By Drew Gallagher, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
It’s fantasy football season, the time of year when friends and owners concoct painful and embarrassing real ways to punish the losers in their make-believe leagues. For some fantasy players, winning is nice, but not finishing last is even better. A LOT better.
Sure, there’s fun to be had before the season begins. The league run out of Lil’s bar in Newport News recently determined draft order by having participants run the 40-yard dash in the parking lot. The league president concedes that they might have to rethink this approach since two of the league owners had to see their primary care physicians recently for pulled muscles, and their co-pays were higher than the league entry fees.
But the true grandeur in fantasy football is the punishment for whoever finishes last. Some leagues require losers get personalized license plates announcing how bad they suck at fantasy football. Another penalty that’s becoming increasingly popular is to make the last place finisher spend 24 hours at aWaffle House.
My friend Bryce Sheetz, who lives in Atlanta, said his fantasy league substituted McDonald’s, and required the loser to maintain a live camera feed the entire 24 hours to make sure he wasn’t shaving off any time. The loser could get out early if he or she ate from a fixed selection of menu items:
Big Mac: 45 minutes off.
Fries: 30 minutes.
Tasty shake: 25.
Order the Big Mac Meal Deal and you’d be back in the comfort of your own home, and, more importantly, your own bathroom, in a mere 22 hours and 20 minutes.
The top time-saver in the Atlanta league is the Big Breakfast with Hotcakes, which knocks a whopping two hours off the loser’s sentence, and a few days off life expectancy.
The league owners, all 28 years and older, recognize that no stay at McDonald’s is complete without a trip to the ball pit. This diversion only gets you five minutes off, however, and could get you kicked out of McDonald’s, which means you have to start over again at a different location that doesn’t have your picture on the wall next to “America’s Most Wanted.”
With that in mind, I’ve come up with some other creative punishments for last-place finishers in the upcoming football season:
1. Losing owner has to listen to “Don’t Worry Kyoko” by Yoko Ono--preferably the live version. Unlike the album version, the live versions on YouTube tend to run for 16 minutes, which might seem like nothing compared to the 24-hour McDonald’s or Waffle House stay, but even 16 seconds of this Yoko hit will have you begging for an order of French fries to ice pick into your ear canals. Here’s the link. (Parental consent required.)
2. Losing owner has to substitute-teach in a public school for one day…and eat Taco Bell for breakfast. Vlad the Impaler once said that the most effective punishments involve assaults on multiple senses and, if possible, galloping diarrhea.
3. Losing owner has to dress up in a cow costume and stand outside a Chick-fil-a with a sign that reads OPEN…on a Sunday.
4. Losing owner has to give away apple slices to Trick-or-Treaters on Halloween. You might think this is getting off easy, but you have to factor in the time it takes to clean eggs off your windows the next morning, and understand that the scorn of neighborhood children could last well into the following pool season.
5. Losing owner has to listen to Melania Trump’s book on audio as read by AI Melania. This will take up seven hours of your life that you will never get back, and leave you wondering why someone thought AI reading the audiobook in the voice of Melania was a good idea or necessary. Except that it was probably free.
6. Losing owner has to be on call at all hours to deal directly with Verizon or any other provider if their fellow league owners have problems with phones, internet, or cable.
7. Losing owner has to go to a parks and rec soccer game—the younger the better—and in the middle of the match run onto the field, steal the ball from a player—the smaller the better--and then score a goal and celebrate by whipping off your shirt and running around the field as if you just won the World Cup. If your shot happens to miss the goal, then you have to throw yourself to the ground and wail while holding your ankle and claiming you were fouled. You have to stay prone on the pitch until the police arrive.
8. Losing owner has to take an elderly relative to a cell phone store and have them ask a technician how to call their brother in Budapest. And can the technician or the phone translate Hungarian in real time?
9. Losing owner has to dress up as former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and visit a dog park.
10. The losing owner has to sit through all five seasons of the children’s show Caillou, the interminable series that once drove comedian John Oliver to shout, “F**k you, Caillou! Grow some hair and leave the house!”
Or at least go to the McDonald’s ball pit for a few hours.
Thanks, laughter is so appreciated in these fact is stranger than fiction days.