With the NFL season in full swing, fantasy football competitors are scrambling to put together their best lineups. Some leagues have money pools for the winner, others win bragging rights, but one incentive that has become increasingly more popular amongst high school-aged players is the loser’s punishment.
Designed to bring shame and humiliation to the loser, league mates agree on a punishment before the first games are played. Last year, the most viral punishment by far was making the loser of the league film TikTok videos choreographed by the winner. Senior Ryan Holtzapple had to film a video every day for a month.
“It was pretty embarrassing because a lot of the videos were pretty bad,” Holtzapple said. “But it started to get better as they went on.”
Competitors can gauge how successful their rosters will be after these first few weeks pass by. Some will feel relief, others nervousness. Those who experience early losing streaks may shake up their teams by turning to the waiver wire to pick up players who are not already on a fantasy team. Trades are another popular way for losing fantasy managers to bolster their rosters in an attempt to avoid punishments. If players are unable to find trade partners, some players will join together and make trades that are unfair or one-sided as a way to assure they won’t finish last. However, these trades are often vetoed by league mates as a way to combat unjust tampering.
A punishment is always better when more people get to experience it, especially if those people are your classmates. Wearing wacky outfits to school is certainly a popular way that league mates show off the loser for all to see. “I could see people pointing and laughing with their cameras out, taking photographs of me,” senior Zachery Nagurney said.
Sometimes the competitive spirit can become heated, and disagreements break out between league mates. There are frequent disputes about whether the regular season or the consolation bracket determines who gets the punishment.
“I argued that it should be the playoff record because the winner of the league was Daniel Bernstein, who won the playoffs; everyone else disagreed,” senior Luka Jevtic said.
There are plenty of other punishments that can’t be done in school but are still very public. The waffle house challenge is a staple in the fantasy football world, where the loser must spend 24 hours in a waffle house and can reduce the time spent by one hour for every waffle eaten. Another popular punishment forces the loser to street perform until they’ve earned a certain dollar amount. Whether it’s a dance routine or singing karaoke, this fun punishment is bound to end in boos, humiliation and eventually pity cash, which will then be donated to the league’s winner. The dog cage is another favorite of many fantasy leagues.
“Basically, you sit in a dog cage and people pour stuff on you,” freshman Jacob Mann said. “It felt pretty good [to watch], knowing that I didn’t lose.
In a few short months, the football season will wind down, and the pressure that has been building all year will begin to feel real for these competitors. Whether injuries ravaged their team or they simply drafted poorly, losers will need to accept their fate and gear up for their punishment.
