Fantasy Life: The Outrageous, Uplifting, and Heartbreaking World of Fantasy Sports from the Guy Who's Lived It

by Matthew Berry

  13.

  The Challenges of Playing Fantasy at Work

  or

  “I Should Have Fired Him by Week Four”

  The conference room table.

  What I remember most was the conference room table.

  It was big, made of rich mahogany, and seemed to stretch forever. I was dressed up and shaved, a rarity for me in those days, and as I was shown in I hoped they would tell me where to sit. I had never had a meeting as big as this, so I was nervous. What do I do? Sit close so they can hear? Farther away to show respect? Do I take the drink offered or not? Okay, they just brought me the drink. No coaster? I’m gonna leave a mark. I can’t leave a mark, right? I’ll just use my notes. I remember my last thought before it started: Please don’t throw up.

  He was impressive in person. He was in charge of one of the biggest sports media companies in the world. I was passionate. I had ideas. I pitched my little heart out.

  “Fantasy sports are more than a fad. This space is going to explode. You have a real opportunity here. I think I can help.”

  He looked at me as he considered my whole presentation. He seemed to be thinking but gave away nothing. He thanked me for my time and the thought I had given this. He said he’d be in touch.

  A week later, I got the call: they were passing, but they wished me luck.

  Now completely out of show business, I was pitching to whoever would listen. Different media companies, TV stations, cable channels, websites, radio stations; if they had an audience, I gave them a full-blown presentation. PowerPoints and press clippings and stats and research with passion.

  And none of it mattered.

  They were passing, but they wished me luck.

  I’m pretty sure I lead the world in luck wished during those years.

  Having just quit Hollywood and gone through a divorce, I wasn’t exactly flush with money. I wasn’t broke, but what I did have I wanted to save. Who knew when (or even if) I’d make a living from these websites, so the only way to promote them was with, gulp, me.

  So after every rejection, it was back to the phones, emails, brainstorming.

  And I kept the faith.

  I’m a never-say-die guy. Sometimes stupidly, often stubbornly, but I am, to my core, a never-ever-say-die guy. The best way to get me to do something is to tell me I can’t. I didn’t get into many of the colleges I applied to and shouldn’t have been admitted to Syracuse. Only a bunch of videos I’d made as a high school kid got me past my unimpressive high school résumé.

  I was fired as the host of a college TV talk show because they felt I was too uncomfortable on TV. I was forced to quit writing for my college newspaper. I was fired from my first production assistant job in Hollywood. I was fired a week into my first professional TV writing job. In show business, I was turned down for representation 14 different times, including twice by 3 Arts Entertainment, which ended up representing this book.

  But I kept the faith.

  I wrote for years in Hollywood, and the only movie that ever got made from one of my scripts was the worst one my writing partner and I ever wrote. We got screwed over by studio execs, movie producers, and other writers. I tried to get a side job for fun writing fantasy at two different websites before catching on at Rotoworld. And I was eventually fired from there.

  And I kept the faith.

  Which I would have to continue to do because what other choice did I have? I was unemployed, approaching middle age, and suddenly single. And I wanted fantasy sports to become my work.

  Pipe dream.

  Frankly, it’s a dream I’ve heard from a lot of people over the years. Not just because they love it, but because if fantasy sports is their work, then they won’t get into trouble when they do fantasy at work.

  Yes, despite growing in popularity, fantasy sports still hadn’t become mainstream. No major media companies were committing to them at the time, and even “normal” companies frowned upon their employees playing them.

  But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. And just like I kept hearing “no” when I was trying to turn my hobby into work, when people combine fantasy sports and work, it often doesn’t go well.

  Isaac Robinson is the commissioner (and, he’d like you to know, 2012 league champion) of the Hopeful Chiefs Fan League out of Chanute, Kansas. In the league, they have a trophy for the guy who wins, of course, but also one for whoever comes in last.

  “It’s called the You Suck Balls Award,” Isaac explains, “and it’s made of a block of wood. Affixed to the top of the wood block is an athletic cup, the whole thing is spray-painted gold, and the team names of the ‘winners’ are engraved on the side.”

  In this league, Royce, owner of Raider Nation, has “won” the loser’s award for two years running. Now, it’s normally awarded during the following year’s draft, but Royce was working then and it could not be presented to him in person. So, on August 18, the trophy was delivered to Royce’s porch.

  And that’s where the trouble begins. You see, the job that caused Royce to miss the draft? It was working for a congressman. A controversial one. One who had been getting death threats. So when Royce comes home to find a ratty cardboard box sealed with duct tape and a scrawled note saying, “Special delivery for Royce,” what does he do?

  Exactly. DEA, ATF, bomb squad, FBI agents are all dispatched to his house. “The neighborhood was evacuated,” Isaac remembers. “The roads were all closed. TV reporters and vans were covering it.”

  While this is going on, the FBI tries to contact the congressman to make sure he is okay. He’s actually on a plane and unreachable (the FBI doesn’t know this yet), so they rush to his house. Naturally, the congressman’s wife is freaked out by men in black clothes shining flashlights in her windows, so she calls the police. Now there’s a showdown at the house between the local cops and the FBI!

