Judge Ed, Fantasy Football Ethicist: Fantasy/Life Balance
Add Some Calories to Your League?
Free league but I felt like adding a prize to keep people interested. Is a box of pop tarts good enough? – J.B., Pennsylvania
Did you know that according to Wikipedia there are 29 different signature flavors of pop-tarts? That doesn’t even include the select limited lines they offer.
My judgment: It’s a testament to mankind’s fortitude and ingenuity that we can discover that many varieties of pastry and frosting. That alone makes the Pop-Tart a worthy prize in any fantasy league. Oh, and I’ll take the Strawberry Frosted, please.
Remnants of Yahoo! Anger
I got screwed by Yahoo! a couple of weeks ago during their fantasy outage. I wanted to change my lineup and was unable to, and then had to leave for work at 12:30 ET. They later sent us a note with apologies and offered 20% off of the Yahoo! store. Aren’t we owed more than that, though? – Keena, Ann Arbor
Such an entitled society we live in now-a-days, don’t you think? Let me guess, it was finally the week you were going to start Justin Blackmon and Chad Henne over Larry Fitzgerald and Matt Ryan.
My judgment: Why wait until the last minute to adjust your line-up? Are you trying to instill a false confidence in your fantasy opponent? Everyone was effected by the outage equally so quit complaining and take the discount. I would recommend the $16.95 wine set, but I can see where you can make a case for the $11 Emoticon wall clock.
Fantasy/Life Balance
Judge Ed, On average, how many leagues should an avid fantasy player with a full-time job and a boyfriend partake in to balance keeping it interesting and being competitive without crossing the line? – Martie, Sacramento
I’m sure there’s some complicated algorithm I can use to come up with the perfect answer, but my name’s not Nate and I frankly don’t have the time for that. Assuming you watch the games regardless of fantasy participation, extra leagues won’t really cost that much more of your time. If you’re an avid player you do the research whether you own 1 or 20 teams.
My judgment: It’s more a matter of enjoyment. Realistically there will always be two or three leagues you care the most about. The fantasy experience is optimized when you know your competitors well enough to trash talk and humiliate them. For me, I know I take far more pleasure dominating my high school buddies and cubicle mates than I do competing against FantasyFreak69 and Abe Froman in my free public league.
