A Substitute Reality

Two years ago, after a thirteen-year hiatus, I dove back into the world of fantasy football. I’m a fantasy monogamist, and theb are my only team. It’s been rough sledding in the Rio Grande Valley. The Aztecas limped to a 7-21 record in their first two seasons, with consecutive last-place finishes in the league’s Eastern Division. We’re kind of the early ‘90s Phoenix Cardinals of the league- geographically misplaced, and terrible.  

But I’m a persistent sort, at least when it comes to things I do poorly. I got right back at it in 2008 and at season’s beginning I felt good about an Albuquerque roster that included Drew Brees, Brian Westbrook, Marques Colston and Matt Forte, who I cleverly drafted in the sixth round. My ebullience hardly dimmed after a 1-1 start, including a win that snapped an eleven-game losing streak within the division. Marques Colston went down in Week One, but with Brees and Westbrook laying waste to the NFL in the first two weeks, I still liked the firepower at hand. 

I promise you, this is going somewhere.  

Week Three promised to be a pivotal one. While the Browns attempted to break into the win column for the first time at Baltimore, the Aztecas were looking to move to 2-1 with a victory over the division-rival Saginaw Beer-Drinking Bench-Press Champions. After Matt Forte spearheaded a solid fantasy start through the 1:00 games, I settled back for the 4:05 starts, for Browns at Ravens and the games involving my own players- including the top-rated player, Brian Westbrook, in action against the Steelers. 

The Browns, as we know, got off to a good start, taking a 7-0 lead early in the second quarter on a 19-yard screen pass to Jerome Harrison, who put on such nifty moves that he not only sliced through the Ravens defense, but dashed right out of the running back rotation. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a player that seemingly gets punished for making plays. It’s a curious thing. Does Romeo Crennel have a daughter, and if so, is Jerome Harrison sleeping with her? Even if he does, and he is, should that matter? Murray Chadwick kept giving ice time to Dean Youngblood, and he walked out on the team and was shacking up with Chadwick’s daughter.  

But while the Ghost was avoiding enemy defenders and Romeo’s good graces with equal aplomb, my Aztecas were rocked by a catastrophe. Brian Westbrook was forced out of the Steelers game with a strained ankle early in the second quarter, joining Colston and Nate Burleson on Albuquerque’s ever-lengthening injury list. He left with five carries for twelve yards, no receptions, and exactly one fantasy point. It was the worst possible time for a fantasy injury: too late to change the lineup, too early to have any positive impact. 

It was a bitter turn, and my hand-wringing was accordingly overwrought and inflicted on any soul that was unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. No NFL owner with hundreds of millions on the line took a setback harder. No Israelite lamented more over the ruins of the Temple. My angst found fruition in the results. We lost by eleven points, a number Mr. Westbrook usually rolls up in a half. Our record was now 1-2, and once again we faced the prospect of a long and fruitless season in the shadows of the Sangre de Christo Mountains. Meanwhile, Derek Anderson performed his second-half implosion as the Browns coughed up 21 unanswered in the third quarter and went on to lose 28-10. I shook my head, rolled my eyes… and re-donned the sackcloth and ashes over the woes of my fantasy team. 

The loss in Baltimore sent Cleveland’s record to 50-97 since the beginning of the expansion era. They’ve lost nearly two-thirds of their games since 1999. They’ve lost nail-biters and blowouts. They’ve lost games in which the outcome wasn’t decided until the last play and games in which the outcome was obvious from the first series. They’ve blown big leads and launched furious comebacks that have fallen just short. They lost a game they led with no time left on the clock. And I’ll bet in half of those 50 wins, they’ve looked like crap doing it; like that beauty in Cincinnati last week. It gets to the point where the routine becomes white noise, easy to tune it out. A decade of watching the Browns commit dumb penalties, fight on the sideline, get physically manhandled, and do everything else that makes them pretty much the antithesis of what a fan wants from his NFL team has a dulling effect on the senses.  

It’s been nineteen years since the Browns hosted a second-round playoff game. When a team is irrelevant for that long, the standings aren’t the only place where it just ceases to matter much. I have two emotions remaining when it comes to the Browns: exasperation over being owned by the Steelers; and a relative indifference to most everything else. It isn’t what we grew up with. It used to be different. Because it’s different, I’m different as a Browns fan. My fervent edge has been rounded off. I still watch; I still get up to CBS whenever I can, and all that. But really, I’m sleeping with my eyes open.   

Some rail and vent on talk radio and the message boards. Some drink themselves into a stupor, stagger to their seats in CBS halfway through the first quarter, and spend the next two-and-a-half quarters booing. Some mow the lawn and run the errands on Sundays, taking a stab at productivity with the time they once whiled away thrilling to Bernie and Clay, Web-Star and E-Rock. I channel Bill Bidwell for sixty dollars a season. That’s how I fill the void. 

The Browns are on the bye this week. But there are no byes in the Stow-Kent Shopping Center League. And Brian Westbrook should be back in the lineup. Maybe this Sunday will be better than most.