Science confirms fantasy football makes you a horrible fan

Science has concluded that playing fantasy football turns you into a terrible football fan, while slowly engulfing your productivity.

Chief Scientist of science, Goger Roodale held a press conference last week to reveal the findings of his team’s research. He stated that playing fantasy football causes football fans to conduct abnormal behaviors such as cheering against their childhood team, being joyful about a player getting hurt and a chronic case of pressing F5 violently every Sunday to refresh their fantasy website.

Upon hearing this report, we reached out to several fans on their thoughts about the report. One Minnesota Viking stated, “I have been a Viking fan ever since I was little. My grandfather, father and my brothers all played for the Vikings. I grew up in the St. Paul area and had season tickets growing up.” When asked about his fantasy team, he said with emphasis, “My fantasy team? That comes before all. I will try and pick up as many Vikings as I can in the draft, but if the success of my fantasy week depended on a Viking player playing terrible, I couldn’t give a shit about the success of the Vikings.”

Realizing the impact fantasy football can have on a devout football fan’s mental state, we dug deeper into exactly how much impact it can actually have on a fan. The second fan, who was a lot more melancholy in his interview, stated shamelessly, “Last week, I cheered – no, more like hysterically screamed in joy when I saw a player get injured. That player was on the opposing fantasy team’s roster, and seeing him go down in pain and agony just made me so happy.”

“I get that his physical health is important, to the extent that he supports his family and makes a living off his physical health. And yes, I also get that these are real people that feel real pain, but I’m not gonna lie to you – none of that matters if you are a devout fantasy player.”

These grave realities, we found, are not distant from our daily lives. Students across the University have begun playing cash fantasy games, such as FanDuel and DraftKings, which adds another dimension to the psyche of a fantasy player – money. One student stated, “Every Sunday, I sit down in front of my computer and repeatedly press F5 so that my Internet refreshes for updates.” When asked if he studied for the upcoming midterms on Sunday, he said with a scoff, “Absolutely not. I had lots of money riding on these games.”

Since so many football fans were essentially abandoning ideals of sportsmanship and royalty through fantasy football, we had to get a comment from the NFL. We surely expected that an organization that values “the integrity of the game” would not support the concept of fantasy football. However, we were wrong.

“We love the concept of fantasy football,” said NFL representative, who wished to remain anonymous. “It only drives our ratings up, which means more money for the owners, league, TV stations and our sponsors.”

When asked about fantasy football compromising the values of royalty and sportsmanship, the NFL representative simply responded, “Whatever makes the money is what we’re happy with. We really couldn’t care less about all that other stuff.”