Since now is the time when everyone is eyeing their NCAA bracket and with the imminent start of fantasy baseball, this is the opportune time to discuss the issue of whether or not morality has a place in fantasy sports (I’m including bracket pools in fantasy sports).
I was born and raised a Duke fan. I bleed Blue and White, I can name every retired jersey that hangs in Cameron Indoor Stadium, and know and root for all the schools that have hired former Duke players or assistants as their coaches. This poses a problem, however, when it comes to picking my bracket. Aside from being a diehard Duke fan, I also know a good deal about college basketball. Thus, when picking the winners in my bracket I tend to do pretty well, until, that is, when I come to a game that involves Duke. My heart tells me to pick Duke no matter what seed they are, no matter what matchup problems their opponent presents, no matter where the game is being played. And that loyalty leads me to pick Duke to win regardless of what my head is telling me. In other words, every year since I can remember, I’ve picked every game carefully, weighing the advantages and disadvantages for each team, except those games involving Duke. This means that every single year my bracket proudly displays Duke as my pick to win the tournament. Hence, the only time I’ve won a bracket pool is when Duke has been in the final four (fortunately for me that’s happened a lot).
The problem with this heart over head strategy is that all my eggs are in one basket. As a rabid Duke fan, if Duke loses I’m inconsolably pissed for the remainder of the tourney plus a number of weeks following the end of it depending on how early Duke got bounced (last year I was pissed until October or so). As a fantasy sports fan, I’m also extremely pissed when they lose because it means the near impossibility of me winning the pool. Effectively, every year when I throw in $20 for my bracket pool I’m paying a price for my loyalty. I am basically just paying $20 to show the world and all my friends (who hate Duke by the way) that I am so unrelentingly loyal that I’ll pick Duke to win no matter what.
Last year, however, I reached my peak of frustration with this heart over head mentality. Despite the fact that I wanted to strangle Duke’s Josh McRoberts for being an overrated, lackluster, self proclaimed star, I picked one of the sorriest Duke teams in recent memory to win the tourney. There was no way this would happen, but, as I’ve said, loyalty dictates this decision. My frustration didn’t come from Duke losing to VCU so much as the fact that by losing so early in the tournament; I had no shot at winning my pool. So all the thought I’d put into the other picks was negated. I could’ve hit on every upset, but still had no shot at winning because Duke lost in the first round.
This year I realized how to rectify that situation. Pick against Duke, loyalty be damned? No way. Instead I’d just say ‘screw it’ and pick the teams I’d like to see win. Winthrop is in South Carolina and coached by Greg Marshall who was an assistant at my alma mater of College of Charleston. Thus, I pick them to win. Davidson is representing the Southern Conference, the Conference College of Charleston plays in, so I’m going to pick them to go as far as I can (I’ve got them beating Georgetown and making it to the elite eight). I like Texas A&M, so why not have ‘em win a game? I like Tennessee because of Bruce Pearl, so I’ll stick them in the finals against Duke (where they will of course lose to Duke). Clemson beat Duke in the ACC tourney, so they lose in the first round. This gets me to the flip side of my heart oriented picking method; the teams I hate. I pick the teams I hate, UNC, Kentucky, all the other ACC schools, etc, to lose as soon as possible. Schools that I didn’t get accepted to for grad schools, schools with people I dislike attending them, schools in cities I’m not a fan of, etc. All these teams I pick to lose as soon as they have a reasonably hard game. From now on this is my strategy for brackets.
