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Question: Would you rather have a championship for your fantasy squad or have a super bowl championship for your
favorite team?
As fantasy players, it occurs quite often that you will have a player on your fantasy squad facing off against your favorite team. This is hard to juggle, because you may need the fantasy points, but by getting them that player may be helping defeat your NFL team. Let's take this aspect out of the conversation for a minute and focus just on the depth of being a fan vs. being a fantasy owner.
I have been a Seattle Seahawk fan since they came into the league in the 70's. Jim Zorn was my favorite player growing up. I always wore #10 and pretended to throw touchdowns to Steve Largent in the yard with my brother. As fans of our teams, we can, at times, live and die with how they do each week, whether they make the playoffs or not, or if they can possibly make the super bowl and win. This has rarely been the case with the Seahawks. They have had a realistic shot at the Super Bowl 5 times in 30 years. The rest of the time I am left to enjoy small victories, beating the Broncos, beating the Raiders, the occasional exciting draft picks or free agents, coaching changes and new billionaire owners. This cannot replace the feeling that occurs when the Seahawks are truly in it on the field. I attended the NFC championship game two years ago in Seattle when they hosted Carolina for the right to go to Super Bowl 40. It was easily the best football game I have ever seen. The energy and enthusiasm in the crowd was amazing and the fact that my favorite team won to go to the super bowl was huge. Then the next week I came back down to earth as the Hawks blew a 2 to 1 yardage advantage over the Steelers and couldn't get the ball in the end zone enough and lost 21-10. As hard as that loss was, I got to experience the excitement of a super bowl run for the first time and it was awesome.
At the same time, I have been playing fantasy football since 1992. I remember my first draft pick very clearly, Thurman Thomas, #9 overall. I definitely didn't make the playoffs in that first league, but I was hooked. My first championship came in 1997. I can remember my lineup vividly. John Elway at QB, Barry Sanders, Terrell Davis and Terry Allen at RB, Jerry Rice and Chris Carter at WR and Shannon Sharpe at TE. I ran away with the league because my mid round running backs Allen and Davis exploded. So unlike the Seahawks it only took me 5 years to have my first championship. I figured that this was just the first of many to come. I was wrong. I have been consistently in the playoffs in my leagues, but it is not easy to win a championship in fantasy either. You have to have great drafting, the right free agent moves, luck with health and playoff matchups. It wasn't until 2005 that I broke through again and won both my leagues that year. But that is it in 15 years, 3 championships out of probably 30 leagues.
So once again, the question remains, would you rather have a fantasy championship or a super bowl for the real team? The crux of this decision lays in how emotionally invested a person could be in one versus the other. With your NFL team, the act of following the action on and off the field is on certain levels disconnected. No matter what a fan does from Monday to Saturday, it has 0 effect on how the team performs. The only thing that you can do that can make a difference is go to the game on Sunday and scream at all the right times. The main reason we have an emotional connection to these teams typically goes back to the little kid in us that looked up to the players of yesterday and wanted to be just like them. I mean who doesn't think the Coke commercial from the 70's where Mean Joe Greene throws the kid his jersey is the best commercial of all time? Some of that romanticism is lost on sports today, there is just too much going on to have this same level of identity with your favorite players or teams. Players leave via free agency, they get arrested for violence against animals or people, or they are busted for cheating. It just isn't the same. But that doesn't make the answer to this question any easier.
The main difference with fantasy is the illusion of control. As a fantasy owner, you invest your time and energy into preparing for the draft, analyzing your players every week, choosing who to start and who to bench. Then the excitement every Sunday as you sit in front of the NFL Ticket on satellite and watch every game all at the same time. For quite a few people, fantasy is their only connection to football so this probably represents the key to their enjoyment of the game as a fan.
So it comes down to individual control and time investment for fantasy football compared to the emotional connection you have to your NFL team. Did you know that 17 teams have won all 41 super bowls? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Bowl_champions That leaves fans of 15 teams who have never tasted victory at the highest level. So we could have a split here. Fans of the teams who have already won a super bowl may prefer to win a fantasy championship and fans of the teams who have not won would prefer a super bowl. Could it be that simple? I don't think it is that clear cut.
There may not be a perfect answer to this question, but this is my take. When it comes to football specifically, I have been pulling for the Seahawks for so long, I would definitely trade a fantasy championship for a super bowl ring. The pride of being a fan of a team that is on top of the world is something that is universal. Just look at how cocky Boston fans are now that the Red Sox and Patriots are the best in the business. They went from long suffering to insufferable in 6 years. I would enjoy that turnaround in the Northwest very much. But I don't have the same connection to any team in baseball and basketball. I follow both sports just as closely, but for whatever reason I didn't develop the same connection to any one team growing up. I think for this reason, I would much rather have a fantasy baseball or basketball championship than have the hometown Mariners or Sonics win a title.
So I guess the final answer from my perspective is that if a fan has been connected to a team for a long period of time, I would guess that it doesn't matter how long it has been since the last championship, they would definitely prefer the next ring to any fantasy title. For the rest of us, we can root for everyone, just as long as we don't have to face them this week!
