Why People Lose at Fantasy Football

“The Red Pill”

Most people are familiar with the film, The Matrix, (and if you’re not, you need to seriously catch up on your movie watching, but I digress) – In the movie, fairly early on, Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne, gives the interminably naïve Keanu Reeve’s character, Neo, a choice in the form of two pills, one red, one blue. Take the blue pill, you wake up like nothing happened, just as you were before; take the red pill, and like Alice through the looking glass, you will suddenly see everything very differently. Your entire reality will be turned upside down. But in that process comes the promise of enlightenment, to see the truth for the very first time. In the Matrix, Neo chooses the red pill, and the ability to see reality, the simple truth, which he had not known until now: that what he thought was real, what he had always assumed to be his world, his life, his environment, everything, was all a fabrication. Despite where he thought he was, he was actually somewhere else. Who he had assumed he was, he wasn’t. And everything he thought he was doing, he was not.

The above scenario is how most people approach fantasy football, just like Neo before the Red Pill. They assume they are playing the game, yet they are not. They continually lose, year after year, to their own shame and embarrassment. I know because I used to be one of those people myself, many years ago, before I swallowed my own red pill and took those deliberate and often painful first steps towards the truth. You see, the reason why you lose at fantasy football is that you are not – in all actuality – playing the game of fantasy football, even though you believe with all your heart that you are. This not only insures that you will lose, but it completely hinders your potential to grow and get better, because as they say in the recovery movement, you can’t be helped until you admit you have a problem. Morpheus explains as much to Neo when he tells him he himself must choose to see reality, he must choose the red pill. And so must you.

To quote another movie, Training Day, “This is chess, not checkers!” The people who have been winning your fantasy league year after year understand this. They not only are playing the game, while the weak players are not, they also understand the complexity and diverse strategy involved in taking down league trophies. And furthermore, they rely on, even prey on, your incorrect presupposition that you are approaching the endeavor with the proper amount of seriousness, let alone the aforementioned concept that you’re not even on the right playing field. They are playing fantasy football and you’re chasing shadows.

This all leads to the concept of “the metagame” which is the main subject of my new book, “The Art of Winning Fantasy Football, Mastering the Metagame”, a secret strategy guide which I produced for the Fantasy Football Institute, where I am lead instructor. In any area of life, in fact even the process of everyday life itself, within its form and movement contains a set of unifying principles – a paradigm – which governs and dictates the action that unfolds. Just as a pasta maker will not brew coffee, you will never win at fantasy football if you are operating the wrong machine. This underlying framework is known as the metagame, the game within the game, the set of rules that govern the action. And in fantasy football, more than in most games, the metagame is particularly difficult to identify. Indeed, winning fantasy football is derived from mastering the metagame. This is the critical understanding you will need in order to thrive and crush your opponents. My book is devoted to giving you this understanding, the tools and techniques, the paradigm shift (the red pill) which will enable you to see the real world of fantasy football.

You’ve been running around in the dark and you didn’t even know it. Step into the light. I will teach you the real game of fantasy football, the unifying set of principles that govern the game, I will empower you to empower yourself and crush the people who have been crushing you. I will teach you how to dominate your league year after year. As the ancient Chinese proverb says, “give a man a fish and he has food for a day, teach a man to fish and he has food for a lifetime.” I don’t give picks and stats like the others, that information is everywhere. What I will teach you is how to see the truth. Emboldened with that knowledge you will be playing the real game of fantasy football, likely for the very first time. This is how you will win.