Fantasy Football Ethics

Fantasy football has become such a huge part of the lives of sports fans over the past decade that the line gets blurred sometimes. At this point it's nearly impossible to cover football in any way that involves interaction with the audience without touching on fantasy pretty regularly. I'm certainly not going to try. (Not that I have an audience, but the theory's the same.)

The Football Outsiders guys have an interesting one in their Scramble for the Ball feature this week. Essentially, some guy's playoff slot is locked in, and his final week opponent is on the verge, and is significantly weaker than the folks who might get if weak final week opponent loses. Is the right move to tank, or to play to win?

It's similar to the situations faced by real teams late in the season when their playoff spot is locked in, leaving them with nothing to gain by winning. The difference is, the real teams have a lot to lose through injury. That's not an issue for your fantasy team. Is it ethical to tank when you're not actually protecting yourself from direct harm?

I dunno. I actually have had an (incredibly geeky) experience with this kind of situation, not involving fantasy sports. My high school played in an annual Quiz Bowl tournament sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club. (Told you it was geeky.) Four schools, round robin, followed by a championship game between the top two teams by record, tiebreaker of total points scored, winner gets to go to the State Tournament. My sophomore year we lost a hard-fought game to open the tournament, but slaughtered the other two schools. Naturally, the school we lost to also clobbered the other two, and went 3-0. Our record of 2-1 got us into the championship game, where we won another hard fought battle to win the tournament.

My junior year, the same scenario seemed to be playing out. We again lost a tight game to the same team in the opener, and trounced the other two teams to secure a 2-1 record and a rematch in the championship. Except the team we'd lost to didn't play along. They played the last game of the tournament against the crappy team that had beaten the other crappy team.

You can probably see where this is going. They threw that last match. They scored just enough points to make sure to secure the tiebreaker against us, put down their buzzers, and let the other team score at will to beat them, and get enough points to win the tiebreaker against us. Three teams were 2-1, and we were the odd team out. When they were actually trying, the school that had defeated us destroyed their opponents in the championship game.

So, what does this illustrate? Well, as the guys who got shafted in the situation, naturally, we were mad. We were victims of that team, which we couldn't really complain about, and of the tank job, which rankled, but also of circumstance, since without the schedule being the way it was, the plan wouldn't have worked. From the perspective of the people who pulled it off, though... they got what they wanted. They won the tournament. Their team captain, whose idea it was, got to take his team to the State Tournament his senior year. We might have been mad, but there wasn't anything we could do to them.

The Kiwanis Club sponsors weren't very pleased, though. The next year the format of the tournament was changed, adding a fifth team and eliminating the championship game, making the championship based purely on record, with total points as a tiebreaker, eliminating any possible incentive a team might have to lose. Somehow, I have the feeling that at some point in there, the coach and administration of the winning school got an earful.

Is it worth it to pull a stunt like this? Well, if you're never going to have to deal with those people again, maybe it is. I wouldn't, though. I tend to believe these things come back around to bite you, in a karmic sense. In the example there was money involved, which makes it much worse. Taking the high road is my recommendation.