This same sort of problem reared its head in my fantasy baseball draft. My friend who organizes it is from Singapore and currently living somewhere in Asia (Hong Kong I think). Half the guys in our league are also somewhere in Asia. There are some in Wisconsin, some in Texas, and then me in Cape Town, South Africa. Thus, to screw me over (we’ve been doing this for 4 years and in that time I’ve won twice, came in second last year and came in third once; I am the master) they set the draft time for 3am Cape Town time so that I couldn’t go to an internet café and be there for the live draft. The computer, drafting for me, is apparently run by the Yankees because it didn’t draft a pitcher until round 10, when it took the second best pitcher from Tampa Bay. But that wasn’t the worst of it. It drafted Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, and Oliver Perez all from the New York Mets. I am a Braves fan. I hate the Mets. And yet I had zero Braves and three Mets, including Delgado; the worst Met of all. So I’ve since been making outlandish trades to rid myself of the Mets and get a few Braves. To do so required some less than favorable trades however. I got Francoeur, Carlos Zambrano, and Mark “disabled list” Prior for Beltran, Delgado, and Brian Roberts. Roberts is good for 40 plus steals and Beltran is a top 20 player. Why did I make this trade? The same reason I’ve changed my bracket strategy.
Are you a fan of your team or only out to win? Are you about substance or money? Would you rather have a fairly random chance to win your bracket pool or know that you can root for the teams you like and have that be synchronized with your bracket picks? Would you rather watch a baseball game and root for the Braves but hope Delgado gets you fantasy points or root for the Braves without any addendums?
A lot of people (I’m looking at you Bill Simmons) complain that fantasy sports and brackets muddy the waters of team loyalty and what it means to be a fan. I say these people are only confused by this situation because they are in fact not REAL fans. You don’t have to pick Francoeur in the first round, but you do have to make sure you go after him early enough to get him (round 8, round 7 if you are competing against other Braves fans). That’s what a REAL fan would do.
For me, in life and sports, I’d rather have my morality than a winning bracket or fantasy team or whatever. I’d rather know that I was loyal to what I believed in, what I choose to support. And if that means losing so be it, at least I can know that at no point did I utter the words, ‘yeah, [insert a team or player you hate] got me fantasy points/bracket points as they did so against a team you love. In me there is no confusion, there is only loyalty to my teams because I am an unconfused, unrelenting TRUE FAN.
I’m torn. In some ways I agree with you wholeheartedly and in some ways it sounds like justification for being a crappy fantasy sports player. Let me explain.
Would I ever draft or play Tom Brady? Hell no! If the Pats were playing the Colts, and the entire Indy secondary was in the hospital while New England’s offense hopped up on Gummi Berry Juice? Hell no! Does this make me a poor fantasy football manager? NO! It reinforces what I truly know, the Pats suck and the Colts rule.
Now there is a flip side to this. If the Pats were playing Miami in the same situation, I would have Brady and their whole gay offense on my team. The #1 reason to have the on my team would be to run up points to kick Bryan’s computer model ass. The #2 reason would be would be because I know that the Pats are sometimes a team that uses their deal with the devil to run up the score. And I’m fine with that. Because I know that good will always defeat evil. The Colts are always going to beat the Pats, even if the score says otherwise… the Colts won. Yes the Pats “beat” the Colt this year, but in actuality the Pats ended up worse because they were seen as a team that could go unbeaten. That and the fact that Tom Brady was seen having anal sex with Bryan’s computer model in a pool of biobutanol directly after the game means that while the score says one thing, the facts say otherwise.
I guess I kind of end up in the same situation as you. Even if I were to draft douchebags for the points, I would make sure to make up for it in some other way.
Yeah, I agree with what you are saying and let me restate that it isn’t like I had UNC losing to the 16 seed. I let them get all the way to the elite 8 and then lose to Tennessee (who I like). Obviously, that was wrong and in some ways it does make me a crappy fantasy player. However, this year’s NCAA is, I know Jim will agree, the worst ever. All four number one seeds make it to the final four?!?! That is boring, a reflection of how the dumb NBA embargo on high school players is hurting college basketball, and allowing the guy who knows nothing about sports to win the pools bc he picked all the favorites.
And so my point is, for picking right on every Davidson game, I can feel like I have better sports knowledge than the guy who wins the bracket by picking all the top seeds.
With fantasy football/baseball its a little harder. do you avoid tom brady? if he falls to number 9 in the draft, i think you’ve got to snag him. but if you have a choice btwn tom brady and peyton, you better pick the guy you are a fan of.
