Fantasy football diehards about to sweat

It’s an annual early summer tradition that every blue-blooded American sports fan looks forward to. It warms the soul and brings about rich images of camaraderie, competition and unbridled man-love of the finest quality. It represents everything right about the summer months: hope, optimism, and the vast possibilities tied to a future marked with success, triumph and the limitless unknown.

Of course, I’m talking about the annual “Fantasy Football Draft Date” email.

Forget the sight of Chris Mortensen’s bus or that first whiff of freshly cut training camp grass, it’s the mid-June “When are we having our Fantasy Football Draft?” e-mail from your league’s commissioner that truly gets the football juices going.

It’s this e-mail, which most often comes unannounced and in the middle of a typical workday, that marks the official start of “football” season for the average NFL fan. With summer weddings, children off from school, and summer vacations clogging up the second half of August on Outlook calendars far and wide, the annual fantasy draft date logistics email — part practical, part sentimental, and completely drizzled in trash talk — sets the wheels of eight wonderful months of pro football in motion.

I look forward to that e-mail every year. And yet, this June, it has yet to arrive in my inbox. The emotional part of me hopes it will. The rational part of me knows it won’t. Imagine telling your kids that Santa Claus is taking Christmas off this year. That’s how fantasy football diehards are starting to feel this summer. And as the lockout drags on into July and potentially August, that cold, empty feeling will only intensify.

To many crews of friends and colleagues, that August fantasy football draft means more than just claiming the rights to Aaron Rodgers or Drew Brees for the upcoming football season. It marks an annual gathering — set in stone, literally months in advance — where friends, both old and new, will commence and share laughs, jabs and Buffalo wings. I couldn’t tell you which owner actually won my fantasy football league last year, but I can rattle off several of the running jokes from our draft. Without fantasy football drafts this summer, something very unique — something very American — will be lost.

A bit dramatic? Tell that to the guy who devotes his every Sunday in the fall to staring at the GameTracker on his laptop, while following the fourth quarter of a meaningless Cardinals-Seahawks game on FOX. Tell it to the various networks that rake in hundreds of thousands of advertising dollars to their fantasy football promotions. Hell, tell it to the folks whose lives are directly impacted by fantasy football — a “not-so niche” industry that brings in an estimated $800 million a year. Statistics from a recent BusinessInsider report say that 22 million Americans played fantasy football last season. This isn’t just a bunch of pencil pushing geeks in their mothers’ basement, anymore. It’s everyone with a pulse.

Beyond the annual mid-June fantasy draft logistics email from your commissioner, much of what goes into fantasy football draft preparation will no doubt be missing this summer, too. The magazine racks — usually lush with fantasy previews in July and August — will be barren. Fantasy football owners used to spending summer vacation days at the beach, researching off-season free-agent pickups and rookie additions in these glossy pubs are left with … well, nothing, this year.

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"The offline fantasy magazines are pretty much history, as is,” explains Andrew Miller, founder of fantasy football site Football Nation. “They could never adapt to changing situations because they usually went to print in July, anyway. But now? With a lockout? They can't even put free agents on teams. They’ll be completely outdated. For our site FFChamps.com, as soon as we know where the Free Agents go, we will be ready to make those adjustments to our draft prep materials. The print magazines — especially this year — simply don’t have that luxury.”

The leading fantasy football websites are by no means immune to the effects of a lockout, though. “The lockout affects our online draft guide,” adds Gregg Rosenthal, managing editor of popular fantasy sports site, Rotoworld.com. “We’re going to put one up in mid-July no matter what, but it will just be weird if the lockout is still going on. We’re ranking guys without knowing what team they will be on. Either way, we’ll have to put out a Draft Guide 2.0 after the lockout ends.”

Rosenthal notes that his site’s NFL traffic was slightly down in March and April, but numbers will “take a huge hit in August if this thing isn’t over.”

Over the next few months, you’ll read plenty of stories focusing on stadium vendors, local hotel owners in the league’s various training camp towns and bartenders in cities across the country that are going to take financial beatings because of the lockout this summer. These are the obvious results of a major sports league work stoppage. These stories, as terrible as they might be, are nothing new.

