Top ten threats to fantasy football

It seems hard to imagine that the game that tens of millions of people play, and seems to get bigger and bigger every year, could actually become less popular. But all that goes up must come down, and there are actually reasons to think that the current obsession could actually become less popular, and soon.

10) Age. It's true; the older you get, the less time that you have for hobbies, especially when the hobby starts to irritate you. Fantasy sports are, of course, prone to relentless amounts of irritation, especially if you are playing for cash that you don't particularly want to part with, or on a draft date that causes family friction (say, Labor Day weekend). This is less tricky for online leagues, of course, but that still won't keep you from spending way too much time and money in draft prep, and to wonder why you are still doing it later.

9) Owning the numbers. One hopes and dreams that the NFL will never be as stupid as MLB is, where the actual numbers are a bone of contention -- Czar Bud Selig thinks that MLB statistics should be the paid-for-property of MLB -- but trying to squeeze more money out of the audience is an eternal temptation. If the leagues ever get that kind of traction, and decide to put up a pay gate, that's got to start draining the pond.

8) Labor unrest. Stating that an NFL lockout or strike would ruin fantasy football is somewhat akin to saying that nuclear war would play hell with your lawn, in that it's true but kind of besides the point. And make no mistake about it, all signs point to serious problems in 2011. The NFL is having the same small market versus large market versus the players three-way dance that caused the nuclear winter baseball strike that canceled a World Series and destroyed baseball in Montreal, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and more.

To be honest, I don't really see the NFL's owners and players opting for mutually assured destruction. The league has always had its way with the players in ways that MLB's owners can only dream of, and the large market owners, with the possible exception of Jerry Jones, don't seem crazy enough to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. But people have a way of getting stupid when hundreds of millions of dollars are on the table.

7) Monopolization. The last few years haven't been particularly grand for Yahoo. A merger with Microsoft didn't happen, Google and Apple took the lead in countless ways, and the global economic downturn caused problems in online display advertising, sapping the company's revenues and making them a target for takeover. But more importantly for our little part of the world, ESPN finally got its act together in fantasy games.

The World Wide Lemur has overcome some disastrous missteps to get to equilibrium in the fake game. They've been better at moving to auction drafts, aggressive about advertising, and getting in bed with the NBA to take the lead in that sport. And if they can keep the momentum up, and Yahoo sells out... well, CBS Sportsline would still be around, I suppose, as would others. But monopolies rarely make for innovation and growing times, especially if the Lemur decides to start enforcing morality (i.e., banning users due to comments) or monetization.

6) Casinos everywhere. In the very near future, there will be casinos with poker rooms very close to where I live, as part of the overall casinozation of America. And once you've got that, well, you need something more to set yourself apart from the other rooms, don't you? Something along the lines of a fully functioning sportsbook that lets me make three-team parlays while in a luxury setting with bad for me food and drink?

Well, I doubt that I'd just cancel my involvement in roto leagues. But they might not have the same importance, if you catch my drift.

5) Women and children. A friend of mine sent an invite to a league this week. It's for no money, and the gimmick is that it's for kids -- and, of course, their parents. It's so adorable, I just want to... well, not join the league. Because how am I supposed to talk trash and cash out a kid, unless there's actually cash on the line?

I keed, I keed... but only just. Because fantasy sports, no matter how much you may want to sugarcoat it, are a vice. And those tend to go away when exposed to the bright light of women and children. For good reasons.

4) Barbara from accounting. With each succeeding year, it gets frankly easier to draft well, avoid obvious blown picks, find out about deep sleepers and draft like, well, someone who knows what they are doing. And with teams going to committee work at running back and, shh, wideout (notice how the Saints won last year by spreading the wealth, and it's a copycat league)...

Well, the plain and ugly truth of it is that it's getting harder to get past the random chance of injuries and hot weeks, especially in head to head leagues. And if you can win a league by random chance, then it becomes just like your NCAA basketball bracket, which is inevitably won by someone who picks like they are filling out a bingo board.

3) Nerds. To many people in the audience, this is a pot kettle moment, since you've got to have the nerd in you to do this game in the first place. But fantasy football's vagaries of numbers (the fact that passing touchdowns can go for four or six points, turnovers count differently, some leagues go for bonus points over threshold numbers, etc., etc.) lends itself to abuse in the pursuit of "fairness."

Within the next few years, I guarantee you that there will be "Expert" leagues that go for Football Outsider-y Nerd Plus stats like value over replacement player, contextually adjusted yards from scrimmage, and so on. So you'll be caught between the rock of random chance leagues, dominated by Barbara from Accounting, or leagues where advanced trig is required to compete. Either way, you'll feel played.

2) Over-fishing. Here's the real dirty little secret about leagues: they live on the misery of the guys that never win. Some of my best friends have been paying out for years and years without making bank... and in a tough economy, you have to think that there would be a little bit of realization here.

The situation will look awfully familiar to poker players; the game's gotten harder, and the guys that used to just play for fun have decided that they are no longer having fun. When the room is all sharks, it's just not that much fun to swim.

1) Itself. Right now, there are high roller guys spending a fortune to draft in opulence in Vegas. There are highly regrettable situation comedies about leagues. Podcasts, cable shows, columns, logs... there's no end to it. And there's no sign of stopping or slowing down, especially since the fake game allows us to stretch out football season for an extra month or two.

We do this, of course, because there really isn't enough NFL football to satisfy us. If there were a real second league in the spring, in good markets with similar rules and comparable talent, we'd watch it. Then, we'd start fantasy leagues for it.

It's all got to end some day, or at the very least, slow down. Either that, or just accept the idea that we're more or less powerless to resist this, and that fantasy football is the end of the world. So, well, coin flip.