YEAH I SAID IT: 5 Reasons Fantasy Baseball is Better than Fantasy Football

Crammed in an undersized booth in the dimly lit basement of an old building, I had the best lasagna I’ve ever tasted.

I’m speaking, of course, of the currently-defunct Rathskeller in Chapel Hill, NC – “The Rat”, for short.

It’s the beloved memories of these ‘hidden gems’ that give us pause when we consider letting outsiders in on our favorite things. Positive experiences seem to be enhanced when we can share them with others- after all, what good is something if you can’t share it with the ones you love? We live in a social network-happy society, where every article or status update we read has a ‘share’ or ‘like’ button conveniently attached. We love to say “I tried this and liked it, and I’d like to share it with you.”

The problem with that line of thinking, using The Rat as an example, is this: subsequent experience with that thing you originally loved is much less likely to be positive when everyone else starts to like it too. If everyone follows your recommendation, it essentially diminishes the chance of you repeating the original experience, and effectively, kills the thing you love. That little secret hole-in-the-wall that served as your go-to safe haven now has a line waiting out the door. The dining room is crowded.

Fantasy football is the latest victim of the unintended diminished experience.

Most of you reading this are likely participating in at least one fantasy football league this year. Take a look at your fellow league members- at least one player in every league has been playing for 10+ years. A handful of others have been at it since just after the turn of the century (the dawn of the social network age), and the rest are relative newbies. Those of you who have been playing since the 1990s- can you honestly say it’s as fun now as it was then?

I’m not saying that the veteran fantasy players aren’t having a good time anymore, just that the influx of new players has changed the game. That Bowl of Cheese (The Rat’s name for their famed lasagna), isn’t your thing anymore, it’s everyone’s.

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimates 35 million adult Americans are playing fantasy sports in 2012. In 1994, I could only find 3 other people to play in my league.

The fantasy football dining room is now full, and the line is out the door.

I’ll never stop playing fantasy football, nor should you, but for fantasy die-hards- here are a few reasons you might give fantasy baseball another look:

5. It’s there for you everyday

Fantasy football lineups take under a minute to set for the week, and over-scrutinizing your moves (“tinkering”) will only hurt you in the long run. This is one of the factors that led to the boom in popularity of fantasy football, as busy adults can quickly check in on their teams and move on with their lives. If you’re seriously into playing fantasy sports though, wouldn’t you want something that demands your attention for more than one minute once a week?

Talk to corporate, approve memos, set fantasy football lineup

Once you set your fantasy football lineup, 80% of the real-life action that determines the outcome of your weekly matchup happens in a matter of 6 hours. Thirteen of the sixteen games on each week’s NFL schedule take place from 1 – 7pm EST every Sunday. That’s 1 day out of every 7, 6 hours out of every 168 that you can actively watch and root for your players. Yes, there are Sunday night, Monday night, and sometimes Thursday night games, I’ve taken those into account; and it’s never a given that you will even have players involved in those games.

So every Sunday, there’s a whirlwind 6 hour time frame in which you try to take in as much football as you can, and there’s absolutely no chance that you can see all of your players play. You might think you’re seeing it all, with the help of all of the various Red Zone channels, picture-in-picture, and other multimedia tools at your disposal, but you’re just catching highlights or happening to see a play here and there, not watching a whole game.

With baseball, it’s spread out. There are games every night. If you like watching your players play, you can; and you can watch the whole game, not just 10 second highlights. It’s much more fulfilling to the avid fantasy player.

4. Player updates are not a secret

How many times have you set a fantasy football lineup based on the latest report regarding their health or status on their team’s respective depth chart? Now count how many times you’ve been burned by that information. You can’t. It happens to someone every week.

New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick is notorious for intentionally skewing his team’s injury report to affect opposing coaches’ game planning and strategy. If you don’t know if a certain player is going to play, how can you form your plan for the week? This strategy is employed by many NFL teams, and makes fantasy planning slightly more frustrating than trying to DVR a scheduled program that comes on after a live sporting event.

