They said it couldn’t be done and they were right. My fantasy football experiment has failed. Despite my best efforts and hours upon hours of my own time each week, the women are losing interest.
When I told some of my guy friends that I was thinking about doing an women-only fantasy football league, they told me it would never work. Women don’t follow football enough to stay entertained the entire season. 17 weeks is a long time and you will get faders. They were right. About half the team starts people on byes or injured players. Some people don’t even know how to log into the prompt anymore (since they haven’t done so since the start of the season).
But here’s an interesting twist…with the exception of maybe one person, all the people who are lagging are the people who did not play for money. I had an opt-in system for the cash prize, hoping this would facilitate an “open” and “invitational” quality to the league, so not to scare newcomers away. So half the people played for money and half did not. All the people who played for money are on their game. We comprise 6 of the top 8 (of 14) teams and 4 of the cash teams rank 1-4 in overall points (the other 3 have respectable scores above 600). So maybe it’s not the chromosomes that determine motivation to endure the long fantasy season…maybe it’s cold hard cash. When I started the league, I told people that I wanted to make it all cash because I was afraid that without cash on the line, people would lose interest. I was assured by everyone that it would not be the case. It is.
But whatever the case, this has become frustrating. I have a losing record in fantasy, mostly because I remind people who I play against not to play people on byes, because I want a fair game. I remind everyone, but it seems like I always play a full roster full of cheap goal line carries and such and other teams get it easy and play opponents who are playing half their players on IR. Other women on the team are equally frustrated and I feel like this whole experiment is a failure.
Mark my words, this is the last time I go against the voice of reason. I just hate that the voice of reason, was a man’s voice. Women, you have truly let me down.
Chicks Like Sports Too 