  Meanwhile, back at Royce’s house, the bomb squad has brought in . . . wait for it . . . the bomb squad robot.

  So, hidden behind protective shields, with all the FBI, ATF, and bomb squad department people nervously watching, the technician is using the robot to remotely scan the mysterious box to find . . . the words YOU SUCK BALLS staring back at them!

  Isaac spends the next hour patiently trying to explain to the FBI that no, he does not mean any threat to the congressman, and that Royce does, in fact, suck balls at fantasy football.

  Eventually, everything is figured out and Royce confirms the trophy is part of his league.

  The final tally, Isaac?

  “My league’s trophy is now in Washington, DC, in the possession of the ATF, and still has to be analyzed for terror. I believe I am now on some FBI watch lists, and my league cost our government millions of dollars and many hours of law enforcement manpower . . . all because my friend had to work instead of coming to the draft.”

  And of course, because he sucks balls at fantasy.

  I’m guessing Royce’s boss wasn’t too thrilled with him after that whole episode. By missing the draft, Royce accidentally caused disaster, but sometimes disaster happens during the draft because of work.

  Dave Nardelli is in the “Crew League” with nine coworkers. He travels for work, so it’s no surprise that during his draft in 2011 he was, once again, on the road. Specifically, he was in a hotel room, waiting to draft online, when his phone rang.

  A coworker was on the business trip with Dave and was calling from the hospital. The coworker was actually supposed to be in the hospital overnight, but suddenly he had been released and needed to be picked up. And of course, Dave had the only rental car.

  “I’m pissed . . . 10 minutes till draft time,” Dave says. “But I get in the car and call my wife. ‘Babe, you need to log on to ESPN for me and help me draft over the phone.’” With his wife, Dave made a few picks on the 30-minute drive to the hospital. He then pulled into the hospital parking lot.<
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  “My coworker opens the passenger side door to get in, and as he’s doing that . . . he falls to the ground. He is having a grand mal seizure.”

  Obviously, Dave instantly hung up the phone to help his coworker, leaving his wife to try and finish the draft on her own. “Just go down the rankings sheet!” he yelled, and hung up.

  But fantasy karma had his back. By doing the right thing and blowing off his draft to help his coworker (who should never have been released from the hospital in the first place), Dave’s wife ended up picking a helluva team. Percy Harvin, Jimmy Graham . . . Team SNards finishes in the money. So the story has a happy ending. Except for Dave’s coworker. He’s dead. Kidding. Maybe. I should check.

  You can call me crazy, call me a dreamer, call me a hopeless romantic, but I’d like to think that, faced with helping a coworker who’s having a seizure or finishing your fantasy draft, everyone would help the coworker. Or at least multitask. But sometimes the decisions about what to do when fantasy sports and work intersect are not so clear-cut.

  “Since charges are still pending, I should probably just use my first name.” That’s Sam. Sam’s story takes place at a TV news station. They had a work league that included everyone from the news director and anchors down to photographers and production assistants (PAs). The season was going along fine, and one of the guys in the league, we’ll call him “Yancy,” was on pace to make the playoffs. But while that was happening on the virtual field, suddenly things were amiss at work.

  Due to the legal nature of the story, Sam can’t give specifics, but the company launched an investigation with the local police, and came up with the perpetrator, who was let go. Exclaims Sam, “I would have never guessed in a million years who it turned out to be.”

  Yancy?

  “Yancy!”

  I guessed on the first try. Of course, I was only given two names, and it wasn’t likely Sam would tell a story about himself getting fired, so not exactly Sherlock Holmes either.

  Sam continues: “Needless to say, it was a surprise to everyone when the email came out about him being fired in connection with the investigation. And it seems weird, because this is a real-life situation where someone lost his job, but after the initial shock, the first question that came to mind was: how would this affect the league?”

  I get it. Yancy didn’t do anything wrong in the league itself, but all the league members were people from work. And he was fired from work with good reason. Why do I think Miss Manners never has to deal with this?

  So what’d you guys do?

  “Well, the commish immediately locked him out of his team. Someone would set his roster that week, but that didn’t solve our long-term problem. Do we kick him out or let him finish the season? But if he wins it all, then what? Do we withhold the money? Roll it over to next season? I wrote in to your podcast, Matthew, and you suggested we kick him out.”

  That’s right, I did!

  “Your reasoning was, ‘What’s he gonna do, sue?’”

  Well, did he?

  “No.”

  Told you.

  “Yep. And even though Yancy’s team qualified for the playoffs, the team with the next-best record took his spot. I made it to the championship game, but ended up losing in the Super Bowl to . . . you guessed it . . . the team that only got in because we kicked Yancy out. That team ended up running the table. Stupid Drew Brees.”

  Yeah, that was the year that Drew Brees was trying hard to break Dan Marino’s record, and the Saints kept pouring it on. I played Brees in a couple of finals that year myself. Stupid Drew Brees indeed. But even though it didn’t go the way you wanted, Sam, your commish handled it perfectly.

  There is no more thankless job in fantasy than the league commissioner. Coordinating draft times, chasing league dues, having to rule between friends, enforcing rules, everyone’s always bitching at you (or about you). It just sucks.

