The Internal Dilemmas of a Football Fan

Watching football these days isn’t a simple matter like it used to be. In the beginning, you just rooted for your hometown team. Then, sports gambling was invented, leading to the invention of spreads and that movie with Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey. Finally, fantasy football arrived, which gave the sports networks a reason to post individual player stats on the Bottom Line. Instead of merely watching the game to root for your team, you can have a larger vested interest. Without gambling or fantasy sports, would there be a reason to watch the travesty that is the Houston Texans?

Watching a game with fantasy implications can be a little frustrating. You’re not rooting for any particular team, just your own player. Some common annoyances suffered by the fantasy fan are when your wide receiver gets tackled at the one-yard line, when the backup running back gets the goal-line carries, or when the quarterback runs the TD himself instead of throwing it to your tight end. You can get equally frustrated watching a game you bet on when the other team scores a meaningless touchdown to cover the spread.

Being a hometown fan, fantasy fan, or gambler is hard enough to do each week. What happens if you try to wear more than one hat? This sounds like a smart idea at first, because there are only so many hours of football on each week (around 1342 maybe?), so why not try to maximize your viewing experience? However, you also open the door to extreme mental anguish. Luckily for you, I have spent many hours contemplating these situations, and I present to you my analysis.

Hometown Fan and Fantasy Fan:
This is the most common sports conflict today. How do you root for your team when their success will be detrimental to your fantasy squad? The simple approach is to concede one team’s defeat. This is relatively easy to do when: a) your hometown team is awful and out of playoff contention, or b) your fantasy game is already lost for the week.

The dilemma comes in when you need your player to perform and your team needs to win the game. On the one hand, you obviously want your hometown team to win, but on the other hand, you don’t want to concede defeat in your fantasy league. This is where creative cheering is useful. Let’s say you have a wide receiver on the opposing team. You can cheer for only him to score or get yardage, and when the running back gets the goal-line touchdown, you now have two reasons to be angry. If your player does score, it’s a win-lose situation, instead of The Internal Dilemmas of a Football Fan a lose-lose.

Another common situation is when you have players from your hometown team on your fantasy team. If your team does well, you hope that your player is the one responsible as then you’ll get to reap the fantasy benefits also. However, if he has a terrible game but the team still wins, then your enjoyment of the win is lessened. There’s clearly no bright-line rule to follow in this situation, so you’ll just have to wing it week to week.

Hometown Fan and Gambler:
As a general rule, you should not bet against your own team straight up. Simple as that. Betting against the spread is obviously a different matter. If you don’t think your team is going to cover, you shouldn’t rule out betting against them out of hometown loyalty. By doing this however, you open yourself up to the problems discussed earlier. If your team is giving a ton of points, betting against them means you’re rooting for a close game, which could come back to haunt you should the other team pull out the win. If your team should prevail and the other team covers, that’s an obvious win-win for you.

Fantasy Fan and Gambler:
This is an interesting predicament to be in and one I wouldn’t recommend. You open yourself up to all sorts of problems when you bet against the team which has some of your fantasy guys on it. If you bet for the team with your fantasy players, you effectively hedge your bets (winning $10 now as opposed to $100 at the end of the fantasy season).

If you really want to give yourself a headache while you watch, try the following: bet on the team with two of your fantasy players that’s playing the team with a fantasy player on your opponent’s team. Just for kicks, let’s say you are down 8 points in your fantasy league and this game happens to be the Monday-night game. To further spice it up, the opposing fantasy player is the kicker. Is there anyway you can win your bet and your fantasy game in this situation? If you’re taking the points, you need your fantasy guys to score all their team’s points to improve your odds. Then, if other team has a functional offense, you need them to only score touchdowns. If all those things happen and the team you bet on doesn’t end up winning because of special team or defensive touchdowns, then you will have pulled off a remarkable feat, one which will awe your friends for about five seconds.

Hometown Fan, Fantasy Fan, and Gambler:
If anyone wants to attempt this, please proceed at your own risk.

Wanted: Owner, Home, Some Offense

Changes Coming for Nationals Baseball

The media darling of the first half of the 2005 baseball season, the Nationals currently remain orphaned, as the team is still without an owner in its first offseason in Washington. The Nationals have been owned by the league since 2002, when former owner Jeffrey Loria sold the team to the league and then turned around and bought the Marlins. After designing the most expensive World Series rings ever, Loria then threatened to move his new team unless he got a new stadium.

Speaking of new stadiums, the Nationals are also due one of those. When the league finalized plans to move the team to DC last December, the city agreed to finance a $440 million new 41,000-seat stadium (the estimated price tag is now up to $535 million). This new park would supposedly be open by 2008 and be located on the Anacostia River, a block from the Navy Yard metro stop. Last Thursday, the league and the city met to hammer out the final lease agreement for the stadium, which is the last thing that needs to be finished before the new ownership group is selected.

There are currently eight finalists in the ownership pageant. The frontrunner appears to be a group headlined by venture capitalist Frederic Malek and also includes former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Malek was part-owner of the Bush-owned Texas Rangers and also managed Bush Sr.’s extremely successful reelection campaign. You, however, might have a much closer tie to one of the other prominent ownership groups in contention. In fact, you might be reading this column sitting in a building that bears his name.

Ted Lerner, who earned an LLB from the Law School and has several buildings that bear his name on campus, is also in the running. A self-made real estate mogul, Lerner has tried and failed for thirty years to buy a Major League Baseball team (he also was outbid by Mr. Synder for the Redskins in 1999). Lerner’s ownership group consists of only one person outside his family – Fox Sports broadcaster James Brown. A Lerner-owned Washington Nationals would certainly be beneficial to students – one of you could network your way into becoming the new, youngest GM in baseball.

The team’s current GM, Jim Bowden, was himself a former youngest GM in baseball when he became the Reds’ GM at the age of 31 in 1992. He is responsible for the highly successful Ken Griffrey Jr. trade and was also the baseball analyst for ESPN’s Cold Pizza before coming to Washington. Bowden also compared a potential MLB strike to 9/11 in 2002. Yikes!

Bowden’s success with the Nats has been so-so. Working with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, Bowden assembled a team that was in first place heading into the All-Star break. The Nats then hit a brick wall and finished last in the NL East for the second-straight year. While the team excelled in close games at the beginning of the year, the team’s abysmal offense could not keep the wins coming in the second half (in fact, the Nationals finished dead last in every major batting statistic, a pretty remarkable feat if you think about it). $4.2 million of the team’s $48 million payroll went to shortstop Cristian Guzman, who was one of the absolute worst offensive players in the league, putting up what was arguably the worst offensive season for a regular in the history of Major League Baseball. Another $3 million went to 3B Vinny Castilla, who was just shipped out of town last week for Padres pitcher Brian Lawrence.

Bowden’s contract was only extended through April, leading Washington Post columnist Tony Kornheiser to suggest Theo Epstein as the team’s next GM. With the league expected to announce the new ownership group sometime in the next two weeks (maybe by the time you read this column), the Nationals can finally settle into their new home. With a new owner, stadium, and GM, the Nationals can work on building a quality franchise in the District. One suggestion for the new owners though: no ushers in the new stadium. Thanks.