Fantasy Gazette

Let’s face it: times have changed. The power balance in America is shifting. This ain’t your granddad’s America, and nobody plays Standard scoring anymore. What’s worse, a previously-beloved public figure or country singer is being cancelled what feels like every day. You need to go woke to remain safe these days, and that extends to fantasy football players. We’re here to help you with key tips and tricks to going woke.

Before we begin, if you are a straight, white, red-blooded, proud American male you need to stop reading this article now and turn yourself into the police.

Thankfully, the concentration of cis white males among fantasy football players is significantly lower than communities like Dodge Ram drivers and swingers. Categorizing people into a checklist of demographics is a great start, as doing so is very important to the woke agenda.

Going woke is simply all about modifying your vocabulary and actions to make sure the internet finds it morally correct at this exact moment in time. Let’s talk about what that means for fantasy football.

Vocabulary

It is crucial that fantasy players be intentional in their word choice. Some traditional terminology in this game conjures up the image of human exploitation. Most notably, “owning” players in fantasy is rare to hear, with “managing” taking its place. You should never say or do things that exploit people. Here are some terms we forced our unpaid interns to look up and the replacements we suggest:

1

Current Term: “Drafting” players

Problem: This may be triggering to people who have an aversion to military conflicts, and can cause PTSD.

Replace with: “Digitized Player Selection”

2

Current Term: “Fantasy Points”

Problem: Assigning objective points to the players on your team dehumanizes them. Do better.

Replace with: “[Player] is a valued human being for the 40 yards he picked up. Yay!”

3

Current term: “Trade”

Problem: Trading one person for another is objectifying. You’re literally saying they are slaves.

Replace with: “Swaps-A-Doozy”

4

Current term: “Asset” (or “Commodity”)

Problem: Again, you’re dehumanizing someone, and you’re worse than Hitler.

Replace with: “Human Being with Value Ascribed By Love”

5

Current term: “Dynasty League”

Problem: Historical ruling dynasties traditionally maintained power by exploiting the working class (remember, capitalism is bad).

Replace with: “Long-Term Virginity Enhancement League”

6

Current term: “Running Backs”

Problem: Running Back is now a slur, due to the diminished value they have on both their teams and in PPR leagues.

Replace with: “Aspiring Christian McCaffreys”

Done!

League Management

Our unpaid interns identified some common aspects of fantasy football as potentially cancellable. Consider the following changes to your league rules.

1. Waiver Wire/Free-Agent Pool. Having a group of unrostered players means that some players are not considered “good enough” to be on a team. This is non-inclusive and dangerous. Expand roster sizes to accommodate every NFL player available – even ones who have been retired for years if you want to be woke. Peyton Hillis literally rescued a kid from drowning (and was RB4 in 2011) and he’s not on anyone’s team? Sounds like you hate heroes. You’re begging to get cancelled.
2. Offensive Team Names. One fun aspect of fantasy football is naming your team. Unfortunately, fantasy players tend to use sexually explicit names, or worse – bad puns. Do not let league members assign offensive names like “Ride this Chubb” or “Chubb is Coming Hard” or “This Team is Full-Chubb” or “Deshaun Watson Fan Club.” Instead, assign names that help take down the patriarchy, white people, and capitalists. Try woke team names like “Less Than 1% Of Fortune 500 CEOs Are Chilean Women” or “Most Of The People On Epstein’s Client List Aren’t Buddhist” or even “Not A Member Of The Deshaun Watson Fan Club.” That’ll show ’em.
3. Quarterback Scoring. Quarterbacks generally score significantly more points than other positions. This sort of elitism favoring the wealthiest and most prominent NFL players is problematic and showcases the worst parts of postmodern capitalism. To make point distribution more equitable, we recommend knocking down their scoring to match their teammates output, and deduct points if the QB negatively talks about a teammate who makes less than 35% of their own salary.

Final Considerations

We recognize that many of our readers may find these suggested changes drastic and unnecessary. You may be thinking, “The old way has worked fine all these years. Why should I be the one to change? These snowflakes nowadays are offended by everything!” If that’s what you’re thinking, we recommend you consider the following: Can you afford for your league to be cancelled? If it is shut down, what are you going to do every Sunday in the fall? Are you prepared to watch NFL football without the possibility of bragging rights over your buddies from middle school? Will you be able to sit through a Commanders-Texans matchup if you don’t need 3.5 more points from Antonio Gibson as they keep giving the ball to Brian Robinson, so you need to hope they’re losing at the end and Gibson is in on the two-minute drill and gets two catches for 16 yards, but you’re afraid it won’t happen if you aren’t watching?? What will you talk to your work friends about…WORK?!?

Face it. You need fantasy, and the only way you can guarantee to keep it is by Going Woke. We recommend you follow all the suggestions mentioned in this article. But if it seems like too much, at least follow these three rules:

1. Remember that NFL players are human beings. Consider their humanity when you talk about them.

2. Be inclusive in your leagues and in the content you consume. Support women in fantasy football and stop asking them to name 3 players from their favorite team.

3. If all these new woke things turn out to be problematic in 20 years when we change all the rules again, we are profoundly sorry for the impact this article had.

Follow these tips, and we at the Gazette are confident that fantasy football can survive at least one more year!