The Top 5 Situations Where It Is Acceptable To Slap The Shit Out Of Someone In Your Fantasy Football League
RDT blogged this last night and it got me thinking when is it acceptable to slap someone in your fantasy football league. I am by no means a violent person but I am also a person whose happiness for any given week during the fall or winter relies on whether I win or lose since the Giants have been an outright joke for almost an entire decade. So this story obviously struck a chord with me.
The reason Tommy Pham slapped Joc Pederson is apparently because he was using the IR slot a little loosey goosey for Tommy's liking.
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I personally find it annoying when someone puts a player with an O on their IR instead of a player that is actually on the IR. But that's a glitch that the nerds that make fantasy football games haven't been able to close. Covid basically made an IR slot necessary for every league the last couple years since you could lose half your roster out of the blue one week because of a couple rogue sneezes.
I don't consider this offense slap worthy however. Angry text message worthy? Sure.Should Joc Pederson be stripped of all the home runs he hit over the last week as a punishment and the Giants are given losses in games where those home runs made a difference in the final score? Absolutely. But some IR trickeration is not slap worthy, even if this disagreement occurred over 2020 Jeff Wilson Jr who was the Shanahan back that won countless fantasy leagues after being stashed for months two years ago.
However, there are a few scenarios that are 100000% without a doubt slap worthy when it comes to fantasy football malfeasance.
1. A Significantly Unfair Trade Is Accepted
This is the big one. Nothing has ended more friendships, leagues, and maybe even lives when it comes to fantasy football more than an unfair trade. It doesn't matter if it's a slightly lopsided trade or a flat out rip off that even Dave Gettleman would've declined. People will scream collusion without knowing exactly what it means. I was a customer service rep at Sporting News back when I first graduated college that had to deal with fantasy football complaints and the amount of perfectly fair trades that were deemed cheating by crying commissioners before I stepped in was preposterous.
That being said, there are scumbags that will make unfair trades with the dumb manager in your league, sometimes with collusion in mind because they are promised money or just want to stick it to one of the assholes in your league. Both people involved in those unfair trades should not only be slapped but backhand slapped to the point they leave their feet.
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2. Someone Dumps Their Roster Just To Be A Dick
The bastard cousin of the shady trade is the shady cutting of a player or an entire roster. The only positive to this is that any commissioner worth their salt can easily add the players back to the shitbag's roster that cut them since pretty much all leagues have waivers. But it's still an unnecessary headache for everyone playing a game and the asshole that does that deserves to be bitch slapped for making the commish in charge of holding a dozen idiots in check do extra work along with the initial wave of angry emails and texts that occur when all those players end up on waivers.
3. Not Managing Your Team At The End Of The Season
Look, I understand that life gets in the way of managing your fantasy football team as you get older. Kids, jobs, family responsibilities. I even have an entire, very much alive podcast about parenting/adulting that discusses all this stuff (SUBSCRIBE PLEASE, MY KIDS ARE STARVING AND THE SUITS HERE APPARENTLY HATE ME)
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It can get to the point where fantasy football becomes the only part of your life that you can escape to a fantasy. But sometimes you may forget to set your lineup because you are busy or just too old. Don't let that happen. Set an alarm if you have to on Sunday morning to take 1 minute to make sure you aren't starting anybody that's injured or on a bye. If that's too much to ask, give your team to someone that will do that 60 seconds worth of hard work every week. If you don't, you should be slapped by your best friend.
4. Not Doing A Punishment You Agreed To Do
The best part about playing fantasy football isn't winning or being a league with some of your closest pals. It's seeing those pals suffer due to the 8 billion random happenings any given Sunday that they have barely any control of. This clearly happens to half the league every week when they win or lose their matchup.
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However, the real good shit happens when someone has to get an awful tattoo, take the SATs as a grown ass man, get slapped in the face, or anything other wonderful ideas for coming in last place in their fantasy league.
As a man of honor and integrity, not doing said punishment is grounds for expulsion in my eyes. That is why I ate bird seed in a video that is apparently no longer on Twitch.
And yes, I haven't forgotten the young men at Barstool that still owe this punishment from an old fantasy football league and still have not done it. They should all be on Slap Alert until further notice.
I'm pretty sure half of the people that owe this penalty live in constant fear of what The Wheel will unleash on their souls every day on The Yak. But still, if you did the crime you gotta do the time. And if you don't, you get slapped until it feels like an acceptable amount of punishment has been doled out.
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I don't want to do it but I am fully prepared to have Team Ziti (namely Davey Pageviews) go on strike from The Dozen until Commissioner D. Lowe holds peoples' feet to the fire.
5. Tanking
There may be nothing I loathe more than tanking a fantasy league. That could be because losing on purpose in a league that is like $100 then giving someone a free ride to the playoffs because they were lucky enough to play you that week is a pussy move or because the Knicks have never successfully tanked during my entire life, which has resulted in them sucking for almost my entire adult life.
But if someone in your league tanks, they should get slapped, then the commissioner should change the rules to the draft order being determined by lottery with the team that comes in last having the fewest chances to get the first pick and every team a spot closer to making the playoffs has one more chance all the way to the person that missed the playoffs by one slot having the best chance for the number 1 pick because why the fuck would you reward ineptitude in life? This ensures that everybody is trying their hardest until the last week of the season and won't pull the other slapworthy nonsense on here to help next year's draft pick. Anybody who has a problem with this lottery system should be hit with a backhanded slap as well.
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I'm sure there are plenty of other situations worthy of this considering we are all grown babies when it comes to fantasy football so leave any situations I forgot in the comments. I am still trying to figure out if lines can be crossed on the fantasy message board/text/emails that would be worthy of fisticuffs since it feels like the battleground of fantasy banter is like a roast where anything you say goes. So I'll leave that for you to decide.
Also shout out to my guy Phillips for breaking pretty much every rule on this list multiple times to winning a bunch of championships in my big league while also making us change the rules of our league to stop his scumbag behavior. You're simply the best, pal (Your words, not mine).