I have no idea why, but my fears of getting hate mail or death threats simply have not (yet) materialized. Knowing what I know about what happens to those who poke their heads out of anonymity long enough to point out societal racism or the need for anti-racist and feminist dialogue in a community that may not be the most welcoming to that conversation (yet), I expected the worst. What I’ve gotten instead has been nothing short of amazing. The only unprompted blog-related e-mails I get are either a) people asking me for advice on some sticky piece of ambiguity or another; or b) telling me how amazing I am. I am always happy to do what I can for the ‘a)’ people, and the ‘b)’ people consistently knock me on my ass and leave me sputtering to convey adequate thanks.
That being said, I do get a fair amount of spam from people who advertise themselves as ‘publicists’, hawking this book or that one. A lot of them are pr0-religion or talking about some miracle cure for some disease; a very precious few are about interesting and useful scientific studies; most of them, however, are useless and deleted immediately. Despite my repeated attempts to unsubscribe from whatever mailing list I’m on, they flow in at the rate of one or two a day, which I am happy to chalk up as a minor annoyance.
Until today, when I received an e-mail entitled “Fake it Till You Make It” – 10 Fantasy Football Tips Every Girl Should Know ASAP:
Dear , [no name. Not off to a great start…]
Hope you are well [no you don’t, you fucking liar]. There is nothing hotter for a guy than to see a girl in a football jersey [um… it’s sad that you either believe this or think that other people do. Setting aside the stupidity of assuming that what I find ‘hot’ has primarily to do with their clothes, there are a lot of things I’d find more appealing on a woman than a football jersey.], why not have some insider advice [remember this phrase for when you see what their actual ‘insider advice’ is] in your pocket to go along with that? With football season on the horizon, plenty of boyfriends, husbands and friends have already begun turning their attention to the game and the “dreaded” fantasy football [and, y’know… some women who actually enjoy football. But I guess that’s like talking about a unicorn to you].
Whether your readers would secretly love to get in the game themselves but are too nervous, or would love to find a way to get in the conversation and maybe impress a special someone, the team at SFF – Suicide Fantasy Football – offering a new twist on the traditional fantasy platform with user friendly sign-up, “no-research” rankings, auto-picks, and more, put together a list of tips every girl should know:
As a guy who knows fuck all about football, I’m a little cheesed that it’s only “girls” who can benefit from what will clearly be a list of super-insightful tips, but hey at least I’ll get some useful advice.
1. Don’t draft Peyton Manning. He’s coming back from injury and will be a big question mark this year
See? This is good to know! I spent a few seasons thinking that Peyton’s nickname was “Eli” before I realized there were two Mannings playing football. Their parents must be proud. Prognosticate on, oh wise soothsayer!
2. Kickers don’t matter
I guess don’t tell that to these guys?
3. Draft Brandon Lloyd – You may not know him, but he’s with Tom Brady and that’s a good thing for fantasy football!
Sure. Never heard of him, but you haven’t steered me wrong so far.
4. Brett Favre retired
Yeah, like twenty times. Pretty sure if I know this, everyone knows this.
5. Don’t pick players based on looks, just because Sanchez and Tebow are hot, doesn’t mean they can throw a football
…
What?
Your sage advice is seriously “don’t pick the cutest boy”? If you think football is decided by a goddamn beauty pageant, you’re probably too stupid to read this e-mail anyway. The number of people for whom this is actual useful advice is roughly the same number of people whose relationships will be ruined by legal gay marriage – zero!
6. Stay away from anybody on the Washington Redskins. That’s right, we said it!
That’s just good advice for life, though. Racist-ass name.
7. Don’t overvalue teams from your hometown or geographic location
Um, you sent this to a Canucks fan. Hockey fans in general will always root for ‘their’ team, regardless of their record. At least ‘my’ guys have a couple of Presidents Trophies.
8. Give your guy a 12:50pm reminder to set his lineup
That’s pretty considerate, but of course you think the “girls” reading this article are dumbfounded by pretty faces, so I’m surprised you think enough of them to believe them capable of working an alarm clock.
9. Pick a really fun team name
This will definitely help me win! Thanks for the tip, genius!
10. Never pick players based on the color of their jersey
Oh what the fuuu…
Please let me know if you would be interested to use this list for your readers or if you would like to speak with someone from SFF [Oh I definitely want to speak to someone from SFF. The problem is that ze may not get a word in edgewise]. More information about SFF is below and feel free to check out: www.suicidefantasyfootball.com
Thanks and look forward to hearing from you [I somehow doubt it]!
Aileen [This e-mail brought to you by our sponsor: internalized misogyny!]
SFF – Suicide Fantasy Football is the perfect game for beginners and the most experienced alike to get turned on to the fantasy football bug! Here’s what’s great about SFF:
- There is no draft. Picking players is a breeze with all the research work done for you by the SFF team.