I wouldnt draft francoeur number one or even in the first round and i wasnt going to trade my number one pick for him, but i would draft him round before most people would just to make sure i got him and i did in fact make a trade that was not totally level for him. I’m happy with that even if i dont win. and if i do the joy and bragging rights will be that much better.
by the way francoeur hit a homer last night, that’s 5 fantasy points baby and after opening day i’m in first place.
It’s a little hard for me to equate NCAA brackets with fantasy football, so I’m just going to talk about the college fun.
Agreed, this has been the most boring NCAA tournament in my personal sports memory. I haven’t read anything on ESPN’s men’s college basketball page all week, breaking an annual streak that starts in early November, and typically ends seven days after the Final Four. What’s there to read, this year? “This is going to be the greatest final four ever, baby! All number four of the one seeds are in, baby! Highest level of collegiate competition in the nation, baby!” Notwithstanding the irony America’s love affair with the underdog, it is our true paramour. Why? Because as Americans, we are used to being the dominator, the champ, Apollo Creed. The dollar is number one, we win the most gold medals, we’ve got the highest GDP, biggest and strongest army, earn more, spend more, consume more than any other nation.
In the style of fancy smancy sports reporters from the likes of them big glossies, your Sports Illustrated or even worse, New York Times Magazine Sport, let me draw a completely unprovable and yet self proclaimed brilliant analogy: America will claim to love this tournament and see it was the most thrilling and heart stopping ever, because for once much of America feels like an underdog. Milk’s expensive, gas is outrageous, we’re thinking about soaking beans at night and buying industrial size bags of rice to save a buck. Opposites attract, and for too many Americans, it’s nice to see people thought of as the best- all those number one seeds- living up to their billing. So when North Carolina beats whomever the second ranked one seed is, we’ll all breath a sigh of relief, and wait for the world to right itself, somewhere underneath American boots.
Or, when Memphis wins, we’ll take a deep breath, go back to cutting out coupons, and pray for an October date between the Braves and Yankees.
I like the analogy. Anytime you can combine mass psychology with sports I’m a happy camper.
But I have some points of response.
First of all, the Braves are not the NL favorites. An all favorite World Series would be Yanks/Red Sox vs Mets. The Braves were predicted by many to finish 3rd in the division behind the Phillies and Mets, so after a decade of dominance the Braves performance the last couple years combined with the heavy spending of the Mets has rendered us to underdog status.
Second, don’t you dare even suggest that UNC will win.
Third, I like your analogy but here is what I think. Anyone who is an ACTUAL college basketball fan agrees that this is the worst NCAA tourney in memory. The reason for this is that the NBA people with their ‘no high schoolers’ rule has relegated college basketball to minor league status. Guys play for one year and then leave. The tradition suffers, the team chemistry that is so very important to college basketball evaporates. Even Tony Kornheiser, who I like, said a few weeks ago that the NCAA has become a feeder league for the NBA, which he thought was a good thing.
I heartily disagree. I like the product of college basketball. I like the passion, the heart, and everything else college sports has. I, however, am in the minority. Oddly on this site I think we’d all agree on that point thought. Anyway, the people who disagree with us are the New York/Boston/LA/Chicago reporters. Reporters make more $ writing about the pros, and they hail from up north (boston/ny) where college sports are overlooked. Thus, they dont give two damns about college basketball and just want it to feed players into the NBA.
Well Southerners like us love college sports and don’t really watch the NBA. So my position is, ’stop screwing with my sport you Northern bastards!’
The solution, a position that I stole from my dad years ago is this: when you graduate highschool you have the option to either go pro or go to college. if you go to college you are there for a minimum of three years, which is enough time to earn a degree if you take summer classes (and most college athletes do).
Actually, I’m going to write a whole post on this it makes me so mad. So I’ll stop here. Good thoughts guys, expect the Trey Smtih Solution to basketball shortly.