In fantasy baseball, you know what you’re getting, and with plenty of advanced notice. If a player is injured, they are placed on the DL. If not, you’ll get an honest update as to their status with enough time to get them in or out of your lineup. The practice of ‘keeping it a secret’ until gametime doesn’t exist here, and if it does, it’s to a much less detrimental degree.

3. You’re in better company

My guess is, of the aforementioned 35 million Americans that are now playing fantasy sports, the majority of them are exclusively or primarily playing fantasy football. Again, this is no slight against them, but there’s no way all 35 million of them are avid fans of the sport. This is where you get the very casual fan, who only participates because they were invited. Not to say this is a bad thing, fantasy leagues can be a great social network, but there are drawbacks to such a rapid expansion of anything, not just fantasy football.

The more casual players you have in your league, the less actual humans show up for the draft. The fact that most leagues are played completely online now enables players to set their teams on autodraft and let the league’s host choose their teams. This takes a lot of the fun out of the draft. As the season wears on, the ultra-casual players’ interest in the league begins to wane, and crucial late-season matchup outcomes are determined not by skill, but by the fact that the casual players’ team sports a starting lineup full of injured, benched, and bye week players.

Don’t even get me started on lopsided trades involving seasoned players and the ultra-casual owners.

I traded LeSean McCoy to my husband for Tony Gonzalez! That’s good, right?

Fantasy baseball simply doesn’t attract the ultra-casual player. You’re either all in, or nothing. Baseball leagues still suffer through their share of owners who check out midseason, or trot out weekly lineups riddled with disabled or demoted players, but it’s much less of an issue than in football.

2. It’s less luck-based

When you win your weekly fantasy football matchup, it was due to unrivaled skill and fantasy acumen. When you lose, you blame it on dumb luck. While this seems to happen every week in every league, there is some truth to it- but the luck thing works both ways.

The best fantasy football player of all time couldn’t predict a kicker being worth 30 points in one game. That sure as hell happened one week in 2007, when Rob Bironas booted an NFL record 8 field goals and effectively won the fantasy matchup for all Bironas owners that week. I realize this is anecdotal, it’s not every week a kicker breaks an NFL record, but anomalies like this occur much more often in fantasy football than in any other sport. These anomalies are frustrating due to their unpredictable nature, and the fact that there is no skill involved in the decision that these owners reap the reward from.

You’re welcome, 2007 Rob Bironas owners!

Luck certainly plays a part in fantasy baseball (see: the perfect game), but it has much less of an affect on the overall outcome of the matchup, because there are six other days’ worth of games that factor into the final score. You can weather a Bironas-like storm and skill can prevail over luck.

1. There are more formats

Many of the millions who play fantasy football are in multiple leagues. Each league’s scoring settings are likely a bit different, but relatively similar. You get points for your players’ performances on the field. These points accumulate, the team with more points wins the matchup. Cut and dry, and undoubtedly another reason fantasy football has garnered such mainstream appeal in the last ten years.

Riveting.

Fantasy baseball offers vastly different formats. Points leagues operate on a similar format as fantasy football leagues, but you can also play in rotisserie (roto) leagues. Every season, I look forward to participating in multiple fantasy baseball leagues, because they offer different formats, thus keeping it interesting all year. No league is the same, and it takes a careful attention to detail, different details in each league, to succeed.

A much deeper level of skill and attention are needed to play fantasy baseball. Isn’t that what you want from your fantasy league? So, against my better judgement, I’d like to share fantasy baseball with you. There’s plenty of space in the dining room, and no waiting in line.

Howie Decker is the co-creator and editor of UnderScoopFire.com. He likes fantasy baseball (see?) & taco night. You can read his “Letter from the Editor” here. Follow him on Twitter @HowardtheDeck.