Winter of Our Discontent
made glorious summer one step at a time
does the washington post not understand people?
I’m not disagreeing that the show may not be good. But really? You have issue that the show hasn’t provided compelling reason to play fantasy football? This isn’t 1985. My Lithuanian neighbor plays fantasy football, and I’m not sure he even knows that it’s not about soccer.
Fantasy football is still very much a niche hobby. Yeah, it’s not so niche amongst the 16-32 year old ESPN watching crowd, but that in itself is a lot more niche-y than you would think.
30 million people are playing fantasy football. That’s 50% higher than last week’s highest rated show (NCIS), more than any World Series since the 2001 Game 7, more than the number of people who watched American Idol last year. Is that 30 million skewed towards males age 12-50? Sure, but so are beer, porn, fast food, and the film industry. Give me a break.
Yeah, that 30 million people number is complete bullshit. I think that might be the sum total of people that watch NFL weekly.
From nbcsports.com, in 2007:
Welcome to the ever-growing world of fantasy football. More than 19 million people play fantasy sports in U.S. and Canada, according to numbers released in August by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. Football comprises the majority, around 14 million. Major Web sites, such as the aforementioned CBSSports.com and giant ESPN.com, cater to players by offering leagues and fantasy columnists, as do hundreds of lesser-known sites. And it’s not just for men. Women comprise about 15 percent of fantasy players.
And these are numbers from the “Fantasy Sports Trade Association”. Want to take bets on how inflated that number is? I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re counting leagues, and the number was closer to 5 million, given that many people are in 2+ leagues. Which at 2% of the country, I would argue, makes it very much a niche.
Look guys (I’m talking to us, the 16-32 ESPN crowd), our vision of the world is very skewed. We think we’re more “mainstream” than we really are.
I’m not excusing the Post - they’re idiots - but I do think it’s passable to review the show from the lens of someone who knows nothing about fantasy football, aka the silent majority. But if they were in tune, they’d know it’s a niche show on a guy-heavy network (as pointed out by bfizzle), and would explain and review it as such.