- No smoke filled room and 4 hour meetings with guys talking about their glory days
- You can learn as much or as little as you want about the players and teams and come out looking like an expert from
It’s as simple as fantasy football can get. Our website ranks players from worst to best or best to worst for simple selection. By week 2 or 3 you’ll know all the names and where they stand in the NFL rankings. It will be great to surprise them over Thursday night dinner when you ask them who the better player is this week, Peyton manning or Tom Brady [That is, unless you’re perioding too hard to get out of the kitchen with those sammiches]?
Aileen has asked me to remove her personal info from this page. Gee, I thought she wanted publicity?
My response was pretty short: “Please don’t send me any more sexist shit like this. What the HELL are you thinking?”
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Should I not pick players based on their home or away jerseys? The Oakland Raiders have really cool looking black home jerseys but really meh white away jerseys. So which jersey should I ignore?
The white ones. always ignore the white ones.
To be fair, while kickers are of course important to a real football team, they’re nearly irrelevant in fantasy football since they generate so few points.
Not, of course, that this has any effect on the substance of your takedown 🙂
But by that logic, centres, blockers, and all defensive linemen are nearly irrelevant too, since they generate NO points (except for recovered fumbles). I’d imagine that it would be pretty easy to generate a weighted score for kickers to make them commensurate with offensive players.
Also, I know next to nothing about how fantasy leagues work, hence my disappointment at how shitty this “insider information” was.
OMG, REVERSE RACISM!!1!1!1
Not only are there two Mannings presently playing football, their father, Archie Manning was the star quarterback playing for several really bad teams in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Mind = blown
The first time I played fantasy football, I picked all my players based on how interesting/funny/unpronounceable I found their last names, and then I gave my team the most stereotypically girly sounding name I could think of: Princess Sparklepony.
I was league champion that year.
When I first started reading this, I got really confused because for me, Fantasy Football = soccer-football, not American Football-football.
I mean, it’s still confusing, because I know fuck-all about American football, but it’s now expected-confusing, rather than, “what the fuck is this I swear this disregards all the stuff I actually know?”
They also have an older brother named Cooper Manning would would have at least played college football, if not turned pro, had he not been diagnosed with spinal stenosis when he was 18.
Keep away from Cooper
I once got into a prolonged and heated argument with an Australian over which of our countries was superior at hockey. He tried to convince me that the Australian national hockey team regularly won gold medals. I told him I’ve never even HEARD of an Australian national hockey team.
It took far too long for us to realize that Canadians don’t call it “ice hockey”, and Australians don’t call it “field hockey”.
But yes, Americans should start calling it “hand egg”. For everyone’s sake.
The stupid, it burns…
Renaming American style football to “hand egg” = 100% Pure WIN!
Other than to keep beer cool, is there any reason for Australians to have ice? Canadians need ice to play hockey and build igloos, but Australians can get by with refrigerators.
What a question! Of course we need ice in Australia!
How else would we make ice cream, and what would we put in drinks to keep them cold?
This brings up a good point: how do these women manage to type their picks into the computatron with all those sammiches they have to carry? Not to mention the (obligatory) wet nail polish. Astonishing!
Oooh, connections between Mannings! Now let’s 6-degree with Preston Manning! 😉
I don’t know you but I think I love you for that team name alone.
Now I want to set up a team based on this advice, a team based on how much I like their uniforms and a team based on who I think is the cutest and see which one does best. I give them all even odds.
I participate in a lot of sports betting pools with my husband. I’m not in the slightest interested in sports, but I love to bet. I usually just look at the team names and pick which names I like best, which ones “seem” like they would be good (usually teams from the (Midwest or South) and any team with this one coach I
Iike (though I never remember his name). He is a walking encyclopedia of sports. I always do better than he does. I have won several times and usually come in in the top five at least.
The fantastic part is that we both have fun without me having to pretend to like sports just to gain his approval. And I can treat him to dinner and gloat afterwards.
Well I just pick the players from the team that hail from cities I prefer to shop in. Ohh, which city has the best shoe and handbag shopping….yeah pick a manly man from that team! Or wait, which city has the best spa providing the most superior mani-(ooh the has the word man in it, giggle giggle) pedi package? Pick a few players from that team. Oh my stars, but this is fun!
I always wondered about the Redskins though. Name the team located in the capital city of the land once belonging to a group the most racist word for that group you can find? I’m sure we can all think of the equivalent for say, the Charleston _____ (South Carolina ).
Also my wife knows way more about football (hand egg :D) than I do, and she is from a football = soccer country. I still don’t even know how you know what “down” it is.
Actually, you usually pick an entire defense and not individual players on the defense, unless it differs from league to league or something, which it might.
