Bryan Burwell

In my Football Nation, cheaters are not allowed. Clever charlatans, lovable scoundrels and devilish rogues, however, are always welcome. So George Allen, come on down. Al Davis, your table is waiting. Conrad Dobler, there’s a lifetime membership waiting for you at the concierge desk.

This is my open-door policy in my Football Nation, where a little creative mischief is not only expected, but is often highly encouraged. In my little slice of football heaven, you can water down the field into a quagmire, or grow the grass as tall as corn stalks. Paint the visiting locker room a pale pink, open the stadium loading dock gates at just the right time to create a convenient crosswind. Clutch and grab, poke and punch, and by all means an harmless little push off into the chest of a meddlesome dee-bee on a fade pattern will never be discouraged (paging Michael Irvin).

Football is not a tidy game played by well-mannered, emotionally balanced gentlemen. It is slightly organized mayhem played by large men with evil on their minds and coached by paranoid control freaks who are convinced that the light fixture in every visitor’s locker room is a security camera and every bush in the woods around the practice field is a spy.

And now we know they have good reason to think that way.

In the aftermath of the video mischief of Bill Belichick, the three-time Super Bowl-winning head coach of the New England Patriots, we now know what every football coach in America already knew: Just ‘cause I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me.

But in my Football Nation, the biggest threat to destroy the fabric of football society is not the lurking danger of football coaches behaving badly.

It’s the creeping menace of fantasy football. Once upon a time, I played fantasy football. For three days. That’s all the time it took me to discover the evil within.

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True story: I am a Washington Redskins loyalist by birth and geography. Charley Taylor, Larry Brown, John Riggins and Sonny Jurgensen are my folk heroes. I know the lyrics to “Hail to the Redskins” (first and second verse). 

Part of the job description of being a Redskins fan is that I am also a Dallas Cowboys hater. This is a job we take seriously. But several years ago when I was talked into participating in a fantasy league at work by a good friend (a baseball writer) who said he needed some help, I had no idea what a dark and angry place I was venturing into. Innocently, I believed what everyone had told me for years about fantasy sports. It was fun. It helps spark an interest in the entire sport, not just a regional bias in your favorite local squad. Reluctantly, I agreed to come over to the dark side, despite every instinct in my body screaming at me to stop.

My fantasy partner conducted our player acquisition draft without me and he couldn’t resist selecting Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin for our team. It was a sound fantasy football judgement, but as I soon found out, it was also an abomination to my values as a Redskins’ fan.

The draft was held on a Thursday, and by Sunday afternoon, I was sitting in a press box covering a game, and keeping tabs on my players. What first disturbed me was how for the first time in my life, I was suddenly far more interested in how many touchdowns Smith and Irvin had than in whether or not the Skins were winning their game.

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