  Like being a boss in the workplace, where many of the same issues often arise. You have to make tough decisions, people are never happy, and the pressure to get the job done is ultimately on you. It’s a tough gig.

  I’ve been a commish of many leagues and also a boss on multiple occasions, and it’s no accident that I am no longer in charge of any leagues or any people.

  So if doing either job is a bitch, what if you’ve got both jobs? And over the same group of people? That’s the situation “Spencer Meteer” (not his real name) found himself in. He is the commissioner of a league that is the “Shangri-La of fantasy leagues.”

  It’s a very involved league with off-season rules meetings, tons of trash talk, and a highly anticipated trophy presentation ceremony, complete with half-dressed trophy models.

  The problem? The league consists of the CFO, CEO, two senior VPs, the controller, and a bunch of “worker bees” at a midsize, publicly traded company. Once you’re in the league, you keep your franchise forever.

  Unless you’re fired.

  Apparently, in 2010, there were some screwups in the internal reporting. The senior VP of finance blamed a worker bee, so the worker bee was fired and, more important, removed from the league. Nine months later, no more worker bee, but still the same issues with reporting. It’s clear the problem is the senior VP of finance. And that leads to Spencer’s dilemma.

  “The hard part of the decision wasn’t whether I should fire the guy . . . it was when I should fire the guy,” Spencer explains. “I was having real internal struggles with my work/fantasy football life balance. He needed to go, but we also needed him in the league. He was the returning champion, in the playoff hunt, and a leading scorer. This would be an unprecedented decision and could send shock waves through the league! I should have fired him by week four, but since I didn’t, I was stuck. Especially since it was getting late in the season, so I knew I couldn’t hire a replacement for him in just two weeks. So, as boss first and commissioner second, there was only one correct decision to make. And that, very simply, was to keep him on and root like hell he didn’t make the playoffs.”

  Let this be another lesson, kids. If you’re gonna screw up your job, make sure you’re doing well in the work fantasy league.

  Well, fantasy karma once again smiled, this time on Spencer: the senior VP had the second-highest weekly score in week 13, but faced the highest-scoring team. The VP just missed the playoffs.

  “Monday I go in and meet with HR and go through the formal process for termination. I call him into my office on Tuesday morning and let him know that I have to let him go. He sat stunned for a moment and asked why, and I explained why. He asked if there was anything he could do to change my mind, and it took everything not to say he should have been gone in week four!”

  As the senior VP walked out of the meeting he said to Spencer, “I hope this doesn’t mean I am out of the league.”

  Spencer was shocked. “A guy with a wife and four kids just loses his $180K job and is concerned about a $200 fantasy football league! I just replied, ‘This is strictly professional.’ He smiled and said ‘Okay.’ I’m just going to have to wait until the off-season to let him know he’s out.”

  Or you could just give him a copy of this book. Highlight that last sentence and bookmark it. He’ll get the hint. But, Spencer, I am amazed by the fact that you would keep a terrible employee who caused another employee to be fired just to preserve the sanctity and integrity of a fantasy league.

  “Hey, that is what a commissioner does to protect his league.”

  Issues like that one didn’t stop fantasy football from being played in a lot of workplaces back then, but they certainly didn’t help. And I kept facing opposition in major media when I’d pitch my fantasy sports ideas in those days because people had so many negative preconceived notions about it.

  No, it is not gambling.

  No, it is not just for nerds.

  No, it is not hard to play.

 
; But maybe the biggest challenge was the belief that fantasy is detrimental to work. Many companies then had (and still have even now) Internet firewalls blocking access to fantasy websites and content. And many places had specific rules against playing, discussing, or even emailing about fantasy football.

  The fantasy sports goalies (“No fantasy is getting in here! Nothing fun!”) at work would base their policies in large part because of a study done by the research firm of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. They would read blaring headlines and hyperbole-filled articles, like this excerpt from a site called Replicon.com.

  Fantasy Football Sacks Office Productivity for $18.7 Billion—How Much Is It Costing Your Company?

  Recent studies suggest that Fantasy Football players are costing employers as much as $1.1 billion in lost productivity every week of the 17-week National Football League season.

  This study, conducted by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., took the estimated number of current fantasy football participants and multiplied that number by their average earnings every 10 minutes, about $6, resulting in a staggering weekly total of $1.1 billion.

  Challenger’s calculation assumes participants spend 10 minutes per day, or almost an hour a week, drafting players, setting rosters and plotting strategy at the office. While another survey of 1,200 fantasy sports participants found that 60 percent spent more than an hour each day thinking about their fantasy teams.

  I would fight the perception whenever I could. No one works eight hours straight. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, texting, gossiping at the coffee machine, checking email, online games, whatever . . . everyone’s brain needs a break.

  During those years, it felt like every time fantasy sports took one step forward it would take two steps back. You’d hear something positive, like someone famous admitting he played fantasy. Then you’d hear something negative, like what happened to Cameron Pettigrew.

  As a relationship manager for the private-client group at Fidelity Investments, Cameron understood the importance of camaraderie and relationships. So playing in a $20 fantasy football league made perfect sense.