We are on the eve of the first full football weekend of the year, with the NFL joining the NCAA in the fun. For many of you, this is the greatest time of the year, and for others (Shout out, Sarah), this is a time when you lose your husband/boyfriend for the foreseeable future.
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While it may seem hyperbolic that many of us lock ourselves away on weekends to watch a sport that few of us even played at a high school level, the fact is football dominates American TV watching.
If you do not like football, fall really is Spooky Season.Â
Now that we have established America’s love affair with football let’s tie it back to the point of this blog, which of course is money. More specifically, your money.
And there you have it, nearly ¼ of all Americans bet on sports and nearly ⅕ play fantasy football. Intertwining our obsession with football with our obsession for gambling. Truly an American institution.
I want to focus on fantasy football for now but the lesson will be the same in the end either way. If you are new to the concept, fantasy football requires you to draft a team of players that somewhat resembles an NFL team of skill position players. Quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends (if your league sucks kickers) generally make up the team. Here is an example of my team from my league with Clark.
So I drafted this team against a bunch of friends in a league who also drafted a team, and now I root for my imaginary team to score more points than my friends imaginary team. And as I type that sentence I realize this blog is a cry for help. But we are moving on.
Where it gets interesting is we pay a buy-in, where everyone puts up $100 or whatever total you chose, for the entire season. Then the teams play each other as described and after imaginary playoffs take place one team is crowned the winner and takes home the money. In a 12 team league the winner may take home $1k or more.Â
This along with bragging rights and some trash talking can really keep a friend group together, or when it goes poorly, tear it apart.Â
Yes, that is a TMZ article talking about how one pro athlete slapped another pro athlete over a fantasy football league.Â
I once got accused of colluding in a league for trading Josh Gordon for Eddie Lacey in 2013. Eddie Lacey rolled his ankle and got fat, while Josh Gordon burned more defensive backs than bowls that year. All this cost me a championship and to this day haunts me.
Athletes, they are just like us!
Now they were playing for high stakes $10,000 so it’s a bit more than the couple hundred dollars we play for but then again both their career earnings were over $30 million so this is an inconsequential amount of money to both of them.
The point is people get emotional about their money.Â
Part of it is because of something called loss aversion, the positive effect of winning is greatly outweighed by the negative response to losing. When the losses hurt so much more than the wins, in fantasy or investing it can cause us to make irrational decisions or just become miserable.
And much like today as we sit on the precipice of the football season we think everything will go perfect.Â
We drafted the best team.
The Bears are back.
But in reality the road is never as smooth as we initially think.Â
Just like when you put money into your first investment account, optimism makes us think that it will be a straight climb up. That stocks just return a steady stream of gains, year after year until you need them. When in reality the climb is often much rockier.
What’s the Upside?
We are all emotional when it comes to money. Even when it is about something as dumb as fantasy football for as little as what amounts <$10/week on something that is supposed to be fun with your friends.
This is what makes investing hard, there are a lot of biases that creep in when real money is at stake.
But if we are able to ignore the noise, and acknowledge our biases we can improve our results in the long run.Â