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But the average NFL fan — the guy or gal who has no vested interest in the sport other than loving their Sundays devoted to the game — truly hasn’t felt the impact of the NFL lockout yet. The NFL Draft, the league’s hallmark off-season event, went on without a hitch. Mel Kiper’s hair was as coiffed as ever, every team made its full allotment picks, and the top rookies pretty much all showed up in New York City to shake commissioner Roger Goodell’s hand. The NFL Network is still on the air, there’s still news to report, and EA Sports’ “Madden ‘12” will be released on time.

The average fan’s first real taste of the NFL lockout may very well come with the lack of fantasy football preparation this summer. And that taste? Well, it’s going to be pretty damn bitter.

“We're already panicking, plain and simple,” says Jonah Keri, author of the best-selling book, The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team From Worst to First. “My buddies and I have had the same league going since I was in college in 1995. The trophy is this hideous Labatt Blue bowling trophy, and we mark the winners by writing on the little labels that come with cassette tapes (we had to hoard these, because people obviously don't sell cassette tapes anymore). For a decade and a half, we've looked forward to this league, and the chance to win this dinky little trophy. Now you want to deprive us of this right. For shame, Roger Goodell. For shame.”

Keri’s league is not unlike the millions of others with quirky traditions, unique running gags and years worth of history rooted in friendship across the globe. Take that away and something far more sentimental than a seventh-round sleeper pick is lost.

Beyond fantasy football, other areas of the game’s “extracurricular activities” are beginning to feel the heat, too. “The action on our Week 1 odds is down about 30 percent compared to last year at this time,” notes Dave Mason, Sportsbook Manager for online gambling site BetOnline.com. “This leads me to believe that many of our players believe there will be a season, but it will start late. There will definitely be a Super Bowl champion. But, Week 1 might not take place when it is scheduled, so even though bets would be 'no actioned,' people would rather bet on stuff they know is 100 percent certain.”

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No fantasy football? No Week 1 bets on those summer Vegas bachelor party trips?

This is getting awfully depressing.

And if you’re a fan who’s simply not into such off-the-field behavior? Then, perhaps the most innocent of August activities — a day trip to a training camp site — is more your speed.

Well, guess what? There’s a chance those trips might be scrapped, too. Time is certainly ticking. To even plan a training camp excursion takes a few weeks of prep time. Few Americans can just drop everything, without some advance notice (and approval from the boss), to spend a workday in Georgetown, Ky. or Oxnard, Calif. The longer the lockout goes, the less time NFL fans have to make arrangements.

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“The truth is, many NFL fans don’t have the opportunity or means to go to the stadium, so training camp is the only chance they have to see their favorite team up close in person and interact with the players in a unique way,” says Jared Cooper, the CEO of Sports Power Weekends, Inc., a company that plans sports experiences for fans across the country. “Losing training camp does not only adversely affect the players and teams, but also the fans that have welcomed the Packers to DePere, Wisconsin for 53 straight summers, or the Steelers fans who have been traveling to Latrobe each July and August since the 1960s. If the lack of fantasy football doesn’t hit the NFL fan this summer, perhaps missing out on these annual trips will.”

At the end of the day, all fans of the NFL can really do this summer is wait anxiously.

Wait anxiously for that annual “Fantasy Football Draft Date” e-mail from their commissioner.

Wait anxiously for both sides of the lockout to come to terms.

Wait anxiously for some sort of sign of progress.

Though the players, owners, team staffs and NFL media have been feeling the sting of the lockout since the end of the 2010 campaign, it’s not until now that the fans of the game are really going to start being affected.

And as June turns to July and July inevitably turns to August, things are only going to get worse.

"If you're worried the NFL lockout is letting football players get out of shape, imagine what it's doing to fantasy football players,” quipped Jason Gay, columnist for The Wall Street Journal, on Monday night.

DON'T LET GO

Who knows when the NFL will be back. Relive the happier times with a visit back to our 2011 Draft Central.

And, in a way, Gay is right. Fantasy football isn’t just some hobby. It’s not something you just pick up where you left off. It’s a skill, perfected over time and months of pre-draft preparation. It's the average NFL fan's rare opportunity to feel the rush of competition.

Don’t buy it?

I’ve got more than 20 million people who can back me up.

Twenty million other Americans who are about to realize just how terrible a summer lost to the lockout really will be.