Is Fantasy Football Cultivating Fantasy Friends?

Fantasy football leagues, a place where people compete to set perfect lineups of professional athletes, can easily become a place of strong, nuanced connection amongst its league members. I've been doing Fantasy Football for a long time with 2 very different “friend” groups. One group stems from college, where I do know most of the people in the league, and another one where my best friend is playing; however, there are 10 other people, some would say strangers whom I’ve never met. Although, through playing for so long, I’ve gotten to know them through trades, banter, and the group chat/DM dynamic that Fantasy Football operates with.

According to the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association, more than 60 million people play fantasy sports in North America, so it’s an ever growing, popular thing.

And for those who don’t know, a quick overview of Fantasy Football is that a group usually consisting of usually 10-14 people get together and have a “draft” where they pick players from real NFL teams. Sometimes people meet in person, but in my experience -- and in many others’ -- these can occur entirely online. Once completed, you have your team which then competes against other teams, and this repeats each week until playoffs start.

The best leagues are competitive with everyone talking, trading, and all pretending to be real managers of football teams. This level of competition and play can rise to the level of real connection. A lot of the time, people get very invested in these leagues. I mean, even if you are playing for money, these leagues are often rather small buy-ins. People are playing, trading, setting line-ups, studying match-ups, analyzing trades, following injuries, and constantly trying to improve their roster, all in order to be crowned the winner at the end of the season. But why though?  Who cares?

Well, along the way, as you win and lose, propose trades, accept offers and reject others, make good waiver wire decisions, drop players you should have held onto, or missed players you should have picked up, you are of course doing It alongside those 10 or so other players. And along the way, it’s natural of course to be talking and discussing what’s all going on. It gets to the point where, finally, after all of the mental strife and anguish of "Is my roster respectable, and are my peers going to realize that I do in fact know ball?" that you’ve met a lot of people. You’ve gotten to know them through how they carry themselves in this fantastical football group.

Even if you don’t know them in real life, you’ve been interacting with them in this make-believe setting, where the points really don’t matter, and even if you have "the best line-up", you can still lose one week and then easily the next. It’s not so simple as to acquiring the best players and calling it a day; it’s cultivated studies and research, and perhaps working or not working with others in the form of a fair or a one-sided trade.

We see this connection and shared respect in examples like, “they’re playing this guy against that defense” or “interesting, I hadn’t thought of that” where one person gets to stop and see this fantasy game through the eyes of their new "friend". And through this, we discover so much about how little it takes to connect with someone, and how even a game based on another game can be a way for us to communicate and discuss ideas.

Even if I never meet any of these people, I’m playing, and even if I only check in on the group chat on game day, Fantasy Football to me is a fascinating look into how people who may have never met may come together and discover new ways of thinking about a game that’s constantly changing. And for that, I think Fantasy Football is a great way to connect with others and make new, oftentimes entirely digital, Fantasy Friends.