(
)
I love my wife and child. Honestly, I do. I stress this point because what follows may lead you to believe otherwise.
In late July of each year, I say a virtual goodbye to my loved ones, and I disappear for nearly six months. I don’t go far, just into the computer room across the hall, where I spend endless hours late into the night several nights a week for months at a time feeding what I have come to realize is my addiction.
Hi. My name is Drew, and I am a fantasy football draft addict.
—
An estimated 27 million Americans play fantasy football. Not many do so in the manner I do. I have 71 fantasy teams this season. As absurd as that sounds, I topped out (so far) with 80 two years ago. The only reason I’m lagging this year is because I took vacation time during draft season.
And that’s what I tell people when they ask about vacation: “Yeah, it was great, but I missed some prime drafting time.”
It hasn’t always been this way. It took 15 years to get here. It started with one team in 1997 — Drew’s Brew Crew. This was before the Internet was in every home. In fact, we were lucky to have electricity in North Carolina back then. We drafted at a friend’s place in Charlotte. Every roster change required a phone call to the commissioner — no online player pool, no trades via email.
That first team was 7-6 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. And as painstaking as that “offline” experience was, I could see the potential entertainment value. The next season, the Web finally found its way to my apartment. That fall, I had three teams, all online — which included the birth of a team name I still use to this day: Angry Neighbors With Slingshots. Two leagues were with pals. The other was a public — the first of hundreds of free public leagues to come.
That public league was my gateway drug. This was like an alcoholic’s first beer, it was the first bite into a fingernail, the first time Tiger Woods got aroused. I was hooked, I just didn’t know it yet.
—
It took just a few years for me to amass a huge collection of teams. As much as I enjoyed the interactive gameplay of fantasy football, it was the drafting that held my fascination. I learned there is a way to do dozens and dozens of drafts without having to manage each team throughout the season. Many sites have “mock” drafts — which are like practice. You perform a draft, but after the draft, no league exists. It is drafting for drafting sake. You would think this would satisfy my obsession. It’s sort of like Internet shopping to gauge price. You fill up your cart with items you want, see how much they cost, then hit cancel before the checkout. Only in mock drafts, you are gauging the price of players — the price being which round players are drafted.
However, there is an inherent problem with mocks: They are mocks. They are not real. There always are a couple bozos in every mock draft who make a mockery of the exercise. Since you don’t play the season with the roster you draft, there are no penalties for bad picks. It’s like putting that 70-inch HD television in your online shopping cart, knowing you have no intention of buying it.
Those silly picks corrupt the draft data. Rest assured, corrupting the data is a serious offense in my book, because accumulating data for my “important” drafts (read: money leagues), and research for the Fantasy Tracker column is the primary reason I immerse myself so deeply in fantasy football. At least that’s what I tell my wife. (Those of you who think that comment will put me in the doghouse at home, rest easy. My wife doesn’t read my work.)
Because I refuse to spend significant time doing mock drafts, I have to do real drafts. And since I have been in leagues with absentee team owners, and know how frustrating it can be to enter trade negotiations with an owner who doesn’t respond, I refuse to be an Absentee Owner. Therefore, I have to manage every team I draft.
I will not be an Absentee Owner. I will not do mocks. I will feed my addiction.
And that’s how you end up with 71 fantasy teams.
—-
The popularity of fantasy football has grown exponentially in recent years. At ESPN, they average 15-percent growth year-over-year, and the number of unique users of its fantasy services has doubled since 2008. It’s a $1 billion business, the Hollywood Reporter says, and costs companies an estimated $6.5 billion in lost productivity, according to a study by Challenger, Gray and Christmas. I think I was about $500 million of that.
There are are few people like me — though not many.
“I’ve heard stories of people who do insane amounts of leagues,” says ESPN fantasy columnist Matthew Berry, aka The Talented Mr. Roto. “There is a small percentage of people who go to extreme with it.”
What may be a surprise is the variety of individuals who play fantasy football. No longer is it fantasy football isn’t about the fanatics anymore. Everyone does it.
“When I first started, all my email, Twitter, facebook [feedback] … they were all white men between 25-35, and now its a huge, huge cross-section,” says Berry, who has been giving professional fantasy advice since 1999. “Now it’s kids, seniors, women, housewives, grandmas; it’s across the board. You see a lot of celebrities playing fantasy football.
“When I first got [to ESPN] there weren’t a lot [of colleagues] playing fantasy. Now it seems like everybody does. … It has become more normal to have a fantasy team than not.”
Most engage in fantasy sports in a more reasonable manner than myself.
“The majority of people are people who play a couple of leagues,” Berry says. “It gives them rooting interest in games they otherwise wouldn’t care about.”
Yeah, there’s that. Plus, you get to draft. The reason I have so many teams isn’t because I enjoy managing them, it because I enjoy drafting them. The draft provides the dopamine release. The in-season process of managing the teams is just a side effect.
But with so many teams, and the time required to take to take care of them all, it begs the question: How do I do it?
—
Once the season starts, Tuesdays are the busiest day. I go through each team, identify players I want to replace, make waiver claims and scout for possible trades. Normally I get started around 1 a.m. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. It’s not as easy as logging in once and managing 71 teams. There are limits to the number of teams you can have under each username. I open a file called “fantasy usernames.” This is a list of more than a dozen usernames and passwords at four different sites. Then I proceed to go down the list, logging in to one account, make the necessary changes to each team, log out, log in as a different user, rinse and repeat.
