Fantasy Football is thrilling, infuriating and nerve-wracking. Now that football season is around the corner, billions of people worldwide are drafting their teams. Once teams are drafted trash talk immediately ensues and rivalries begin. Friends join together into leagues of many varieties. After the draft, each person immediately has pride in their team and feels that they could win it all.
Junior Jackson Ferry was the champion of my league last year. When I asked him how he felt when he won, he said, “I knew my team was going to win the whole year, I was very confident in my squad but still winning the championship was one of the happiest moments of my life.” The Pace senior boys have two highly competitive fantasy football leagues. The victors from last year were Ryan Reiss and Christian Johnson. The winners not only receive bragging rights for the whole year, but they also receive a cash prize; usually, there is a buy-in for fantasy leagues and money is awarded to first and possibly second place.
Throughout the year people constantly trade their players and try to construct the best team possible. However, with injuries and busts, fantasy football can be extraordinarily difficult. Having your first-round pick tear his ACL on the first game of the year is heartbreaking and can destroy your entire fantasy season. However, when you see your waiver wire pick-up break away on an 80-yard screen pass and score a touchdown, the feeling is elating.
Missing the playoffs is not only embarrassing, but if you are bad enough to finish in last place, you have a humiliating punishment awaiting you. My fantasy league’s last-place punishment is a milk mile. The loser has to drink a gallon of milk and run a mile in a certain time. If the loser does not complete the task in the designated time he gets egged. This year’s loser was Junior Drew Thompson. He will be running his mile on Saturday, August 26. The challenge will be brutal not only because he has to drink a gallon of milk, but the temperature is 100 degrees fahrenheit. While talking about his punishment Drew Thompson said, “I have been drinking milk all week to get myself acclimated and ready to chug the whole gallon, my goal is to not throw up and run in under 11 minutes.” After the punishment, the whole league gathers at someone’s house and drafts our teams for the next year.
Fantasy football is an exciting game that either ends in victory and fame or humiliation and failure.