I guess I hallucinated all of those hours that I spent discussing dream lineups with my husband. It was probably the fumes from the hair dye. :(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(
We had it all planned out: Cam Newton should go to the Steelers so that they don’t have a rapist for a quarterback anymore and I can finally root for Tomlin and Polamalu (God-botherer though he is, he’s a phenomenal safety and seems to be a very nice guy) in peace. Newton has roughly the same skill set as Roethlisberger, but he’s better and he’s younger and he doesn’t rape people. Roethlisberger goes to the Jets because they’re a bunch of sexist douchers anyway and he’ll fit right in and fuck the Jets. (Unfortunately, far fewer picks would be thrown by Roethlisberger than were by Sanchez.) Sanchez could be tossed to the Panthers, to rot in obscurity as he should because he’s a no-talent hack.
Situations might have changed, though, since I’ve not kept an eye on changes to the rosters in the off-season. Maybe that’s because I’m a girl.
Seriously, watch out for Cam Newton. He’s going to be something else, y’all. I don’t do team loyalty, so it’s Cam and the 49ers because they were beautiful to watch and I love a good defense. I just want to see a good game.
Sorry; I just hallucinated some more.
It’s like picking the good beers at the festivals. The good ones are the ones with the most ridiculous names, because it means that the makers were happily drunk off their own produce when the naming was done.
So if you ever go to a beer festival, stay away from the Membury Original Ale, and head straight for a pint of Velvet Frogbit*.
*Not, AFAIK, real beer names
There’s another subtle problem with this fabulous advice that has slipped through the cracks:
The idea there is that fantasy football players have until the kickoff of the first game of the weekend to set their lineups; after that, things can’t be changed, because then games are in motion and fiddling with lineups would be much like betting on a horse race after it’s started.
Clearly, the essay picks 12:50 P.M. on the theory that it’s ten minutes before the beginning of the first NFL games on Sundays at 1:00.
One problem: the NFL Sunday schedule only starts at 1:00 P.M. for people in the Eastern Time Zone. If one lives elsewhere (say, in British Columbia?), “a 12:50pm reminder” will be hours too late (almost three hours, in Pacific Time BC) to set “your guy”’s lineup.
Given the contempt for the intelligence for the reader this dreck was written for, surely they should have explained that the reminder should be set for substantially earlier than 12:50 P.M. Sunday for any “guy” who lives west of Indianapolis (or Thunder Bay, as the case may be)?
“Hand egg” is great! I’m still not sure why they didn’t go with “tackleball” right from the start, though.
Are you kidding? Robbie Gould has won me the game more than once. Honestly, if I were to pick a position that does me the least good it’s tight end. I once in a while I get a breakaway game, but rarely do the ever make the difference. (unless you get first pick in the draft and nab someone amazing)
Fantasy football has long intrigued me, in much the same way as, say, ballroom dance. Either you know EVERYthing about it, or NOthing. Very few people dabble in either.
That said, it occurs to me that fantasy football is D&D for people who don’t know they’re nerds. And I say that as someone who has been playing/DMing D&D for almost thirty years.
I’ve done that for hockey pools that I’ve been. I’m usually too lazy to go and do the hard work of looking up stats for the work pools. Although I never come up with really inventive names, I’ve come close to winning the pools.. and as an aside Go Nucks Go and right now Go Whitecaps Go!
I laughed so hard reading this that I had tears rolling down my face and my wife asked me what the fuck was wrong with me.
I work as a sports therapist at a University with a football program. Every year some alumni host a “wives and girlfriends of football” event where they go over the rules, discuss differences between the positions etc…(because y’know – no girls know any football rules and guys apparently get sport rules encoded in the womb…or something). They also have a fantasy football league as a fund-raiser. Maybe I should send them a link to this post hahaha.
Awesome stuff.
AP
Ugh, my brother’s high school football team did the same thing (a “moms and girlfriends” day to teach the ladies how the game works), until a couple years ago they realized that most of the super-competative sports moms who’ve been driving their kids to practices and games for ten years actually (and unsurprisingly) had a better grasp of the game than the kid they sent out to explain it. Now it’s just a general meet-and-greet with the coaches and parents…though they still have the (super cute, I think) tradition of getting the moms (or grandmas, sisters, girlfriends, whoever the kid wants) to dress up in their son’s uniform and play a game against each other. Every year it’s awesome to see 80 year old “Grandma Football” out playing rougher than anyone esle…she put several kids and grandkids through the program over the years, some of whom went on to play for some good schools (and one went pro). She’s awesome! I’d love to see what she’d think of this advice. 🙂
Wait – so there was a real, actual Aileen? Color me surprised.
I used to watch football while stoned on acid. Made it actually interesting. Without drugs, it’s pretty boring.
Now, some years later, I’m married to a guy who fortunately is uninterested in football. He loves curling. We’re even going to the World Championships next year in Victoria.
Also, we watch many many hours of the Tour de France every July.
That’s it for us in terms of sport.
I agree with you on the hockey thing. The two or three years I played, my fantasy hockey team always had as many Blackhawks players as possible (which is difficult, because it’s usually a league with many other Chicagoans).
And I always drafted Patrick Sharp first. Partly because he was hot. He’s also a great player, so it worked out. 🙂
Also, first time poster. Hi!
Hullo!