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It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.
-Edgar Allen Poe
The key differentiating feature between dynasty leagues and every other fantasy football format is the existence of a future. In the burgeoning Daily Fantasy Sports market, the “future” is measured in hours or, at best, days. Redraft leagues are not much further along, with the “future” essentially serving as a stand-in for “what happens as soon as I’m past these bye weeks”.
In dynasty, however, the future stretches on as far as the eye can see. Decisions made today hold the potential to directly influence outcomes a decade from now. Indirect impacts, meanwhile, spread out like ripples from a pond, encircling the globe and returning back again.
It is no exaggeration at all to say that you could make a trade the day before the birth of a child and pay for his or her college applications with winnings that trace directly back, in an unbroken line, to that initial decision.
It’s part of what makes dynasty such an exciting format. It’s part of what keeps dynasty owners up at night with worry and indecision. Perhaps we shall look back on today’s decisions as some sort of dream, questioning how anyone in their right mind could have thought that was a good idea. Sort of like the fantasy equivalent of powder-blue tuxedos or Vanilla Ice.
On the other hand, it sometimes seems as if we hold our future selves in as much disdain as our future selves will one day hold our present selves. Our future and our present are in a constant tug-o-war for resources. The problem, of course, is that only our present selves are capable of exerting any pull. It’s a decidedly one-sided contest.
The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.
-Malcolm X
There is a rather well-known entry among Aesop’s fables called “The Ant and the Grasshopper.” The fable tells the tale of a Grasshopper who sang and danced all summer long while the ant busily gathered the harvest; when the winter came, the ant was warm and well fed while the Grasshopper starved to death in the cold.
What I find interesting and notable about this fable is that it is over 2,500 years old. While this hardly serves as conclusive proof, I find this compelling evidence that not only did Aesop and the Greeks play fantasy football, but that dynasty was actually their preferred format! Once again, this reinforces the wisdom of the great Greek thinkers.
We’ve all seen owners who trade away their future first rounders in a fit of short-sighted imprudence and are left hungry and cold during the rookie draft. We’ve also seen owners who, ant-like, harvested assets in advance and were well-fed and comfortable during the draft season.
The lesson, of course, is that by spending time and effort when times are good, we can build up a windfall for when times are bad. Like most fables, however, it prevents a bit of an oversimplification of real life.
After all, haven’t we all heard the saying that nobody has ever lain on their death bed and said they wished they had spent more time at work? Is it possible to spend too much time working and not enough time enjoying the fruits of your work? Which is right, the millennia-old fable or the motivational saying?
The answer, as it usually does, lies somewhere in between. The value of the future depends on several factors.
Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.
-Niels Bohr
The first, and most common, criticism of future value in dynasty leagues is that it is so uncertain. If a player is starting and producing today, you are extremely likely to benefit from that production, barring injury. If a player is anticipated to produce at some point in the future, that production is far less certain.
Consider, for example, a comparison between Matt Forte and Christine Michael. Forte is currently productive but celebrates his 29th birthday this December. He is doubtless closer to the end of his fantasy-relevant career than to the beginning.
Michael, on the other hand, is a highly-regarded 2nd-round pick who is a little more than a week away from his 24th birthday. He likely has much more football left in front of him than behind him.
On its face, the decision between Forte and Michael seems pretty clearly to be a decision between future and present, but Forte’s advantages are not limited merely to the fact that his production is immediate while Michael’s is delayed.
For instance, Matt Forte stands less chance of an injury or suspension cropping up before he realizes his value. While doubtless the most dangerous thing a football player can do is actually play football, injuries can even happen in practice or the offseason. And, in fact, the offseason is when most suspensions strike, as well. Player safety is relative, but never absolute.
Beyond external forces, many intrinsic properties of the players themselves make future production uncertain. Christine Michael was drafted to be a starter eventually, but there is no certainty they will ever fulfill that expectation. Players bust all the time.
At this point, with little track record to go on, there’s no way to rule out the possibility that Michael is a bad player and we just don’t know it yet. Matt Forte, on the other hand, carries none of that risk.
As a result, not only is Forte’s production more immediate, it is also more certain. That certainty makes it more valuable. In this case, the short-term trumps the long-term, not because the short-term is intrinsically more valuable, but because there are lurking covariates confounding the comparison. Immediacy is inherently more certain, and certainty is inherently valuable.
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.
-Winston Churchill
Even ignoring the differences in certainty between production, there are other reasons why the present is intrinsically more valuable than the future.
For instance, trading for draft picks that come due in five years is nice in theory, but in practice there’s no guarantee that your league will still be around five years from now. Everyone likes to think it could never happen to them, but leagues fold all the time.
(In fact, I’ve even heard rumors of the existence of annual “short-term dynasty leagues” where the league folds after every season, only for the owners to come back the following August and re-draft all of the players all over again.)
Even if the league is still going strong, there’s no guarantee that you will still be a part of it. We’ve all seen owners leave dynasty leagues, and again, while we may think that would never be us, humans have a pretty spotty track record of predicting their own behavior.
Illness is no respecter of fantasy football, for instance. Neither is grief. Babies are born, houses are bought and sold, jobs are lost and gained, and families are relocated, and it’s as if the inconvenience that these things pose to dynasty leagues doesn’t even play a factor.
The ant might have stored up for the winter, but if calamity had struck his food stores before he’d had a chance to consume them, he would be worse off than the Grasshopper, who at least had the memories of dancing and playing when times were good.
Or, perhaps instead of the grasshopper, we could offer up a more positive role-model for the short-sighted; the bear spends all summer gorging himself, and when the winter comes, he sleeps free from worry of what might happen to all he’s saved.
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
-Abraham Lincoln
One final argument I would make in defense of short-sighted thinking: the “future” is often thought of as a single nebulous whole, but it is not a monolith. Instead, it is an unbroken string of present moments, occurring one after the other.
If two owners play fantasy football for 20 years and each win five championships, you could say that they both experienced comparable success. But if the first owner won all five championships within the first 10 years, while the latter owner won all five championships in the last 10 years, they experienced that success very differently.
The first owner had all 20 years to savor the feeling of being a multiple champion. When the lean years came towards the end, he had those remembered emotions to sustain him. When doubt began to creep in, he was able to remind himself of his past success and quickly dispel it.
The second owner, on the other hand, spent ten frustrating years wondering what he was doing wrong, striving to reach the mountain top and failing. When doubt and concern crept in, he had no ready answer other than “trust the process”. But in the face of doubt, “trust” is less comforting than “remember”.
Championships may be championships, but the earlier we win them, the more value they provide us.
A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.
-Denis Waitley
I love this quote, as I feel like it perfectly encapsulates what investing in the future means. Investing in the future is uncomfortable. The future itself is unfamiliar and unknown.
Despite this, despite all that short-term thinking offers, it is imperative that we set aside the discomfort and store for the future. Present success is important. It is arguably more valuable, even. But we all have dreams of what our team might be, and if we ever have any hope of realizing those dreams, we must accept the risks and the costs and begin preparing now.
If we do not set aside resources and build towards a goal, then we are still preparing for a future; it is simply not a future of our own choosing. We cannot fail to prepare for the future, we can merely fail to invest in the future, and when that vague future moment eventually becomes a concrete present moment— and it will— we will be left to deal with the consequences of that failure to invest.
Aesop’s fable tells us that the ant survived the winter. There is a bigger takeaway, though. The ant may have survived for a season, but the story of the ant has survived for millennia.
I’d like to close, if I may, with one final quote about the future from one of the great philosophers of our time.
Winter is coming.
-George R.R. Martin
Will you be prepared?