Theodore Bach

Opinion contributor

As a philosophy professor, I would have told you that fantasy football is the least philosophical thing in the world. Then my neighbors roped me into joining their fantasy football league, and I discovered that fantasy football gave expression to a variety of philosophical lessons. Could fantasy football make people wise?

For the uninitiated, fantasy football is a competitive game played between people who are not themselves football players. Competitors draft real football players to form their “fantasy team,” and if the drafted players perform well in actual games then one’s fantasy team performs well. This is not a fringe activity. Fifty-nine million people in North America played fantasy sports last year. But why think it confers life wisdom?

You can't control everything. First, it drives home a central tenet of philosophical stoicism, which is that we ought to focus on what we can control while making peace with what we cannot.

You’ve drafted the perfect fantasy roster. Your team is balanced, and your fantasy future looks bright. Then your star running back tears his ACL; your promising receiver is suspended; and your starting tight end has inexplicably caught only three passes through seven games. Should you get bummed out because you were singled out for misfortune?

No. According to philosophical stoics like Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius, to indulge that feeling is to make an error in judgment. The error is believing, if only implicitly, that indifferent forces are somehow interested in us or “up to us.”

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If you enter your fantasy season with the expectation that unwelcome contingencies should not happen to you, then you guarantee your own frustration. The random machinations of a given NFL season have no interest in you, and they are beyond your sphere of influence. A single season of playing competitive fantasy football with one’s neighbors is ruthlessly effective at instilling this overlooked principle of stoic living.

Seek different perspectives. Fantasy football also makes you wise by reminding you of your cognitive biases. Consider “confirmation bias,” which is when we selectively seek out evidence that supports a hypothesis we already hold. Suppose your gut tells you to “start” the Browns quarterback this week on your fantasy roster. It is a risky move. If only an expert could shed some light.

It turns out, there are hundreds of websites and podcasts, each offering weekly “expert advice” and rankings. If you go searching online for confirmation of your fantasy football theory, you will quickly find a source who will tell you what you wanted to hear. But if your interest is in making sound judgments, you should avoid this method of belief-formation at all costs. Better to learn this lesson playing fantasy football than when selecting a career-path, life partner, or political official.

Connect with community. Lastly, fantasy football makes us wiser by reminding us to commune and go analog. I was fortunate to join a neighborhood league where the “fantasy draft” is a six hour back-yard event. During the season, league members meet regularly to watch games and discuss politics. As contemporary American culture grows increasingly digitized and polarized (these trends are not unrelated), it is important to remember the virtues of in-person gatherings and discussion.

Are the above philosophical life-hacks just rationalizations of time wasted playing fantasy football? The question misses the point.

Albert Camus argued that it was incumbent on the cursed Sisyphus to find value in his endless task of hauling a boulder up and down a mountain. You can take a reflective attitude to just about anything. There is a valuable opportunity for millions of people to develop a reflective attitude toward fantasy football. Doing so can pay dividends in life’s more important arenas.

Theodore Bach is an associate professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University Firelands College in Ohio.