ESPN Should Reward Their Own Fantasy Football King
Written by B-Dub, Sunday January 23 2011
Sometimes fantasy really is better than reality. That's certainly the case for a man named Nathan Harrington.
While Harrington's real life was crumbling around him, his fantasy football team was on top of the world. Well, his team in a national ESPN.com fantasy football league finished first out of 3.1 million competitors anyway. If that's not the top, it sure is close. Normally such an accomplishment would be associated with a lot of time in front of a computer and a lot of luck. Harrington had neither of those things.
It all started in the fall of 2009 when a car accident left Harrington, 33, with nerve damage in his back that required surgery and prevented him from working. It got worse this October, when he, his fiance and his 3-year-old son were forced to move out of their apartment in Salem, Mass. because it was so infested with rats it was unlivable. That forced them to move into a tiny, cheap hotel room and Harrington's computer went into a storage unit.
Just four weeks into the fantasy football season, Harrington was left without a way to manage his fantasy football team, the Beantown Beatdowns, but that didn't stop him. Not even close. He knew that his team was in the top 50 in the national competition. "My fantasy football was the one thing that kind of seemed to be going right at the time," Harrington said. "So I thought I might as well stick with it and ride it out. Thank God I did."
Without a computer of his own to run his team, Harrington had to get creative. He knocked on stranger's doors at the motel where he was staying. He went to internet cafes. He used the computer at his mother's house. He called in lineups to friends. He used a computer at the nursing home where his father was staying. He even made his fiancee drive him to a library so he could check his lineup. "She laughs about it now," Harrington said. "But there were times when she was really mad at me. She thought I was the Antichrist. She kept saying 'It's only fantasy football!' And I kept saying, 'Honey, you just don't understand!'" I bet she understands now.
All of that kind of makes all the guys out there who complain about not having the time to check their lineup at least once a week seem downright lazy doesn't it?
Harrington made the most of his limited time online. He made 26 transactions over the course of the season and almost all of them worked out.
Harrington had the foresight to draft the surprise fantasy player of the year, running back Arian Foster. He made trades for Adrian Peterson and Dwayne Bowe, who finished as the second-ranked wide receiver in fantasy football this year, while Peterson was the second-ranked running back. He picked up Denver's Brandon Lloyd, this years top receiver at his father's nursing home. But the best thing he did was take a chance.
After his quarterback Tony Romo suffered a season-ending injury in the middle of the season, Harrington was forced to go with a QB-by-committee approach. He used such "fantasy studs" as Carson Palmer, Matt Cassell, Shawn Hill, Sam Bradford, Jay Cutler and John Kitna. I feel his pain, since I did something similar in one of my leagues although it didn't exactly work out as well for me. The Romo injury also absolutely killed Miles Austin's stats, but that is a personal rant for another day.
Going into the last week, Harrington was in seventh place on ESPN.com. That's when he made the move that got him the "prize". He thought about picking up Josh Freeman off waivers or maybe going with Matt Casell. What he eventually decided to do was start rookie Tim Tebow of the Broncos.
Tebow paid big dividends by throwing two touchdowns and running for another score in a 27-point performance against San Diego in the final week of the season. That performance was just enough to give Harrington the top spot by 0.8 points, after averaging 114.2 points per week.
For winning, Harrington received a $3,500 gift certificate to Best Buy, which he sold to his mother for $2,500 since he needs the cash to try to find a better place for his family to live.
While that's great for him, I have to wonder how a media giant like ESPN can give out such a pathetic prize. A $3,500 gift card, that Best Buy obviously gave them for free? Really? That's what the biggest sports network on the planet gives as a prize to its biggest fantasy football competition that attracts over 3 million participants? That's lamer than the majority of their on-air talent. What was second prize, an ESPN the Magazine T-shirt?
ESPN should be ashamed of themselves, although something tells me they couldn't care less. They're getting a ton of publicity out of this feel-good story and only cynics like me would dare to point out the negative angle.
The billion dollar network should give this guy a token job as a fantasy football "expert". Obviously he wouldn't be an on-air personality or featured writer on the website, but Harrington is a fantasy geek like a million other people out there and could certainly provide something to their analysis. Just give him a computer job looking up stats or something that he could do in spite of his back injury. You don't think that dweeb, Matthew Berry, does all his own research do you? The network has an army of guys sitting at computers doing research for all of their shows and articles on their website.
Harrington already proved that he'll do whatever it takes to keep up with his passion for fantasy football. That type of commitment shouldn't just be rewarded with a lousy $3,500 gift card. That's a joke. Give the man a chance. I think he's earned it.
"When I saw I ended up No. 1, I just couldn't believe it," Harrington said. "It was like a fantasy." Come on. With a quote like that, ESPN doesn't even have the decency to make a quick commercial with this guy? Who's making the decisions over there?
It's probably the same people who thought giving a puny $3,500 gift card to the winner of a national contest was a good idea. I guess Nathan Harrington isn't the only one who's living in a fantasy world.
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