Fantasy Alcoholism

Overheard on the R train heading downtown early Wednesday evening:

Guy #1: I hung out with Conrad the other day.

Guy #2: That guy’s a raging alcoholic, dude.

Guy #1: He is?

Guy #2: Yeah! We're in a fantasy league with him and he hasn't changed his lineup since the draft.

Don’t know about the rest of you, but I found this exchange to be pretty comical. Granted, there was other information eventually offered explaining Conrad's alcoholism, including the fact that he was fired from his job because he would go home and "drink his face off" every day after work and then show up in the same clothes the next day.

But it definitely says something (not exactly sure what) about the relevance of fantasy sports in our culture that the very first piece of evidence offered for a guy’s alcoholism was the fact that he hadn’t monitored his football squad since drafting it.

So that’s why some of you who are in my various leagues aren’t paying attention. You’re all drunks!

Seriously, a very important public service announcement: Next time you notice that a friend of yours is starting to slip in important aspects of his life (most notably in fantasy sports management), don’t ask questions – perform an intervention immediately and get him into rehab.