Al Behrman/ AP Images

This is the worst thing I have ever seen:


Oh yes. “Roster options,” on NFL.com’s fantasy football, is exactly what it sounds like: In exchange for cold hard American cash, you get the right to sub in a player from your bench if he outscored one in your starting lineup.

This is quite real and is active on NFL.com, though thankfully, only in custom “roster options” leagues. It’s 99 cents for a single switch, and $3.99 for unlimited switches in any given week.

HOW DO ROSTER OPTIONS WORK? Best of all, roster options are simple. It can’t be easier to get started today. Custom league manager turns the Roster Options setting on during the “Create League” process or via the “Edit Roster Options” manage tool.

Team Owners click “Buy” button available on My Team page for all benched players.

Complete the purchase process.

If a player you purchased an option for outscores a player in your starting lineup (at an eligible position), NFL.com automatically makes the post-game substitution and your total score is updated.




One saving grace is that you have to buy the option before that player’s game, so I couldn’t have slunk in on Sunday night and swapped in Jay Ajayi’s surprise 200-yard day that I definitely didn’t see coming. It’s like buying insurance. But it’s still terrible! The best/most painful part of fantasy football is agonizing over whom to sit and whom to start, and discarding that phase of the game for tryhard assholes with too much disposable cash is just, just awful. This is bad and NFL.com should feel bad.

I know we as a nation are torn over just about everything, from politics to religion to mayonnaise. But I really think this is one thing that can truly bring us together: The government should immediately move to amend the Constitution to prevent this from being legal, and if they won’t, we should assemble with pitchforks and torches in front of the house of whoever invented this.

(Also, Yahoo is the only good fantasy site anyway.)