It’s officially fantasy football season. Fantasy football has become immensely popular over the past few years. Most single young men have more fantasy apps on their phone than dating apps. Using football and elementary school level math to dominate people you either work in an office or went to high school with is fun. As a result, there are countless nerds giving you endless advice to confuse you before your draft. I won’t even pretend to know enough about football to advise you on player selection. What I will do, is teach you how to win the draft without knowing a thing about fantasy football.
Step 1: Whisper Down the Lane
Spread rumors. Lots of them. Jeremy wants Cam Akers in the fourth. Greg wants to leave the first five rounds with two kickers. It doesn’t matter. Fantasy football brings out the insecure child in all of us, so people will start to defend opinions they don’t have. This will allow your league to lulled into a false sense of security.
Step 2: Supply Alcohol
If you want to win your league, get every single person in the group as drunk as possible. If your draft is in person, this will be easy. Just bring a bunch of alcohol and propose the most intense drinking game you can think of to determine draft order. People will start to forget about which players are suspended, and which ones tore major knee ligaments last November. Everyone else will make a lot more mistakes, which really takes pressure off of you. If your draft is online, ignite the group chat with a chug video or something. Just make the league as a unit drink as much alcohol as possible.
Step 3: Destroy the Leader’s Confidence
Odds are, there’s one guy in your league who filled a composition notebook with random stats and facts that will influence his draft. You need to break this guy. After his first or second pick, just say, “Wow. Did you miss that Matthew Berry report?” and then almost take it back. Be really patronizing and tell him that he knows more than you, and your news is probably wrong. This will throw a wrench into his entire plan, and create a ripple effect of chaos to throw off everyone’s draft.
Step 4: Make Up a Family Emergency
Just don’t do it for yourself. Pay someone outside your league to call one of your friends to the hospital with a fabricated story about someone in their family having a terrible accident. This will force him to auto draft, which is a nightmare after round three. It’s honestly not that mean to do either. The news that his family is safe will be even better than the original news that one of his siblings is fighting for their life.
Step 5: Just Have Fun
At the end of the day, fantasy football is about having fun. The first four steps should have alleviated some of your pressure, so just relax and draft from this point.