When I finally have attended to all 71 teams — all waiver requests are made, necessary trades have been offered, I spend a little extra time on those “important” teams — it’s almost 4 a.m.
Thursdays are easier. I sit down at the computer at midnight. I touch each team, but this time, I’m just monitoring which waiver requests came through, what other pickups are needed, and addressing other possible trades. But at least this time, a large portion of the teams need little attention. I’m done before 2 a.m.
Saturdays are like a walkthrough. At midnight I boot up, check each roster to ensure I have an eligible lineup, that no additional waiver pickups are necessary, send a snotty email to that Absentee Owner who never got back to me about my trade proposal. I’m done by 1:30 a.m.
Sunday, I kick back in front of the tube. I use the laptop or tablet to monitor the progress of a handful of “important” teams and enjoy the games.
Some people tell me that by having so many teams, it dilutes my rooting interest, because I practically have every player somewhere among my 71 rosters. But on Sunday, it doesn’t matter. I have a select few players who I have drafted over and over burned into memory. I know my “important” rosters by heart. I’m rooting for those players to do well.
But above all, I just want to see some exciting games, and I want to see my favorite NFL team win. Yes, after 71 fantasy teams, days and days spent drafting, hours a week spent attending to those teams, reality football still is better than fantasy football.
—-
So why is the process of building a team more interesting to me than how that team performs? I think it comes down to power and control. During the draft, I have control over how my team turns out — or at least control over whom I pick at my spot in the draft. Once the season starts, team owners no longer are in control. Now you are at the mercy of the players’ on-field performance.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to win. And having done so many leagues for so long, I’ve gotten pretty good. In my 80-team season, I had a winning percentage of .665. I averaged 9.4 wins per league and 4.6 losses; 69 had winning records, nine did not; 61 teams made the playoffs (76 percent), 16 won the title (20 percent).
Alas, I didn’t win any of my four money leagues that year, though three of those teams did make the playoffs and my overall winning percentage in those leagues was .641.
So my earnings that season were exactly $0, and having paid league dues, I lost money. Pay leagues in fantasy sports are like interactive gambling — you are making a season-long bet, and you have some control over the outcome. But even if I had won every money league, my potential winnings wouldn’t be enough to justify the time spent drafting and managing so many teams. So money isn’t the motivating factor. Winning is a goal, but it’s not the motivation. I don’t sit in front of my computer and think: I need to win ESPN Public League 48792, so I’m going to join and draft.
My motivation for drafting is the process of drafting. That’s the exciting part. Where will you pick? Who will you get? Will this player slip to you? Will you sleeper be there late in the draft? You try to maximize the value of each pick, getting the players you want right before someone else. You don’t want to pick someone too early, and you don’t want to wait too late and miss him entirely.
My obsession is similar to the guy from “Clerks” searching for the perfect dozen eggs. I seek the perfect draft. It doesn’t matter how well I did in my most recent draft, there is a better team out there, and I must draft it. So I try again … and again … and again.
Until this year, I fielded nearly two dozen fantasy baseball teams each year — not because I love fantasy baseball, but because I love to draft. But I find fantasy baseball too cumbersome. So this past season, I decided not do any fantasy baseball leagues — which meant no fantasy baseball drafts.
Then came the draft withdrawal. By March, I was itching to draft. I didn’t want to commit to a full season of fantasy baseball, but I needed to draft … something … anything. This need spawned a fantasy movie league. Myself and some coworkers drafted summer movie releases, with the overall box office of our movie rosters as the tally. When you find yourself inventing a reason to to do a fantasy draft, that’s when you know you have a problem.
—-
Addictions defy reason. They spit at logic. They grab hold of your mind and body and force you to do things you might otherwise consider unreasonable.
Mine has its symptoms. Sometimes the brain becomes overloaded with fantasy knowledge. It can be embarrassing — like when the waiter asks what I’ll have, and I tell him, “I’ll take Doug Martin in Round 7.”
So, do I have a problem?
“Any addiction, when you do something and it takes over doing other things, it’s a problem,” says Edward Pino, a licensed mental health counselor in New York. “If you’re spending time doing that instead of spending time with a spouse, eating, working or taking care of yourself, [it’s an addiction].”
My fantasy addiction is my reality. I’ve come to terms with it. I can live with it, but what about my marriage? My family?
“You can get addicted to gaming — video games or fantasy football,” Pino said. “[When you’re addicted, you’re not] dealing with feelings and relationships. Your relationships are with your players.”
So fantasy football is my mistress. But at least its out in the open.
Most of the time spent with my fantasy teams comes after my 13-year-old’s bedtime, so I’m OK there. Besides, she’s a Panthers fans, hates Duke and loves Batman, so I guess I’ve done a few things right.
My wife used to ask me what I was doing when I went to the computer room late at night. Now, she just rolls her eyes. Then again. the more time we spend together, the more likely she is to realize I’m an insufferable jerk.
So I guess, in a way, you could say fantasy football has saved our marriage.
Drew Loftis is editor of The Post’s Sunday sports section.
dloftis@nypost.com