Jonathan Stewart isn't a fan of your fantasy football team.
"It's not a fantasy, it's real life," the Carolina Panthers running back said in a telephone interview. "These are guys who have actual families. This is a job. It's not fantasy."
The regulation posse is taking a hard look at two major daily fantasy sports companies, FanDuel and DraftKings, over the central question of whether they offer games of skill or a way to circumvent laws against online gambling. We can debate the merits of their arguments endlessly, and that fight moved to a New York courtroom earlier this week.
The more troubling issue about fantasy football is that its increasing popularity is masking something darker: the desensitizing effect it is having on fans, numbing them to the pain and injuries that are the stock in trade of a violent game.
You've seen it time and again, An injury to a player evokes moans and sometimes profanity in the moment, but it is not out of concern for the athlete on the field. It is because the player -- often a quarterback, a running back or a receiver -- is central to someone's fantasy team.
The players see it, too.
"I see them bashing people's names, cursing them out on social media, bashing guys for not performing because they didn't win $10 in their fantasy football league," Stewart said. "You want to respect your fans, but you want the fans to respect the game."
The problem is that fantasy, by its definition, is disengaged from reality. It has created a class of fans who view the NFL every weekend only through the distorted prism of their own made-up roster.
In one game alone last Sunday, Baltimore Ravens running back Justin Forsett broke his arm, quarterback Joe Flacco tore up his knee and St. Louis Rams quarterback Case Keenum sustained a head injury so serious that it left him struggling to stand up.
Yet thousands of fantasy moguls with these players on their rosters surely bemoaned not their fate but their availability for the rest of the season.
"I've certainly been guilty of saying, 'I hope this guy gets hurt today,' and then following it up when I look at my wife and say, 'I don't really mean that,' " said Seth Young, an executive of Flower City Gaming, which operates Star Fantasy Leagues. "When you're competing and you've got your own fantasy team on the line, you care about you. You don't care about the players. But at the end of the day, we're all still human beings."
I have heard the argument that the greatest value of fantasy football is that it engages casual fans, pulling in individuals who otherwise had no interest in football. That has clearly been a boon to the league, with the increased engagement showing up in page views and television ratings. But what is really driving that interest?
"What are you engaged for?" Stewart said. "Are you engaged because you love the game and respect the players? Or are you trying to make easy money?"
Stewart has reason to be soured on fantasy. He has been on the receiving end of harsh social media criticism for years. A durable and productive player for his first four seasons, he played only nine games in 2012 because of injuries. A year later, he appeared in only six, running for only 180 yards and scoring no touchdowns. This season, he already has two 100-yard games, but he has six in which he has failed to score a touchdown.
"You see somebody when you go out and they say, 'Hey man, I need you for my fantasy team,'" Stewart said. "I'm like: 'Wait, I need this for my job. Forget your fantasy.' What's important here? You making a couple dollars in an easy format or me providing, because this is my job?"
This much is true: In the past 20 years, fantasy football has changed how we watch the NFL and how we look at athletes. Instead of players to admire and cheer, they have become cogs in a machine, chess pieces to move around a virtual board.
Shawn E. Klein, a philosophy instructor at Arizona State, argues this is a function of fans' not knowing athletes. He sees a lack of sensitivity "as part of the spectator experience to see the players more as objects or as figures in the entertainment space, to see them almost as imaginary, to not see them as human beings with jobs and family."
We see the same phenomena, to an extent, in entertainment and politics. The difference in football is there is weekly carnage in the NFL, and fantasy allows team owners to anesthetize their sensibilities and indulge an intriguing double agency.
Last Sunday, Stewart carried the ball 21 times for 102 yards in Carolina's 44-16 victory over visiting Washington. After the game, Stewart said he was congratulated by a fan thrilled because Stewart was on his fantasy team.
Except, Stewart said, the man was a Washington fan.
"Where's the loyalty there? It just feels weird," Stewart said. "I think they don't look at us as human anymore. I think they look at us as an opportunity."
It's a chilling evolution in which compassion feels like the real fantasy.
Sports on 11/29/2015