Final Four/Fantasy Fooball/Baseball - What's the allure?

[Taverner]

I can't pick stocks, let alone Pro Sports or College teams

I just don't get the the allure...

[tigereye]

1. I just like basketball and it's fun to guess who might do well

I also love to see the small teams do well, although there don't seem to be as many Cinderella teams this year - well, maybe Dayton. It's just a slice of Americana, I suppose.

[Taverner]

2. Ahhh gotchya

I guess my problem is I've never been able to sustain attention long enough to figure out who was good.

[tigereye]

8. I seem to have picked up the stats bug from my 13 year old son

god help me. For someone who was mainly a swimmer, I seem to have an odd affinity for sports as a whole.

[Taverner]

11. I just don't get into the stats bug, in any sense

For me its all about > or < - not what percentage...

Of course, this is not the recommended path...

[KitchenWitch]

3. For me, baseball has a lot of hidden strategy.

And there are things that happen in the course of a game that one may not really be able to predict.

[Taverner]

4. Baseball - I get - I am LOVING the World Baseball Classic!

And I love baseball - but the whole prediction thing - I just don't get it

[KitchenWitch]

5. I see what you mean

I am rather inconsistent with the prediction thing myself. I did win the DU fantasy football league one year, but I think that was kind of a fluke.

[Noodleboy13]

6. How about Virtual Fantasy College Basketball

I have 2 friends that play this. One wrote an article found here:
www.secretsofthecity.com/magazine/reporting/rakish-angle/simulated-madness


Personally, I don't get it, but diff'rent strokes and all that.



peace
Noodleboy

[jobycom]

7. Two things, I think. First, it draws the fans into a feeling of competition

Instead of just watching, they feel they are participating in the sport, without the uppercut elbow to the windpipe. It's a cathartic competition, in the way movies are vicarious emotion.

Second, for fantasy stuff, it also gives fans a second chance to argue they were right, or to test their own picks against those of coaches and owners. Instead of just saying "I told them they should have drafted A-Rod," they can sort of prove (or not) that their picks would have been better. It's a consolation prize to a frustrating season for all the teams that don't win it all.

Plus it's like D&D. It's just roleplaying immersion, pretending your idle choices really do matter.

I don't do any fantasy stuff and my brackets for the NCAA are just gags where I pick teams I know will lose to lampoon those who take it too seriously. But I can see the allure. It's no different than those of us who start following the primaries three years before the first ballot is cast.

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. I tried fantasy baseball once

Like 25 years ago. I just don't have the GM or manager gene, and I really wasn't into studying every box score every morning to see how "my" team did.

Pools, meh. I don't care about basketball or football, and in baseball there're just too many possibilities and variables to make accurate picks consistently — which is another reason to love the game.

[Taverner]

10. Exactly - baseball is about pissing the time away

Meditation, really

Its as close as we get in American Culture