The League is the G.O.A.T.

In my last blog I mentioned that I have been getting down with the get down on the FantasyLife App. Well one of the scenarios that I got myself involved in was to write a 500-word-or-less piece on what show I felt was the G.O.A.T. I have no idea what this is for, or what my main man knighthawk7734 is doing with it, but I still hit the keys, and made my case for The League....

The League is the G.O.A.T

By Fitzgerald Hall

A show about a bunch of guys and their fantasy football league? You have to be kidding me right? Who is going to watch that? Probably just the same nerds who are playing fantasy football from their parents’ basement. There is no way they are going to make that work. It shouldn’t work! Well, seven seasons, and eighty-four episodes later, you can bet your vinegar strokes, that a show about a bunch of guys and their fantasy football league, not only worked, it is actually the Greatest Of All Time.

Fantasy football, has now become, deservingly-so, mainstream. I’m not saying Jeff and Jackie Schaffer made fantasy football go mainstream. But I am saying that the popularity of fantasy football has reached the level that it has, as quickly as it has, in large part due to the work of the husband and wife duo, on their show The League. No other show has created the popularity of an industry like The League has. Sure Breaking Bad is cool and all, but none of us are going out and cooking up meth with one of our former students after watching it. But after watching The League, we are rounding up a group of people to create a fantasy football league where we can “trade rape” them on our way to a championship. Whether we are Andre, Ruxin, Jenny, Pete, Taco, Kevin, or Rafi (God bless you if you are), the show quickly inspired us all to go out and play fantasy football.

            

As important as The League is to fantasy football, it doesn’t actually stop there. The whole, “you need to be into fantasy football, to be into The League,” argument was quickly countered in the first episode when Taco dropped his Birthday Song (if you haven’t seen it, Google/YouTube it, and thank me after you finish ROFL). Jackie and Jeff created a comedy sitcom, around everyday situations, that didn’t have a fantasy football prerequisite for laughing. Their writing, paired with characters’ improvisations, formulated a sitcom that made even my sister, who thinks fantasy football is my friends and I sitting around pleasuring ourselves to Antonio Brown, laugh like never before. The comedic genius of Andre’s “Carmenjello” skin-color assumption, or Taco’s “Naginta” performance, which allowed the “White Knuckler” to demonstrate her true talents, was appreciated by both fantasy footballers and non-fantasy football playing viewers alike.

            

Whether you followed The League on FX/FXX or binge-watched it on Netflix, it didn’t take long for you to catch some Seinfeld or Curb vibes from the sitcom. Jeff’s experience on the previously mentioned shows definitely shines through during the show’s seven seasons. Jackie’s input, as his tag-team partner, is what makes it the G.O.A.T. Behind every good Kevin, is a Jenny. If The League was in a fantasy shows league, against every other show ever made, I’ll bet you your finest bottle of Three-Penis Wine that The League captures the Shiva. Shivakamini Somakandarkram!

-Fitzgerald