Fantasy Football Injustice: How I got screwed over $1200

Damar Hamlin collapsing on the football field was one of the scariest moments in NFL history. An NFL player making a routine tackle, standing up and then going completely limp after going into cardiac arrest.

The event was so traumatic that both the Bengals and Bills agreed the game should not continue. Thankfully, Hamlin survived that night and has made remarkable progress in his recovery.

The other layer to this story is how Fantasy Football commissioners should handle their leagues if that Monday night game was set to determine who claims first place.

Here was the situation in my league entering that Monday night game in Cincinnati:

As you can see, “Mike’s Primo Team” led by 27.76 points with Tee Higgins remaining. My team, “Drive For 28”, had Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase remaining and was projected to win by a narrow margin. Keep in mind the payout scenario in this league. First place receives $1500, while second place gets just $300, a massive difference.

Next, there was a text exchange involving me, Mike from “Mike’s Primo Team” and the commissioner, Jacob:

This is only a portion of the conversation, but you sort of get the gist here. I asked Mike what he thinks is a fair way to decide who wins. He replied “Want to do 50/50?”. I agreed and thought everything was settled.

Then 2 days later, the commissioner replied saying he will have a ruling Monday, January 9th at 5pm (which never happened by the way). I was surprised by this because Mike and I agreed each splitting $900 was fair, if the commissioner was so insistent on not using stats from another Bengals game.

I then stayed silent awaiting a ruling until this past Friday, when I texted the commissioner suggesting that since we don’t have a ruling yet, let’s use the stats for Burrow, Chase and Higgins from the Divisional Round game against the Bills, the same opponent as the Week 17 canceled game, to decide the winner. Here’s how that exchange played out:

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I texted the newly crowned winner, Mike, and this is how that conversation went:

As you can see, no response. Mike took the money and ran. Just like that, after 2 days of silence, I lost.

No 50/50 split, no getting the chance to use stats from Ja’Marr Chase and Joe Burrow. The ultimate deciding factor according to the commissioner was I didn’t have another receiver on my bench to replace Chase, so therefore I lost. If I would have been prepared for this unprecedented scenario, I absolutely would have made sure to have a backup WR. But it was the Fantasy Championship. My team was set. What did I need a backup WR for who was never going to play?

For additional context, if we would have used stats from any of the Bengals games following the Damar Hamlin incident, here’s how the scoring would have gone:

Week 18:

Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase: 35 points

Tee Higgins: 1.7 points

Difference of 33.3 = Drive For 28 wins

Wild Card Game:

Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase: 45 points

Tee Higgins: 9 points

Difference of 36 = Drive For 28 wins

Divisional Round vs Bills:

Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase: 41 points

Tee Higgins: 5.8 points

Difference of 35.2 = Drive For 28 wins

In all 3 of these scenarios, my team wins. But for some reason which I will never understand, the commissioner was unable to make a single compromise and I lost out on $1200. You really can’t make this stuff up.

 

2020: A year unlike any other

What a year. What a time. Who in their right mind when the calendar struck Jan. 1, 2020 would have ever in a million years imagined a year like the one we just encountered? I’m eagerly awaiting the day when my grandson asks me 45 years from now how I possibly got through it? What a story I will have to tell.

The craziest part is 2020 wasted no time. On New Year’s Day, David Stern, arguably the greatest sports commissioner of all-time died at the age of 77. That should have been a sign. Then 25 days later, what I had no doubt would be the sports story of the year took place. Kobe Bryant, one of the most iconic basketball players ever was killed in a helicopter crash in California while attempting to fly to his daughter’s basketball game. He was 41. The night prior, LeBron James passed him on the all-time scoring list and he even tweeted about the moment shortly after it happened. Who could have ever guessed that would be the final tweet ever from Kobe? It still doesn’t feel real.

Fast forward to March 11th. That’s when things really started to spiral out of control. That night, Rudy Gobert, who has since been rewarded with a $200 million contract despite averaging just over 11 points-per-game, became the first player in the four major sports to test positive for COVID-19 in the moments leading up to a Utah Jazz game against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The game was subsequently canceled and later that night, a true bombshell. Commissioner Adam Silver announced the NBA would be suspending their season indefinitely. It was one of the most shocking things I had ever seen. A sports league just pausing? Stop the madness. Little did I know what March 12th had in store for me.

