Fantasy Football

Last week a friend of mine wrote a comparison piece that juxtaposed fantasy football and visiting a paralyzed friend of his in the hospital. One character held a monologue about his fantasy football team, about his injured quarterback, about the upcoming weekend, and about other fantasy football woes. Interjected into the verbal football rant was the writer’s interior monologue describing his visit to his friend, about how she couldn’t walk, about how she couldn’t read the book he sent her, and about how helpless he felt. Underlying it all was the absurdity of the comparison, of how people can get so worked up about something so abstract and meaningless as fantasy football while other people’s lives are completely changed in car accidents.

I wish I could reprint his piece for you here—it would have been much better than me telling about it. But the significance of the comparison remains. It is something I wonder about as well.

Fantasy football seems to me to be like fiction. We need it. We need the story it gives us. Some people (not me) play fantasy football for the same reason I crawl into bed with a sci-fi novel at night. I read literary theory all day—I cannot read it at night too. In order to put the seriousness of life in perspective, I read fiction. Some people call this escapism—escaping into a story to alleviate the pain of living life—and they throw a negative twist onto it. I see reading fiction in a different light. Rather than escaping life, fiction helps me understand life. In the same way that my subconscious processes in my dreams at night, it also processes through experiencing story. Other people’s stories—real life or fiction.

Story. It’s so important. My parents’ church is currently pushing “telling your story.” When we tell our stories to each other, it is the same thing. We give each other frameworks for our lives and share bits of our lives. Whether it be our real stories, our fictional stories, or fantasy football—a story made with friends—story is important to life.

I think it was Ursula LeGuin who said that there have been civilizations without the wheel, but there has never been a civilization without story.

There’s your food for thought for the day.