Models are sucking the fun out of fun
Fantasy football was an obsession of mine as a kid. I still feel that new season excitement when you can sit down and make a perfect blend of star players and bargain buys who might propel you to the top of the fantasy league.
Now, back in the day it was all done on paper and sent by post to newspapers. You'd have to wait for the weekend to see if your team made it into the papers (I only made it once...). And as the bulk of games weren't televised, I spent my Saturday afternoons watching this on my TV screen:
Quaint.
Today, however, fantasy football is a different beast entirely. The online Fantasy Premier League has over 8 million players and has spawned an industry. Experts and pundits discuss team selections on Twitter, YouTube, and paid websites. Even the footballers themselves have started commenting on how their own performances have been in their fantasy teams.
I've been playing it again over the last few years with friends, but it hasn't felt quite the same as those early years. It's left me with mixed feelings. I've become obsessed with it at times, and I've enjoyed the banter with friends, but have I enjoyed the game like I used to? I'm not sure I have. Today I saw this tweet from a fantasy football expert which made me see why I feel like it's not as fun as the old times:
This expert publicly took a risk with his team selection and when it didn't pay off he was hit with a tidal wave of mockery. For fantasy football, folks, not even a physical football match...
Data has always been an interesting element in sports for fans. You can find people who could barely add and subtract yet have the ability to recite various player and team statistics. There's such an incredible amount of data available today based on player and team performance, ranking, valuations, and god knows what else, it's not surprising that large groups of fans have started digging into how they can create statistical models to help them gain an edge in fantasy football. The problem, though, is that everybody starts cottoning on.
Today, there's something called a 'template' team, a team that, based on past performance, team strength, individual value, and fixtures, should statistically be the team to pick. It's the model team. What happens when more and more people become aware of such a team? Everybody does the same thing. And if you don't? You're stupid.
I've always been a bit of a gambler in games. I'm not talking about placing bets (although I am partial to poker), I'm simply talking about adding an element of chance and risk to up the stakes, to make things more interesting for me and, perhaps, those around me (or more annoying for them, which is also fun).
This year, I decided to take a chance with my team selection. Now, you may know that Mohammed Salah is one of the best players in the world at the moment and if you play fantasy football, you'd be insane, clinically, if you omitted him from your team selection. Utterly bonkers. I omitted him from my team.
Like Mark in the above tweet, this backfired horribly and has left me far adrift at the bottom of my league. Everyone else did pretty great because they all have by and large the same players. Good for them, I guess. But then I can't help but think, what's the point?
If everyone just follows the same model, choosing the same 10 out of 11 players, there'll be little in the way of surprises. Margins will be fine, there'll be no surprise packages, no wild swings of luck. When I was younger, other people's fantasy teams varied enough that you knew you could take a punt here and there because there were enough variations to help you progress if you lost ground. Today, everyone's teams are so optimised that taking a punt can set you back weeks and leave you open to ridicule for not following 'the model'.
Now I'm first to admit I'm not the most competitive person. I find it easy to take risks because I don't care much about failing. I do the same in sports. My wife mocks me for constantly trying to hit massive cross-court forehands in tennis when my technical ability indicates I should focus on getting the ball over the net, something I regularly fail at. Likewise in football, I'm partial to the audacious pass for an assist when the goal is wide open in front of me, just because it's more fun than an easy goal. The chance of success in these endeavours is low, and it can be infuriating for teammates. But if they work out...
I understand that a more competitive character would see this as foolish behaviour. Play the percentages and you'll likely come out on top. But fantasy football is a game and games are supposed to entertain, surprise, and enable stories afterwards. I don't play football seriously and my feeling is that people will talk about that one scissor kick after a game and forget all the 100 sliced shots I made. Or maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better...
Anyway, my main point here is that people get too wedded to statistics and models which suck the life out of fun. For Fantasy Premier League perhaps some controls are needed to enable more randomness and reward risk takers. But if that happened, 'the model' supporters would lose their minds.
Models are useful, of course, but if we begin to hold them above everyday thought and expressions - or random player selections - and lose sight of why we were using them in the first place, things will invariably become rather bland. The same goes for most other parts of life. It's helpful to have models, but when the model becomes the target, you've lost sight of why you're there in the first place. So, here's to the chancers.