It used to be that fantasies we’re about dreams that could never come true,  now the word “fantasy” is just short for “fantasy football,” the nightmare that won’t go away. It would be melodramatic to say that fantasy football is ruining my life, but it’s for sure ruining my football life.

I hate the Rams (who doesn’t?) and I was all ready to root for their downfall against the 49ers, but I have a Rams player on my fantasy roster, so I had one of those hate-them-but-need-him moments that fantasy football creates. It made the game suck harder than it already did.

No one wants to watch a football game anymore, they only want to watch the Red Zone Channel. The Red Zone Channel is for losers who think buying the SuperBowl DVD is just as good as going to the game, for the guy who’d rather watch highlights on his phone than have sex with his girlfriend.

If you play fantasy football, when your team, the team you grew up rooting for, scores a touchdown, you can’t really celebrate unless the touchdown is scored by the right player. If your team wins, but your best player scores 37 fantasy points for someone else in your league, then it will feel like a loss. If on the last play of the game, your team needs a fourth down stop, but you have the fantasy QB of the other team, then in your mind, at some level, you root against your own team, in a demented way you want your fantasy quarterback to beat your real quarterback.

Fantasy football changes the football conversation, we don’t talk about teams and games, only about players and statistics. But mostly, it wrecks Sundays. The fantasy stat ticker at the bottom of the screen becomes all-powerful, exerting a kind of ninja mind control over everyone in the room. The natural flow and beauty of the game are replaced by the emotional rollercoaster of calculating the fractional scoring of every player in the league; the excitement of an overtime game or last-second comeback is completely lost because you’re depressed about the lack of carries your running backs get on the goal line.

The players on your fantasy roster don’t actually know they’re on your team. You remember that, right? I was never really that good at fantasy football, but I was always really good at watching football. This Sunday, I’m gonna take back my life, I’m gonna abandon my fantasy team (I’m 0-3, abandonment may give them a spark)…I just want to go back to the ol’ days when fantasies were fantasies, when touches and handcuffing meant, well…