A more interactive way to not be active: fantasy sports.
The beauty of fantasy sports is that they render real sports all but irrelevant. That’s why they’re called “fantasy” leagues. Sure, real leagues like the NFL are cool. But imagine a league called the League of Extraordinary Bearfuckers, with teams like Fred’s Cornholio, Stuart Scott’s Lazy Eye, I Heart Vag, The Eskimo-Raping Shitheels, and John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Beaver. That’s the league fans like me fantasize about. And fantasy leagues help make that fantasy a real fantasy!
Fantasy leagues superimpose an entirely new game over the game you currently play. Instead of rooting for their home team to win, fans can now root for your kicker to kick a field goal of forty yards or longer, while also hoping that your running back is held to sixty yards or less. Don’t you see how much better that is than just rooting for normal games? By creating an entirely fictional sport dependent upon the arbitrary statistical results of a real sport, fans have an opportunity to become even more divorced from reality. Take me. I rarely answer to the name Drew Magary anymore. My preferred identity is that of HotCarl76, and that’s far more rewarding. HotCarl76 owns a football team. Drew Magary owns three tracksuits and a ColecoVision. He’s also a peachfucker. Who would you rather be?
Fantasy sports do present one problem for you, the player. And that is that fans have become even more emotionally dependent on your on-field performance. The average fan loves to bitch that he could run your team far better than current management. The problem with fantasy sports is how often they prove that fan wrong. There’s a real danger here. Many fans have mundane lives, but if they can maintain the illusion that they are smarter than the general manager of a professional baseball or football team, that’s enough to sustain their existence. If it turns out they can’t even run a goddamn fantasy squad without it sinking to the bottom of the ocean, what hope is there in life? Disappointment can transform into homicidal tendencies so easily.
In fact, you’d be surprised at how fantasy leagues help turn fans into even bigger assholes than management. They’ll be far quicker to place blame for any failure squarely on your shoulders. They’ll be more eager to trade or cut you. And they’ll happily bad-mouth you to anyone within fifty feet. Thought Bill Polian was a ballbuster? He’s nothing compared to me. If I see Shaun Alexander in an airport, I’m gonna fucking stab him.
By performing poorly, you’re messing up the idyllic imaginary life of many fans. You’re killing the fantasy, so to speak. And the psychological ramifications of that can be bloody and horrifying. So, if a fan walks up to you in the parking lot and says, “I need some TDs out of you this week, my man!” you’d best run. Run as far the fuck away as possible. That guy will gut you like a fish if there’s no one else around. And if you’re Daunte Culpepper, who followed up a thirty-nine-TD year in 2004 with just six TDs in 2005, I have to say you deserve it. You worthless bust.
Deeply Penetrating the Numbers
–$578,903
The cumulative lifetime winnings of the average professional handicapper total –$578,903. They are called handicappers because their bookies have handicapped them.
Chapter 6
The Best and Worst Part of Athletic Superstardom
Women
They love you for you, conditionally! Know your woman!
For you, the pro athlete, a woman can often be a ticking time bomb. Unfortunately, I mean this as a metaphor, and not in the literal sense. If women actually detonated, there’d be no problem. Provided you aren’t in the area at the time of the blast. But, in reality, dealing with women is the trickiest part of your new life. There’s a delicate balance here. On the one hand, you want to extract as much sweet, delicious poontang from your exalted status as humanly possible. On the other, you want to avoid any long-term consequences resulting from such encounters, including bad relationships, unwanted offspring, low cash flow, surprise bouts of syphilis, etc. If you do it right, you’ll have George Clooney’s life. If you fuck it up, you’ll have Brad Pitt’s life, complete with seventeen undisciplined children and a cyanide pill as your only way out. Which women out there will take the least bucks for your bang? Here are some examples.