Girl's Guide to a Guy's Fantasy (Sports)

Gisele Bundchen stares seductively while thinking about how good her fantasy hockey team is. Courtesy of Tiago Chediak on Flickr.com.

With the fantasy football season now in the books, many new memories made and a championship belt securely fastened to my britches (thanks Mr. Crabtree), I fancy taking this time to explain fantasy sports to women.

Now that’s not to say all women don’t understand fantasy! Heck, in my other league I lost in the championship round to a savvy female owner. However, since joining the fantasy stratosphere a year ago, women have uttered many a misconception about this popular activity.

I shall now describe why we play to girls who aren’t familiar with fantasy sports.

Gisele Bundchen stares seductively while thinking about how good her fantasy hockey team is. Courtesy Tiago Chediak.

• Girls, remember the joy of getting a new Barbie? Think of fantasy sports as a place where guys can have their very own Barbies. We spend months experimenting with different groups of Barbies by drafting them, dropping them and signing new ones, trading them – all the while developing a deep bond with the ones we own. Then we pit them against other teams of Barbies to determine who has the best ones. And nobody makes fun of us for doing this because the Barbies are athletes!

• A successful fantasy team brings great confidence to its owner. For the most part, those who play know a good deal about the sport and its players before the season even begins. In other words, we’re all playing with the same chips. So when you win, it’s similar to when two girls walk into a bar wearing the same outfit and one of them thinks, My, I sure do look better in this than she does.

• Every other guy is doing it. (Hey, girls aren’t required to strut around in leggings, but that doesn’t seem to stop them.)

• Generally, guys get dressed and ready about twice as fast as girls. We have to do something to fill all that extra time.

• We need another excuse to watch The Game. For example, he says, But honey, the Bobcats are playing the Warriors! Her response, I’ve never even heard of those teams. His response, Well I have three players on my fantasy team in this game. Her response, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!

• That feeling of a “deep bond” I mentioned earlier, the one we make with the players on our team, that’s actually ridiculous. But that delusion doesn’t happen without reason. We are so deprived of friends as a result of spending all our time with a lover that we start to feel a sense of connection with an athlete we will never meet or even talk to. This goes for both guy and girl fantasy owners.

In 2010, this is what it looked like when we pitted our Barbies against each other. It still looks exactly like this. Courtesy of “permanently scatterbrained” from Flickr.com.

Okay, I can’t take it anymore. The jig is up. The real reason we play fantasy sports is to use it as a guise for meeting with friends to discuss politics, philosophy, art, religions and of course, the universe. However, only in a fantasy world would someone believe that’s what we were spending all those hours doing. And so it was dubbed: Fantasy Sports.