Are you a woman who plays Fantasy Football? Are you the only girl, or one of only a few girls in your league? Or are you a guy that has to deal with some pesky girl playing in your manly league? Then this article is for you!
As a woman who plays fantasy football, you may feel like you have to deal with certain annoying issues that the other men in your league don’t deal with. And you’re right! Whether you are a serious fantasy football competitor or you just joined a league because your boyfriend or some hot guy from class told you that it would be fun, you still have to deal with the same crap that every other woman encounters. And it’s about time that someone finally points out the discrepancies that women face when playing fantasy football.
You are expected to be terrible at fantasy football.
When you join a fantasy league, every owner automatically assumes that playing your team will be like an automatic bye week. Honestly, they probably only asked you to join the league because they figured that you’d suck and, as a result, you would pad their schedule. To them, they are all Alabama and you’re just Ball State University. So if you’re name is Christy, Nicole, Jessica, or anything remotely feminine, you are expected to lose pretty much every game of the season.
Every draft pick you make is awful
You picked Antonio Brown in the fourth round…total reach! Jimmy Graham was your second rounder…are you insane taking a tight end that high in the draft?! No matter what pick you make, the guys in your league all think it’s either a reach or just plain stupid. I’m pretty sure that as a woman, you could take Adrian Peterson as your first overall pick, and someone would still tell you that it’s a bad pick. According to Tom, you definitely should have gone for Marshawn Lynch instead, and he will make that opinion known on the draft discussion board. To the men in your league, you are the Al Davis of draft day and every pick you make is the equivalent of taking Jamarcus Russell as your first overall pick.
Everyone wants to “take advantage” of you when they make trades
It’s not enough that you have to constantly worry about being attacked and raped in real life, but everyone in your fantasy football league wants to take advantage of you. This is also often called a “trade rape”, a term that was popularized by the show “The League” on FX. This phenomenon happens when a completely lopsided trade occurs in fantasy sports so that one team gets a far better deal than the other. When you’re the girl in the league, everyone assumes that you know nothing about football and therefore they expect to take advantage of you during trades. Let’s say you offer Carl Darren Sproles for Reggie Wayne. Well, there’s NO CHANCE that he will accept that trade! But why not? It’s a perfectly fair trade. It’s because Carl and everyone else expects to be able to take Calvin Johnson off your hands for Vick Ballard! Just like you’ve always known to watch out for guys slipping drugs in your drink at a party, you need to be prepared that someone will cruelly try to take advantage of you in a trade!
You must be cautious when talking smack
Half of the fun in fantasy football is running your mouth off and talking “smack” to the other owners in your league. But when you’re a female, it’s just not quite so simple. You want to tell John to “suck a fat, hairy… (you know what)…because he’s going down this week!” But if you do that, everyone’s opinion of you quickly changes. Instead of being the cool girl who plays in the league, you’re that weird chick that is way too manly and just takes it too far. Of course John can tell you that your team is “going to get pounded like a porn star” this week, and everyone finds it hysterical. As a woman, however, you must be cautious as to not talk too dirty and completely lose your femininity. The same rules that go for farting apply to smack talk in fantasy football-exercise modesty. What that means is instead of using the same vulgar language that they use, you must once again settle for a mundane response like, “you team sucks so bad, you’re going to lose!” No, it doesn’t give you real satisfaction, but you do get to retain some ounce of femininity.
When you win it’s all luck, but when you lose it’s because you are stupid and know nothing about football.
This one gets back to the main point that as a woman, you know nothing about sports and football….period. So when your fantasy team wins, it’s obviously all luck. Drew Brees threw for 300 yards and 2 touchdowns, and Giovani Bernard rushed for 40 yards and touchdown. Sorry honey, but that was all luck! I mean, it’s not like you drafted them because you thought that they were going to be good on a consistent basis or anything. And when you lose, it doesn’t matter that Larry Fitzgerald was on a bye or that Darren McFadden went out of the game in the first quarter after only rushing for 20 yards. You lost because you are a STUPID WOMAN!
And heaven forbid that you actually win your Fantasy Football League Championship…
So let’s just say that despite your womanly ineptitude, your team somehow, miraculously pulls off the impossible and wins you the coveted League Championship. Well, you finally have the opportunity to taste sweet, sweet revenge. Finally, after all of the “BS” that you put up with all season long from your male counterparts, you can throw it all back in their face and hold your head (and trophy) high. You have finally proved your worth and knowledge, and now you should get the respect you deserve. Will you actually get that respect? Probably not because, after all, you are a woman and no woman is capable of winning a Fantasy Football League Championship…well, unless it was all luck. If you are so fortunate to win, be prepared to be LeBron James and the rest of your league to be Skip Bayless. But it doesn’t matter, because you are CHAMPION! So take that trophy, put it on the mantle, and then go bake some cake….because let’s not forget that you are a woman and you do have kitchen responsibilities to attend to!
Michelle Sassouni lives in Tampa, FL and graduated from the University of South Florida with a B.A. in Communications and a B.A. in Criminology. She has been playing fantasy football for 9 years and is currently the defending champion of her league. Follow Michelle on Twitter @MSassouni