I have a friend in my oldest fantasy league who probably spends as much time thinking about fantasy football as I do. (And upon reading that first sentence, it’s likely he is already punching in my phone number so he can quibble about whether he actually thinks about fantasy football more. Basically, what I’m getting at is that he’s a pedant.)
I don’t mean that in the negative sense, either. I feel like many view pedantry as a means of displaying superiority. They use pedantry as a tool for demonstrating how others are wrong. They think pedantry is their ally, but they merely adopted the pedantic. Tom was born in it, molded by it. Tom’s pedantry is far more good-natured, an exhaustive, (and occasionally exhausting), effort to ensure that he is right, or as right as one is able to be on subjects such as these. His pedantry is a rhetorical perfectionism, a single-minded attention to detail.
I bring this up because Tom and I have been discussing over the past few weeks a pet project of his, an effort to rank all the teams in our oldest dynasty league over the lifetime of the league. As you can imagine, he is quite thorough in his approach- he tracks all-play winning percentage manually since our league software does not do it automatically, and he will go back and make best-guess adjustments for teams that have been eliminated from the playoffs and stopped setting a lineup, just to get the data as pure as possible.
Tom tracks playoff success and potential points and a number of other factors, and then weighs them all against each other to produce a ranking. He then tweaks and rebalances the weights, and generally spends far more time on the project than is healthy. (I secretly suspect he’s just trying to find a weight that doesn’t have me at #1.)
But anyway, we talk about his project from time to time, and shoot the breeze about what a nebulous concept “success” is in dynasty leagues. There are as many ways to define it as there are participants in the league.
Winning titles, for instance, is always a success. The more of them you win, the more successful you are. And making championship games isn’t quite as much of a success, but it’s still quite the accomplishment. And if the team that makes the championship had to overcome a whole slate of injuries to do it, it might be arguably more of an accomplishment.
Our league featured its first tie this year, and because of some inconsistencies in our tiebreaking procedures there are three ways it could have resolved- a win for team A, a win for team B, or a tie for both. And each of those three resolutions would have placed a different team in the championship game this weekend. Any or all of those three potential championship teams would probably feel justified in feeling like a success, since they were just a random and completely arbitrary coinflip away from a title berth.
Even making the playoffs could be considered a success, given the random nature of proceedings from there, especially if you earn a bye or are among the league leaders in scoring. And if you fail to make the playoffs but secure the #1 pick or otherwise substantially rebuild for the future, that’s progress, too. That’s a success.
Regardless of the weights Tom uses, the least successful team in our league’s history is owned by a guy named Mike. And, indeed, Mike finished this year dead last in potential points and 7th (out of 10) in total points. But Mike drafted Sammy Watkins, Odell Beckham, Tre Mason, and Isaiah Crowell this year. He adds them to a core of Andrew Luck, DeAndre Hopkins, LeSean McCoy, Christine Michael, and Zach Ertz. He might have overnight assembled the best young talent core in the entire league, and thanks to Beckham’s heroics he managed to reach the semifinals. I think Mike probably had the most successful season of anyone.
That’s the nature of success. Any definition we use is going to be inadequate. No one else can decide for us what constitutes failure. Only we have the power to determine what success looks like for ourselves.
Personally, I was blessed to play another season in a stable, drama-free league filled with crazy deals, trash-talking friends, and shared memories. I’m blessed to have a friend like Tom who gets my particular kind of crazy and even ups the ante with a crazy all his own. That’s what success in dynasty leagues looks like to me.
As we all gather together with family and friends this holiday season, I wish every single one of you warmth, well-being, and that kind of success. May your days be merry and bright. May your leaguemates be friends, and your leagues return joy and fellowship rather than anxiety.
And if you happen to be playing in a championship game or two this weekend, like the one I’m playing against Tom, may you find room on your mantle for one more trophy.
