The Evolution of Mantasy

The relationship between man and sport has always been a fascinating subject. The Ancient Greeks found honor and entertainment in athletics, as well as many practical offshoots, such as good health and increased physical aptitude that would have certainly helped in times of war. Over time, the reasons for competitive sport have changed, for better and worse. These days, athletes are closer to musicians than soldiers. While some would surely be terrific warriors because of their tremendous size, strength, and talents, they are more like entertainers, designed to lure crowds and help money exchange hands. In short, athletics is more business than than anything else, and as is often the case in life, money rules.

Sure, the Ancient Greeks got weird sometimes,
but they made sports (and perhaps gay sex)
a fun hobby for men.

Of course, the world of the sports fan is often much more spiritual than it is for the people with monetary stakes. The business side of sport is the ugly under belly that many fans choose to ignore or actively avoid. There are many people who cannot stand professional basketball, but see college basketball as the pinnacle of spectator sport. If you juxtapose the two, it is easy to understand why. Football, however, is a very different animal, and its physical nature plays a big part in differentiating it from other sports.

Men (and many women) love football. The misconception is that men (and many women) love football because it violent. As was the case with the gladiators of old, people assume that football fans love to wake up early on Sundays, drink beer, grill meats and watch large men bash into each other as some spiritual connection to barbaric times of yore. This, I believe, is a huge misconception.

Let's not judge a sport by its worst fans.

If you've been to an NFL game, you know there do exist horrible fans; fans that yell unimaginative expletives, slobber all over themselves, and take irrational offense to the happenings of the game and their surroundings in general. Sure, they are drunk and that is a god excuse for the behavior, but the problem is more related to them being terrible people. Still, this is not a football problem, but a problem with the world, which is filled with awful people who, on occasion, end up infiltrating the lives of the other, better people. It happens everywhere - at the grocery store, at work, in restaurants, and certainly at other sporting events. I have seen fans at baseball games yelling at children and cursing because someone is not standing for God Bless America. Many people are ridiculous, and some of those ridiculous people like football.

Hemingway, a good fan.

As for the others - the non-ridiculous, non-slobbering, non-cursing fans - football is a more interesting hobby. If you don't know, the claim that football is not a thinking man's sport, is entirely false. For some reason, baseball (which I also love to watch) has avoided the criticism of non-fans. Sure, it is common to hear someone say that he or she finds baseball boring, but it is usually a simple statement of disinterest. I can easily admit that I find engineering boring, but when I state such a thing, I think it obvious that I understand the value of engineering, and similarly, that others might enjoy more than I do. Baseball is like this and I do not know why. Perhaps it has something to do with it being America's pastime, or that it has a place in highbrow literature, or perhaps it is because it is calm and gentle and not immediately violent, but whatever the case, baseball is to football what  Peyton Manning is to Eli Manning - you might hate them both, but without knowing anything, you're okay saying that Peyton is better, or at least, that you don't like Eli.

Baseball and Football.
Both are good, they're just different.

But Eli Manning is okay too, and both brothers are quite awesome, and football is, actually, a very intelligent, thinking man's sport.

If you watch football and understand the rules, there are several cliched analogies that you can make to describe it as an intellectual competition. "It is a chess match." "It is a war." There are more. Chess and war are strategy based and require understanding, deception, planning, and more. On top of that, they require participants to think, not only before action, but on the fly. Football, particularly at a professional level, is perhaps more about coaching, strategy and quick thinking than it is about the differences in the abilities of the players. A good friend, Craig Giammona, once told me that he thought that the difference between the best team and the worst team in the NFL, talent-wise, was a handful of players. The strict salary cap ensures that teams cannot load up like the Yankees do, and it also ensures that the lesser teams still have a decent amount talented players. I think Craig is right, and that is why, when sitting in a bar watching the Steelers play the Raven to the tune of 10-6 in the fourth quarter, it might be easy for an untrained spectator to feel bored, but that untrained spectator just isn't seeing what it there: It is 3rd down and 2 yards to go for a new set of downs, there is six minutes left, the Ravens are down four points and have run twice. Boring? Hardly. Why aren't they passing, that is more fun to watch? Nope. They are running to work the clock, in hopes that they can move down the field and score with little time, so that their powerful defense can be on the field for one final stand against Ben Roethlisberger and a fairly ineffective Steelers offense that has only managed ten points.

"Honey, you know Ben Roethlisberger - he's the guy who was charged with sexual harassment because he had sex with a girl in the bathroom of a club? Remember, I was telling you about him?"
"Oh, right. Ew. I hate that guy. I hope he loses."

Exactly. And then the Ravens run their way down the field, using all but a minute and fifteen seconds of the clock. Willis McGahee has just vultured a touchdown from Ray Rice, who happens to be on your fantasy opponent's team that week. It would have been the death blow, but now you're only down a couple of points. The bar reacts to the Ravens touchdown with cheers and groans of defeat and the cameras focus on Ben Roethlisberger's pudgy face. Your girlfriend pictures him drunkenly groping her in a dirty club bathroom.

"I'm glad he lost," she says.

The Steelers take the field and Big Ben takes center stage. Effortlessly, the Steeler quarterback and well-documented womanizer fires off three completions that land him on the 17 yard line with 12 seconds remaining. The ball is snapped, Roethlisberger drops back, runs through an arm tackle, and fires off a crisp pass to Hines Ward who catches in the middle of the field just outside the end zone. The rugged receiver puts has head down and runs over a member of the Ravens secondary who were happy to concede a pass outside of the end zone, in theory. The Steelers score and the game is, for all intent and purpose, over.

"Oh, shit," your girlfriend says. "Did they win?"
"Yeah."
"Crap, that guy sucks."

Whether you agree or not, there is no denying that it was exciting and had little to do with men trampling one another. There were layers to that game and strategy had a large part in the outcome. There was the Ravens' layer: Their honest assessment that they would rather have their defense playing to avoid the loss, than their offense playing to attain the victory, had backfired. There was the Steelers' layer: They dissected the Ravens defense bit by bit and, after nearly sixty minutes of struggling, suddenly sliced their way down the field by taking every yard that they were given. And then there is your layer, the most important layer of all: The Ravens' touchdown had belonged to Bart, the owner of Willis McGahee, not Brendan, the owner of Ray Rice, and then, in a moment of ultimate irony, you had won your fantasy battle because you, the owner of Ben Roethlisberger, had won by two points because of that final drive.

You girlfriend never has to know that you drafted an alleged rapist. It's your Mantasy, not hers, but at least, through a tiny bit of explanation and exposure, she is beginning to understand what this is all about. There may be few physical or practical offshoots, but football and fantasy football is certainly about honor and entertainment, and the Greeks got down with that as well.

Big Ben is good for your Mantasy and for
giving girls creepy massages.