March 12, 2020 is a day that will go down in history as probably the craziest day of anyone from my generation’s lifetime. Obviously that morning the ripple effects from Adam Silver’s decision were still being felt. But if it was just Gobert, we should have been fine and the games would continue right? Wrong. Very wrong.

I will never forget it. I was watching Creighton against St. John’s in the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden. There were fans in the stands, the first half was played as normal, but there was no second half. The game was called off at halftime. Then the avalanche of cancellations came pouring through. The NCAA tournament, done. The Major League Baseball season, put on pause. Hockey, suspending play. Within the span of 24 hours, life as we knew it changed forever.

Heck, restaurants were shut down, as were gyms and basically every public place you could possibly think of besides grocery stores and pharmacies. You couldn’t go out in public without a mask. Come again, what?? If there was ever a true sign of the apocalypse, that was it.

The next four months were straight out of a horror movie, including my rift with my downstairs neighbor as I attempted to keep up my amazing physique.

Aside from “The Last Dance” giving people something to look forward to for a 5-week span, literally nothing was happening. The biggest topic of conversation was my “COVID-19 DAILY” blog posts along with when would sports come back and what would they look like? I remember in April seeing an article about how Disney World was equipped to host a “bubble” type environment for the NBA. When I first saw it, I thought it was the most brilliant thing I’d ever heard.

But what about the other sports? Major League Baseball nearly canceled their season because of pure greed. The powers that be eventually settled on a 60-game regular season and on July 23, 2020, American sports returned with the Yankees facing the Nationals in Washington D.C. It was truly a sight to see. Giancarlo Stanton homered. Everyone thought he was going to lead the Yankees back to the World Series, but of course he couldn’t and they ended up losing the the little engine that could Rays team in the ALDS. But I digress.

After 3.5 months of planning, the NBA followed suit setting up shop at you guessed it, Disney World where the Lakers would take home their 17th NBA championship tying the Boston Celtics on the all-time list in front of a grand total of count ’em zero fans. Sorry Boston. You had a great run at the top.

The NHL created their own bubble in Toronto and someway, somehow, we were able to crown champions. As for the NFL, they scoffed at the bubble idea and proceeded as normal, just without fans for the most part and despite dealing with daily COVID-19 positives, got through their regular season on time in truly miraculous fashion.

As 2020 gets set to come to an end, the new NBA and college basketball seasons are well underway and the NFL postseason set to begin, there are still too many unknowns. Is this our new normal having to wear masks everywhere, sports teams either having no fans or having to drastically limit the number of people allowed in the building? We do finally have a COVID-19 vaccine, but I just want to know when I can put this pandemic in the rear view mirror because it doesn’t feel like that’s happening any time soon. That’s my one wish for 2021, normalcy (along with championships for the Yankees, Jets and Nets, I’m not going to bother with the Devils because there’s no hope) and I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

Good riddance 2020. Onto 2021.

 

Frankly Frankel: Sep. 13, 2020

There’s nothing like the first Sunday of an NFL season. Every team except for one or two has at least some sort of optimism that this will be “their year”. It’s a level playing field, at least for now.

 

FRANKLY FRANKEL: September 8, 2020

The Yankees can’t find their way out of a paper bag, the Brooklyn Nets make a splash hiring Steve Nash as their new head coach, the NFL starts this week and my excitement level for the Jets couldn’t be any lower. This is Frankly Frankel on a Tuesday, September 8, 2020.

 

FRANKLY FRANKEL: August 31, 2020

The Yankees show signs of life, what my gut tells me Brian Cashman will do at the trade deadline, Jamal Murray is on an unprecedented tear for the Nuggets and the sports world loses another legend.  This is Frankly Frankel on Monday, August 31, 2020.

 

FRANKLY FRANKEL: August 23, 2020

For essentially all of my life, the name “Luka” was one of my least favorites names.  I just didn’t like how it sounded compared to “Lucas” and I played soccer with a kid who had that name who I surprisingly did not get along with.