Fantasy Gazette

The NFL season opens this week and fans are anxiously anticipating the return to play. This is especially true for fantasy football players, whose lives are meaningless in the absence of NFL games. With the meteoric rise in popularity of fantasy football in the US over the last few years, Americans have become increasingly dependent on the NFL for joy and purpose in their lives. The return of the sport is met with greater fervor than ever before.

Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in the suburban town of Greenfield, Nebraska.

Ten years ago, members of one Greenfield neighborhood started a fantasy football league and held a block party to kick off the season. That tradition continued, and each year, as fantasy football grew in popularity, so did the party. Members of other fantasy leagues began showing up to draft and enjoy the festivities–first from around the city, then the state, then the country. What started as a friendly neighborhood party became an exuberant weekend celebration, then a riotous week-long festival. Then things got out of hand.

Now, the event, which this year began in mid-July, can only be described as Dionysian revelry; a site of sheer, unadulterated debauchery, where the rules that govern civilization have been abandoned completely.

Throngs of people move about in a frenzy. The steady chant of “N-F-L…N-F-L” rings out over the crowd. Following the noise, one can find a group of the most devout fans chanting in rhythm to the beat of a large drum and dancing naked around a statue of Matthew Berry. In other areas, participants are speaking in tongues, convulsing on the ground, or drinking the blood of a freshly-slaughtered goat. Our team counted 14 distinct orgies. Riot police were duct taped to the corner bar’s brick wall. They had lost all control.

These people sure do love fantasy football and causing property damage!

One particularly excitable partygoer – Allen Nielson of Wichita, Kansas – spoke to our reporter.

“I need NFL games! I need them now! Your skin looks wearable!” he wailed. Grabbing one of our interns by the shirt, he screamed into his face, “Who will lead the Eagles backfield in touches!? I need to know!” When the intern responded with only a frightened stare, Nielson bit off the young man’s ear, then ran off into the night, cackling. Looks like we may have found a candidate for Fan of the Year!

Another guest informed us that this was his first visit to the annual bacchanal. “I’ve been so excited for the fantasy season to start. It’s all I can think about,” Gregory Vitek of Fort Smith, Arkansas told us. “I started drafting best ball teams in April to tide me over, but I ran out of money after the first six hundred.” Vitek reported that he made the pilgrimage to Greenfield on foot in the middle of the night, after a Native American shaman appeared to him in a dream. And even though he left his wife and four children without so much as a goodbye, he has no regrets. “If I hadn’t come here, I don’t think I would have ever performed fellatio on a man wearing a Roger Goodell mask while he drafts J.K. Dobbins during his exact moment of climax.”

What an inspiration!

Vitek is not the only one itching for the start of the fantasy football season. Our team found Fred Williamson, the commissioner of the original Greenfield league, lounging in a hammock. A harem of young men and women surrounded him: feeding him grapes, fanning him with palm leaves, and performing a sexually suggestive dance to the tune of Carrie Underwood’s Sunday Night Football theme song.

“The ‘fantasy itch’ comes earlier and earlier every year,” Williamson informed us, opening his pants to show off the actual rash he was referring to. “I think I caught it on the front lawn of the Wilson place in 2019. I remember, because there was a couple from South Dakota who were into some freaky stuff…like BDSM and tiered PPR scoring. Crazy times.”

We at the Gazette want to thank the group in Greenfield for showing us how passionate fantasy football enthusiasts can be. As we overheard one merrymaker say: “TONIGHT BA’AL WILL DANCE IN THE FIELD! THE RIGHTEOUS WILL FALL AND THE BLOOD OF THE INNOCENT WILL RAIN UPON THE SOIL! CHILDREN WILL LAUGH, MOTHERS WILL WEEP, AND THE LION WILL MATE WITH THE DONKEY!” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Enjoy NFL Week 1!

Very few unpaid interns were lethally harmed in the reporting done for this article.