As fantasy players, it occurs quite often that you will have a player on your fantasy squad facing off against your favorite team. This is hard to juggle, because you may need the fantasy points, but by getting them that player may be helping defeat your NFL team. Let's take this aspect out of the conversation for a minute and focus just on the depth of being a fan vs. being a fantasy owner.
I have been a Seattle Seahawk fan since they came into the league in the 70's. Jim Zorn was my favorite player growing up. I always wore #10 and pretended to throw touchdowns to Steve Largent in the yard with my brother. As fans of our teams, we can, at times, live and die with how they do each week, whether they make the playoffs or not, or if they can possibly make the super bowl and win. This has rarely been the case with the Seahawks. They have had a realistic shot at the Super Bowl 5 times in 30 years. The rest of the time I am left to enjoy small victories, beating the Broncos, beating the Raiders, the occasional exciting draft picks or free agents, coaching changes and new billionaire owners. This cannot replace the feeling that occurs when the Seahawks are truly in it on the field. I attended the NFC championship game two years ago in Seattle when they hosted Carolina for the right to go to Super Bowl 40. It was easily the best football game I have ever seen. The energy and enthusiasm in the crowd was amazing and the fact that my favorite team won to go to the super bowl was huge. Then the next week I came back down to earth as the Hawks blew a 2 to 1 yardage advantage over the Steelers and couldn't get the ball in the end zone enough and lost 21-10. As hard as that loss was, I got to experience the excitement of a super bowl run for the first time and it was awesome.
At the same time, I have been playing fantasy football since 1992. I remember my first draft pick very clearly, Thurman Thomas, #9 overall. I definitely didn't make the playoffs in that first league, but I was hooked. My first championship came in 1997. I can remember my lineup vividly. John Elway at QB, Barry Sanders, Terrell Davis and Terry Allen at RB, Jerry Rice and Chris Carter at WR and Shannon Sharpe at TE. I ran away with the league because my mid round running backs Allen and Davis exploded. So unlike the Seahawks it only took me 5 years to have my first championship. I figured that this was just the first of many to come. I was wrong. I have been consistently in the playoffs in my leagues, but it is not easy to win a championship in fantasy either. You have to have great drafting, the right free agent moves, luck with health and playoff matchups. It wasn't until 2005 that I broke through again and won both my leagues that year. But that is it in 15 years, 3 championships out of probably 30 leagues.
So once again, the question remains, would you rather have a fantasy championship or a super bowl for the real team? The crux of this decision lays in how emotionally invested a person could be in one versus the other. With your NFL team, the act of following the action on and off the field is on certain levels disconnected. No matter what a fan does from Monday to Saturday, it has 0 effect on how the team performs. The only thing that you can do that can make a difference is go to the game on Sunday and scream at all the right times. The main reason we have an emotional connection to these teams typically goes back to the little kid in us that looked up to the players of yesterday and wanted to be just like them. I mean who doesn't think the Coke commercial from the 70's where Mean Joe Greene throws the kid his jersey is the best commercial of all time? Some of that romanticism is lost on sports today, there is just too much going on to have this same level of identity with your favorite players or teams. Players leave via free agency, they get arrested for violence against animals or people, or they are busted for cheating. It just isn't the same. But that doesn't make the answer to this question any easier.
The main difference with fantasy is the illusion of control. As a fantasy owner, you invest your time and energy into preparing for the draft, analyzing your players every week, choosing who to start and who to bench. Then the excitement every Sunday as you sit in front of the NFL Ticket on satellite and watch every game all at the same time. For quite a few people, fantasy is their only connection to football so this probably represents the key to their enjoyment of the game as a fan.
So it comes down to individual control and time investment for fantasy football compared to the emotional connection you have to your NFL team. Did you know that 17 teams have won all 41 super bowls? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Bowl_champions That leaves fans of 15 teams who have never tasted victory at the highest level. So we could have a split here. Fans of the teams who have already won a super bowl may prefer to win a fantasy championship and fans of the teams who have not won would prefer a super bowl. Could it be that simple? I don't think it is that clear cut.
There may not be a perfect answer to this question, but this is my take. When it comes to football specifically, I have been pulling for the Seahawks for so long, I would definitely trade a fantasy championship for a super bowl ring. The pride of being a fan of a team that is on top of the world is something that is universal. Just look at how cocky Boston fans are now that the Red Sox and Patriots are the best in the business. They went from long suffering to insufferable in 6 years. I would enjoy that turnaround in the Northwest very much. But I don't have the same connection to any team in baseball and basketball. I follow both sports just as closely, but for whatever reason I didn't develop the same connection to any one team growing up. I think for this reason, I would much rather have a fantasy baseball or basketball championship than have the hometown Mariners or Sonics win a title.
So I guess the final answer from my perspective is that if a fan has been connected to a team for a long period of time, I would guess that it doesn't matter how long it has been since the last championship, they would definitely prefer the next ring to any fantasy title. For the rest of us, we can root for everyone, just as long as we don't have to face them this week!
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