Fantasy Football = D&D?

[Pika...]

I have always wondered this.

1. Jocks and such always pick on the roleplaying nerds.
2. Many a time I have spoken to "regular" people (many sports fans) who have said they simply "do not get it".
3. I on the other hand I could never grasp the whole way people can break down a real-life person's gaming history into a card and predict what team will win based on these "stats".
4. Then it hit me. Stats! Fantasy football! These guys are playing jock D&D...:smalleek:
5. Same concept, same idea, mechanics maybe even transferable?
6. At the very least a good way to convince/trick one to be tempted by the Geek-Side of the force? :smallbiggrin:


Thoughts on this?

[Haruki-kun]

If by that you mean we've just realized jocks and geeks are actually all people, then... yeah. :smalltongue:

[Pika...]

No, more the irony that they are playing their own form of RPG when D&D and such are considered "geeky".

[AsteriskAmp]

No, more the irony that they are playing their own form of RPG when D&D and such are considered "geeky".

Jocks are actually sport geeks, they just don't know it.

[Haruki-kun]

It's pretty much the same thing. It's just that geeks tend toward videogames, DnD and comics, and jocks tend toward sports. Which in the end, I suppose, makes them bigger, stronger and faster.

[Pika...]

Eh, I guess the thread title is more accurate now. Sorry. :smallwink:

[grimbold]

fantasy football does not revolve around dice rolls though
in essence you pick players for your team and then depending on how well they do you gain or lose points its a lot more disconnected than D&D

[Eldan]

So,m the first step in drawing them to the geek side would be to play a game of Blood Bowl with only human teams?

[KuReshtin]

RPG is based on random dice rolls along with the stats that are pre-determined by the player during character creation.

Fantasy sports generally have very little randomness, and a lot of the time, you can use the stats from previous weeks to set your lineups for the coming week.
In fantasy football, for instance, you start different running backs based on their current form, if they have any niggling injuries, and also on what the opposing team's defense have been doing in terms of their run-stopping ability.

The stats that are kept in a lot of the American sports tend to go well with basing fantasy versions on them.

The other big difference between RPGs and fantasy sports is that there's usually very little betting involved in RPGing (except from eveyone having to pay a lot of money to buy rule books and the like), whereas a lot of fantasy leagues have stakes to enter, and the winner can get a whole lot of money, depending on the size of the stakes and the number of participants.

Yes, it's a way for 'jocks' to be geeky, but I wouldn't necessarily say that they're the same.
To me, it would be the same as saying that chess and Monopoly are the same because they're both board games.

[Comet]

They're both ways to have fun.

The 'jock' fun, in this case would be a bit more straightforward, more physical and such. The 'geek' fun would be more complicated and brain hurt-y to compensate for the lack of physical challenge and thrill.

Jock tries to get into geeky stuff: brain starts to hurt.
Geek tries to get into jock-y stuff: body breaks down.

And then they fight about which way is better. Fighting is physical, jocks dominate the field. Geek gets shoved into closet.

At least that's the way I imagine it goes in a stereotypical high school.

[Derthric]

Oh and the Jocks know the lines are getting blurred.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TBusqMaCEM&NR=1

[VeisuItaTyhjyys]

Jocks are actually sport geeks, they just don't know it.

A lot of them do, I feel like. Some just look down on other kinds of geeks the way pedants like me look down on anyone who ever says "social science" with a straight face.

[Ted_Stryker]

Eh, not really. Fantasy football is more of a prediction market, and tends to be a lot more of a zero-sum game than most RPGs. The similarities are fairly superficial, IMO.

[Combat Reflexes]

Oh and the Jocks know the lines are getting blurred.

they ARE! I play sports for a couple of hours and go play d&d when I'm tired enough. They are still two different things though: LARPing and sports is closer IMO.

EDIT: and LARPing is even geekier!

[Anonomuss]

For this comparison in comics, see the following links:

http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/090910.html

http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/090911.html

[DeadManSleeping]

Let's be honest: there are a lot of jocks who don't play fantasy football. There are plenty of people who like sports who aren't actually sports nerds.

But, yeah, fantasy football is pretty dorky. As far as I'm concerned, it occupies some pitiful middle ground between the athletic exhilaration of sports, the mental playground of nerdgaming, and the sad-but-understandable instinctive rush of gambling. It's the unfortunate parts of all three without any of the things that make them really, really fun. There are some things that occupy the middle ground in a positive way. Motion-intensive LARPing, for example, has fantasy AND activity. It's not my cup of tea, but I at least give it props for being creative in a positive direction.

