Life After Fantasy Football

So football season is almost over. This is a tragic but inevitable part of every fan’s life, and mourning the passing of another season is something that adds a somber undertone to life after football. What do you talk about with your coworkers when there is no Super Bowl to look forward to? How do you interact with your friends when fantasy football was the only thing keeping your relationships alive? What is even the point of family functions if you can’t drunkenly argue with your uncle about whether or not Michigan football should be given the death penalty?

While the pain and grief of the loss of football washes over you, I will not ask you to get over it. The season happened, and we will eventually accept that it’s gone. For now, it is my goal to help you come up with ideas on how to move on, and try to make the most of this life that you’ve been given.

Filling the Void of Fantasy Football

Thanks to the wonders of the emerging technology known as the world wide web, we have access to a plethora of fantasy sports never before seen by human eyes. Some of them are sports you’ve heard of, some of them aren’t sports at all, but all of them offer something that could potentially help to scratch that competitive itch.

Fantasy Basketball

Fantasy Basketball is arguably the middle child of all fantasy sports. Since fantasy baseball won’t be around for another few months and you don’t know a single thing about hockey, this could be the only thing keeping you from gambling on Laotian soccer at 2 am every night. Fantasy basketball features the athletic feats of a geriatric LeBron James, as well as all of the other great athletes that Stephen A. Smith constantly compares to LeBron James. We all know that he is a LeBron-comparative addict, and somebody should probably do something to help the poor guy, but for now we're just going let him continue to do this to himself until we build up the courage to intervene.

Anyway, if you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like to be an unsuccessful NBA GM without the public death threats and being compared to Nico Harrison, this is the one for you. It’s not the most involved fantasy sport in the world (in fact it might be the easiest there is), but you’re gonna forget about it as soon as March Madness starts so it doesn’t really matter. Besides, Tyrese Haliburton isn't even playing this year, you missed the draft three months ago, and it’s probably too late to try and catch up.

Fantasy Hockey

If fantasy basketball is the middle child of fantasy sports, fantasy hockey is the French Canadian step-child. You really want to love it, and you try to keep up with it when you can, but you also can’t really understand what it’s saying and sometimes it slips into Russian and that’s a line you feel like you can’t cross. Still, every once in a while when a guy gets cross checked into the shadow realm, it’s impossible not to recognize the raw coolness factor of the Chel. It’s not a sport for the faint of heart, but it rewards those who are willing to go the extra mile it takes to appreciate it.

If we’re being truly honest, fantasy hockey is a much better package than fantasy basketball, and is a more involved and enjoyable management experience. It has elements of fantasy baseball as far as trying to manage goalies that may not be playing every day alongside larger lineups, but it can also have the set-and-forget elements of fantasy basketball. However, much like fantasy basketball, you missed the draft three months ago and you can only name like five teams in the NHL, so you’re about as hopeless here as you are in basketball.

Fantasy Oscars

Unlike basketball and hockey, this one is coming up just in time. The nominees for the Academy Awards were announced last week, and you’ve got a whole month to watch all the Best Picture contenders. You love watching movies, and you are always thinking how you should go see more movies in the theater rather than just half watch them when they’re on Netflix. I bet there are some really cool ones that you wouldn’t have thought to watch, and maybe you’ll have some good recommendations to throw out around the water cooler!

If this is the route you choose to go, it’s time for a reality check: You’re not going to enjoy these movies. In order to be a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Picture, you are going to need to be some combination of painfully depressing, mind-numbingly boring, and needlessly long. Sure, the acting may be great and you’re going to learn the definition of the word “cinematography”, but you’re going to have to sit through so much artsy fartsy bullshit that the word pretentious doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. They’re all indie flicks, so you can’t stream them, and there are only two theaters in a 200 mile radius of you that are showing any of them. The Academy usually throws a popular upper in there to diversify the list, but it’s not going to be enough to curb the onslaught of downers. You will leave this experience questioning whether or not you actually like movies, or even anything about life in general. Then you’ll watch KPop Demon Hunters and you’ll be fine.

Sports Gambling

Careful now. You may have dabbled during the football season while being bombarded with ads every twelve seconds, but this is uncharted territory for you. You’re now entering a new and potentially dangerous world of college and pro basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis, table tennis, bowling, rugby, cricket, darts, horse racing, auto racing, golf, disc golf, boxing, MMA, and other sports you’ve never heard of in countries you couldn’t point out on a map if given two hundred guesses. Will it help you get into new sports and feel something when you watch them? Probably yeah. Will you become a machine that turns money into not having money? Also, probably yeah.

Seriously, if you’re gonna do it, do it responsibly. There’s no joke here, just be careful. Set a limit for yourself, create a system for accountability, and never bet more than you’re comfortable losing. Remember, you’re paying for the thrill that comes with having money on the line, winning money back is just a happy accident. If you feel like you’re having trouble with setting boundaries and you might have a problem, don’t be afraid to reach out for help.

Watching Sports Just to Watch Sports

Believe it or not, this is a thing. There are people in this world who can just become one with the couch and enjoy sports with no external motivation. Some folks out there enjoy the thrill of competition, and don’t even need to have skin in the game. This could be you! You could be the guy who can’t stop talking about Darryn Peterson’s duel against AJ Dybantsa this weekend, and you didn’t just learn about them this morning on SportsCenter! You could be the lady who actually buys the local sports streaming package and watches every Bulls and Blackhawks game, not because you have to, but for sheer love of the game. You could be the galaxy brain MX-5 Cup enjoyer who knows that the true pinnacle of motorsport sounds like a swarm of angry bees doing door-to-door combat 45 minutes at a time for free on YouTube. This is a world that you could choose to be a part of. You could be that person.

Spending Time with Loved Ones

So this might come as a little bit of a shock, but remember that girl or guy you met that one time that you enjoyed spending time with? I don’t know if you recall, but you actually married that person. You may or may not have also had kids with them. That fuzzy blur that you’ve occasionally felt fly past you while glued to the couch? That was a dog. It’s yours, and it’s hungry and really needs you to let it go outside to poop.

Yes, that’s it. It’s all coming back to you now. You’re a real person. You have a family. The GEQBUS may not know who you are, but these people do. They love you. You may even love them. It’s time to spend a little bit of time giving them the love and attention they deserve. You obviously don’t actually have to do this, but it would be pretty cool if you did.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

When the confetti settles at the end of the Super Bowl and we all settle into our new post-pigskin reality, you can find solace in the fact that you are not alone. We all are in this together, and better times are right around the corner. You’re only a few short weeks away from March Madness. Remember March Madness? You love March Madness! And after that comes The Masters, and then you’re in NFL Draft season. Football is basically already almost back! And then by that point you’re in baseball season, and you’ve got all the fun events in May like the Kentucky Derby and the Indy 500. Then you've got that golf outing you forgot you signed up for. Maybe this is the year you’ll actually get golf lessons and fix that slice!

By the time you realize that your slice is now part of who you are and it is never going away, it will be August again. The kids will be going back to school, the cicadas will be screaming in the trees, and something in the air will tell you that a change is coming. Before you know it, Hard Knocks will be back on the TV, Paul Finebaum will be back to spewing his SEC supremacist nonsense, and you will once more accept that it is time to be completely and utterly consumed by your one true love: Fantasy Football.