My Reasoning For Drafting An Entirely White Fantasy Football Team
My reasoning for drafting an entirely white Fantasy Football team this year was really two fold: 1- I thought it would be an interesting sociological experiment and perhaps help people, in some small way, to gain a better understanding of the racial differences that divide us to this day. 2- I’m an asshole.
The NFL is undeniably an African American dominated league. But with very little preparation, (mostly just Google Image searching players with white-sounding names to see if they were, indeed, white) it actually wasn’t that hard drafting for my team: “Los Diablos Blancos”.
Knowing that you can only choose white players actually takes a lot of the thinking out of the whole drafting process. It takes away any lingering questions you might have about who to draft at what point, because I really had very few choices.
I drew the 6th draft position in a league of 12. This was irrelevant. My first pick had to be Peyton Hillis regardless. He’s the only number one white running back in the league and though he wasn’t projected to go until about the 20-somethingth pick, I couldn’t risk him being taken in the first or early second round. Compounding my necessity to grab him right away was the fact that my friends in this league knew my White Team Plan. Many of them are enormous assholes and would probably sacrifice their original drafting plan in order to steal Hillis out from under me and force me to start Danny Woodhead and Toby Gerhart the entire season, with the exception of bi-weeks, when I would be forced to start the electricly-caucasian Green Bay reserve John Kuhn: A player so obscure that he has never even heard of himself.
So Hillis was a no brainer. This made my next pick easy, because the only other player that I really needed to make sure I got was Wes Welker, the only truly consistent white wide receiver in the league. He wasn’t going anywhere for a spell as he was pretty far down the depth chart, so I planned to take the highest-rated quarterback who was not Michael Vick. (a black) Aaron Rodgers was still there, so I grabbed him.
I took Welker next, then Dallas Clark. Round four is pretty high to draft a tight end, but there is a certain comfort in knowing that no one probably wants any of the other players that you plan to take because they’re white and not extremely good. So I figured I might as well make sure and get a good tight end, since he will have to spend his season making up for Danny Woodhead’s lack of excellence.
In the fifth round I took Austin Collie, who is respectable, followed by Jordy Nelson, who is unremarkable according to most NFL experts, and probably his coaches, friends and wife.
In the 6th round I took Greg Olsen because I wanted another solid tight end to play on off weeks and in my flex position if need be. In the 7th I took Danny Amendola, an unspectacular but undeniably white receiver for an unspectacular team.
It was impossible for me to draft an all-white defense because this is not the 1940’s, and I had no intention of going team by team and figuring out who had the whitest D. My devotion to being an asshole knows bounds. Luckily, much like every league, we have a resident know-it-all-team-owner who claimed to be certain that the Packers have the whitest D, followed by The Patriots. I don’t know if he was right, nor do I care. I took the Patriots in the 8th round because The Packers were already gone.
In the 9th round I took Eli Manning to back up Rogers because he was still there and because, again, I knew that no one could possibly want any of the other players I might draft.
I took kicker Nate Kaeding next because he was rated highly. I didn’t know for sure that he was white, but he was a kicker. So, yes, I’m sure he is.
The time came to pull the trigger on Danny Woodhead. The New England tailback who looks like some guy that everyone hung out with in college. Not a guy that you hung out with directly, but he was a friend of a guy that you hung out with a lot. That’s Danny Woodhead.
And my White-Dynamo-Backfield-Tandem was complete!
I then grabbed Todd Heap for more insurance and then little-used running back Toby Gerhart.
For those of you keeping track, I now had two Dannys, a Toby and a Jordy on my team. If you have two Dannys, a Toby and a Jordy on your team, that pretty much rules out a deep post-season run. However their names would be perfect if I were taping a Children’s morning show in which the child stars sang about letting Jesus into your heart.
I finished off my campaign with the aforementioned John Kuhn, (K-Dog!) and Julian Edelman, who I later replaced with Miami receiver Brian Hartline, much to the disappointment of Julian Edelman who called and told me he had never been on anyone’s fantasy team before and begged me to reconsider. Brian Hartline celebrated his last minute pickup by dropping two passes and being significantly slower than his black counterparts.
So what is my point in all of this? And why are you still reading it? That’s on you, dog. But here’s my parting thought. Clearly, I am not going to win my fantasy football league this year. Primarily because of the “having the whole-white-team” thing. But I wouldn’t have won any ways. Because I don’t know anything about all the players in this league. I don’t even recognize about 20 of the names of the top 50 players on the ESPN Draft Rank sheet that I lazily printed out and drafted exclusively from the day of the selections. I don’t have the time or interest to be that involved in football. I follow the Browns and let them rape my soul and take my money every year, and that’s as involved in football as I plan to get.
So yeah, I threw away my twenty dollar entry fee. But I have no regrets. Because, mark my words, though I will surely lose a lot, there will be at least one game this year where all of the stars align. Where Adrian Peterson has an off day for someone and Jordy Nelson somehow has a career game and blows the fuck up. And despite my racial handicap I will beat at least one of these teams in my league. And oh the razzing they will receive from me.
Oh the razzing!
Because as bad as it is to be the losingest team in your Fantasy league, the only thing that is worse is getting beaten by a losingest team in your fantasy league. A team made up entirely of white guys. (with the exception of some New England defenders).
Vivo Los Diablos Blancos! (T-shirts are in the works)
