“You studied for this today?”
“A little,” my brother, Joe, texted back. “Did you”
There was no reason to lie — at least not yet.
“No”
The next message from him came about an hour later, 45 minutes before the start of our big test.
“Prison rules draft it ain’t over til someone’s crying”
Ahh, “prison rules” … The perfect way to describe how my four siblings and I competed in just about everything as kids. It didn’t matter if it was chicken fights, hide-and-seek, Monopoly, Risk, ground fighting tournaments, or weaseling out of the worst chores.
It was survival not always of the fittest, but the most evil and psychopathic — not quite “Hunger Games,” but pretty close.
I wasn’t sure if “prison rules” was an idiom of our sister Noe’s creation because of her distaste for some of our Monopoly tactics, so I do what I always do in such situations. According to 127 people who gave it a thumbs up on Urban Dictionary, prison rules means this: “To do something or play a sport by cheating, being physically aggressive and otherwise trying to win at all costs.”
‘Oh… oh I see. You playin’ by prison rules huh? OK my man, let’s see how you handle my #$%^ now!’
Sounds about right. There was no such thing as a friendly game of anything. Part of it is because we were all close in age, just six years separating the eldest and the youngest. The girls were the “babies,” but they were nearly as tall as the three boys. Plus they were smart, and a lot tougher than they looked.
There was a certain fairness to it, though. No one ever won anything twice in a row, because two or three of the others would form an alliance to prevent it. If all else failed, there was the nuclear option: flipping the board and sending those red hotels and orange $100 bills flying in every direction. Monopoly houses aren’t as bad to step on as Lego pieces, but they screw up vacuum cleaners pretty good.
Now that we’re in our 60s, for fun competition Joe plays golf and I play poker — endeavors where resorting to prison rules is frowned upon (well, most of them — if you can’t lie convincingly, good luck winning in hold-’em). And that’s about it for us. Things like pick-up basketball, softball and darts are in our rear-view mirrors.
But a fantasy football league that includes him, his son and two more of my nephews, plus one of our family’s lifelong best friends?
Bring it.
Anything goes when it’s a family feud.
At least in spirit, I guess. Other than collusion, I don’t know how someone can cheat in fantasy sports, especially nowadays, when espn.com does all the scorekeeping.
So, in this case, prison rules mostly means rip-off trades and trash talking. I do the pretend-I-don’t-care-but-I-really-do variation.
Or do I? (I have to add that, since some of the other owners in the league will read this.)
As we get older, the list of things we’ll probably never do again gets longer — some because of physical limitations, others due to a lack of desire and the fact that we want to run our favorite plays in our fourth quarter.
That’s how I look at fantasy sports: I’ve got other things to do.
They were a borderline obsession in my 20s and still fun in my 30s. I tried a couple of times to regain the spark within the past 10 years, in football and baseball, but both times, after a couple of weeks, did one of the worst things you can do — nothing. Quiet quitting is a cardinal sin in fantasy sports because it’s unfair to the teams you played when you still cared enough to at least move injured players out of your lineup. My apologies, Commissioner Jeremy and Commissioner Rob.
So, I hesitated slightly when Joe’s son Joey asked me to join his league. But then I found two great articles: “How to stay competitive in fantasy football while investing 15 minutes per week,” by ESPN writer Mike Clay, and “The lazy person’s guide to fantasy football in 2023,” by Washington Post staff writer Neil Greenberg.
I read these right before the draft, and referenced Greenberg’s round-by-round suggestions during it.
Apparently, because of what I do for a living there’s a target on my back in this league. No matter how much I honestly plead my ignorance of all but the biggest NFL matters — especially since the Pro Bowl left town — Commissioner Joey and others think I’m sandbagging.
I can honestly (and ashamedly) say I either don’t remember or never knew of six of the 15 players I drafted.
Joe tossed out the first “I hate my team,” even though he got Tua in the seventh round. I won’t hate my guys until I learn more about how they are over-the-hill, damaged or otherwise useless.
Joey has been playing in a work friend’s fantasy league for about 10 years, and he finally won the championship last season. What made the difference?
“I didn’t have any Cowboys,” he said.
Of course I laughed. I still love my nephew, even though he somehow grew up to be a Dallas Cowboys fan.
It seems he has learned one of the keys to winning in fantasy sports: Put all emotion aside while building your team and fielding your lineups.
I’ve got Lamar Jackson at quarterback. He missed the final six games of last season, some say because of contract negotiations more than injury. I’d never want to build a team around him in real life. But he’s a fantasy beast, and this isn’t a keeper league.
My bar for what I consider success in this is pretty low; I’ll be happy if I don’t wander away, and make it to the end of the season with lineups full of guys who are actually playing each week.
If I win any games it will be because of Clay and Greenberg, and Joey — who scolded me when he realized I was picking his brain for some of the finer points of playing fantasy football during our “interview” for this column.
Hey, buddy, prison rules. Get used to it.
