play for his entire career. The reason football is televised is so we can appreciate the prowess of spectacular athletes doing amazing things, not root against them because some know-nothing turd is going to brag about it at the office water-cooler. That ain't fandom, that's nerd-dom.

2. Someone somewhere might look at Tony Romo's touchdown record, someone who only looks at such things because they're an office-jock, a beer-drinking, happy-hour-going, meaningless-stat-knowing moron who's experience of athletic competition is the eliptical machine at Gold's Gym and has chicken legs to go with his beefy torso, and dare to say Romo is an equal quarterback to Troy Aikman because Romo now has the Cowboys single-season passing touchdown record. The office-jock is a fan of whatever the best team in the NFL is, plus Romo, Favre, Palmer, Brady, Manning, Wes Welker, and the Cowboys, doesn't know shit about football, and only pays attention to a) prove he's a man, and b) because he has a fantasy football team, which is why he thinks passing touchdowns are a meaningful statistic. To put it plainly: passing touchdowns are very nearly irrelevant.

3. Football ought to be a lesson in sportsmanship, and for a long time, football was one of the rare sports that had accepted and universally-practiced plays and strategies for demonstrating good sportsmanship, i.e. the kneel-down. Soccer has a "rule" where the team in possession boots the ball out of bounds when the opponent has an on-field injury; football has the clock-killing all-running-play drives and the kneel-down. These have been an accepted part of football strategy for decades: not because they are strategically sound, not because they lead to points or victory, but because they demonstrate good sportsmanship. Fantasy football enjoys the mercilessness of the Patriots end-game humiliation of their opponents, and therefore encourages "fans" to hope for it, enjoy it, and take advantage of it. Why should one person's fantasy team suffer because their coach showed a little class at the end of a game, whereas another team's coach is a complete asshole?

In short, fantasy football has nothing to do with football, much as People magazine has nothing to do with film-making: both make use of the exploits of the stars of their respective interests, but neither of them participate in, celebrate, display, or even understand the art or real engine behind the subject of their scope. On the contrary, as a matter of fact: celebrity worship and fantasy football are perverted detriments to the otherwise fascinating businesses they exploit.

Beyond all that, though, I'm sick of the distraction and am weary of feeling like my perspective of professional football has been clouded and screwed up.

So there. To hell with fantasy football.