I just can't get behind fantasy football.

[Erts]

I'm sick of the "Jock vs Geek" stereotype. It was dated and unrealistic in the 80s when it started showing up, and it remains dated.
I like sports. I like being in good shape. I like being able to run two miles comfortably, lift 400 pounds off the ground, and will probably live longer for it.
I also like D&D. I like statistics. I like trivia, I like animated shows even at my age, and reading a fantasy book for a long amount of time seems like a good pursuit of me.

Why do these have to not go together? What part of either of them makes me unable to do both?
Please, someone answer me,
A "jocky" nerd.

EDIT:
And I don't even follow football that much! Or fantasy football!
EDIT 2: 300 pounds, not 400. Typos don't do well for my argument.

[Fox Box Socks]

I'm mostly cribbing from MovieBob here, but can someone explain to me how a person wearing a jersey is somehow NOT cosplay?

I mean, if a guy walked down the street wearing a Stormtrooper outfit, people would give him funny looks. And they should; he's not a Stormtrooper. He'll never be a Stormtrooper. It's completely unrealistic of him to want to be a Stormtrooper. It's weird for him to wear a high-quality replica of what Stormtroopers would wear (were they, you know, real). And yet if that same guy walked down the street wearing a Ben Roethlisberger jersey, no one would bat an eye, even though he is doing the exact same thing; he's wearing a high-quality replica of what Ben Roethlisberger wears every time he goes out on the field. It's a costume. He's wearing a Ben Roethlisberger costume. If you're wearing a jersey of your favorite player, guess what? You're cosplaying.

Sports fans get very angry when I explain this to them, and I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer for how wearing a jersey and getting all done up in face paint for a Chargers game is different than, say, dressing up as Cloud for Dragoncon.

[KuReshtin]

I'm mostly cribbing from MovieBob here, but can someone explain to me how a person wearing a jersey is somehow NOT cosplay?


I will try to give me my thoughts on this subject.




I mean, if a guy walked down the street wearing a Stormtrooper outfit, people would give him funny looks. And they should; he's not a Stormtrooper. He'll never be a Stormtrooper. It's completely unrealistic of him to want to be a Stormtrooper. It's weird for him to wear a high-quality replica of what Stormtroopers would wear (were they, you know, real). And yet if that same guy walked down the street wearing a Ben Roethlisberger jersey, no one would bat an eye, even though he is doing the exact same thing; he's wearing a high-quality replica of what Ben Roethlisberger wears every time he goes out on the field. It's a costume. He's wearing a Ben Roethlisberger costume. If you're wearing a jersey of your favorite player, guess what? You're cosplaying.

There is a stark difference between the two scenarios as you have described them.

The better example would be if the football fan dressed up in complete football kit, with shoulder pads, helmet, 'wrist-coach' (the arm band thing where they have the plays listed), game pants, hip pads, thigh pads and knee pads, then that would be cosplaying.
Just wearing a replica game jersey is not cosplaying.

Just wearing a replica jersey would be in a similar vein as wearing a T-shirt with a couple stormtroopers standing next to a 'Wheel of Fortune' game board with the letters R_B_L SC_M showing.

Wearing the replica jersey shows that you like football and/or the Steelers and/or Roethlisberger, same as wearing the aforementioned T-shirt shows that you like Star Wars.

Wearing the replica jersey only doesn't mean that you go around pretending to be Ben Roethlisberger.

Wearing the full Stormtrooper outfit to a con does mean that you're pretending to be a Stormtrooper.




Sports fans get very angry when I explain this to them, and I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer for how wearing a jersey and getting all done up in face paint for a Chargers game is different than, say, dressing up as Cloud for Dragoncon.

The difference is in the intent.
The sports fan who puts on the jersey and face paint to go to a football game does so to support his/her chosen team, hoping it will, in however small way, help his/her team win. The intent is not to pretend to be one of the players.

A cosplayer that dresses up as a comic book hero or the like does so with the intent of pretending to be the person he/she has chosen to dress as.


Now, saying that, there are some sports fans who do take on different personas from their normal lives when they put on the face paint and go to football games. (See some glaring examples in the spoiler below.) However, they are still a pretty small minority of extreme football fans.

http://thesportshernia.typepad.com/blog/images/2007/09/11/raiders_black_hole.jpg
http://whoiskeysersoze.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/raiders-fan1.jpg
http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/Sports/images-2/the-dawg-pound.jpg

[dgnslyr]

I'm a bit surprised this (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/9/25/) penny-arcade comic hasn't come up yet.

[Erts]

So, answer?