Fantasy football moves backfire

I hate fantasy football.
I’ve been “playing” — and I used that word lightly — fantasy sports for nearly 15 years.
Along the way, I’ve managed more than 50 teams, in sports ranging from football, baseball and hockey to auto racing.
Recently, however, I’ve “concentrated” — again, I used that word lightly — solely on football and baseball.
Most of my effort has gone into a league started seven years ago with a bunch of friends from high school.
The Mannion Farms Fantasy Football League is its former name. It has since become just Mannion Farms League.
It’s great. We generally have a blast the two times we’re all together, which are the live draft and the end of season “banquet.” There are 10 members spread throughout Michigan, with myself and another living as Hoosiers, so we don’t get to see one another often.
We even had a guy with us who lived out in California until he retired and we found a replacement.
From the outside, we take it too seriously. We’re grown men, though, so that’s OK, right?
We have a trophy.
This isn’t just any trophy.
It’s the Tom Z. Hertzberg Memorial Cup.
I could go into more detail about the name, but it might take another column. Just know it’s a hybrid of the name of former team owner.
The Tom Z., as it is so aptly referred, began in 2009 as just a plaster planter our assistant commissioner picked up at Goodwill and painted gold.
It has since evolved by getting a three-tier wooden base. Each tier is about 4 inches high. On the front is an engraved plate signifying the trophy’s name and the league for which it is the prize.
It’s big. As in, more than 30 inches tall, big.
And it’s wonderful.
Each of the six winners also has an engraved nameplate on the front, and last year we had our first two-time champion when the eldest member of the group won for the second time in three seasons.
My name is not on it.
I’m treating it like the Stanley Cup, a don’t-touch-it-until-you-win-it tradition. I don’t want the bad juju.
Our league goes deeper than just having a trophy. Over the years, we have devised a constitution. In this 11-page document, nearly everything regarding our league, down to the points, playoff rules, roster stipulations and even — get this — draft attire, is included.
See? We may take it too seriously.
The MFL also has championship jackets. Think The Masters golf tournament and the coveted green jacket. We have a similar tradition, with which the previous winner has to outfit the current year’s winner with a jacket as they pass the Tom Z. from one person to the next.
As owners, we are even in the process of getting patches made for the jackets to make them even more official.
I do not have a jacket. Or a patch.
This year, we started with getting the winners vinyl championship banners.
I don’t have a banner.
And with how this season has gone, I won’t get one. Or a jacket. Or a patch. Or to touch the Tom Z.
Because I hate fantasy football.
In 2009, I had then-Tennessee Titans running back Chris Johnson. He helped me to a great 2-0 start, but didn’t perform well the next two weeks. In need of a spark for my team, I traded him. That was the year he rushed for more than 2,000 yards — most for a team other than mine — and I lost 10 straight games.
I had been trigger shy since about making trades.
In the following years I made a few, but none turned out to haunt me as bad as selling Johnson did.
Until this year.
I made two of them.
Again, I had a nice 2-0 start to the season, scoring the most points in the opener and just missing out on the honor the following week.
Then, after splitting the next two matchups, I was sitting at 3-1 and tied for first place.
That’s when the wheels fell off.
I lost three straight, and at the time Buffalo running back LeSean McCoy (my second-round pick) and Green Bay wide receiver Davante Adams weren’t doing much for my team.
So I traded them. They began to put up better numbers.
Yikes.
A week and a loss later, I still needed to change. I had been suffering through three consecutive weeks of my first-round pick, Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown, not performing well.
I’ll give you one guess as to where this is going.
I traded him. He returned to his dominant form.
Yikes.
I got bitten not once, but twice by trading away high-value guys for low-value returns.
I didn’t think it could happen again, but it did.
And now I’m out of the playoffs.
I hate fantasy football.