Fair or not: it’s time for Fantasy Football punishments

Robert Lapic

24-hour waffle house challenge. Getting locked into a cage while condiments are thrown on you. A milk mile. Lose Fantasy Football, and suffer a fate of this variety. Fantasy Football is a popular season-long game where league members draft between eight to 12 National Football League (NFL) players to compete for their made-up teams. Unfortunately for some, many leagues have a punishment for getting last place.

Junior Chris Lee could spend a maximum of 24 hours in a waffle house as his punishment.

Junior Chris Lee placed last in an 8-man league with his friends. For his punishment, his league decided to do a spinoff of the popular 24-hour waffle house challen

ge where you have to stay in a waffle house for 24 hours. Instead, the group decided that Lee must go to an IHOP, rather than a waffle house. 

 “IHOP is open 24 hours and has really big pancakes and waffles. If I eat zero pancakes or waffles I have to spend 24 hours there but, every [pancake or waffle] I eat is one less hour I have to be there,” Lee said.

Lee feels the punishment will be a complete waste of time for him, but he plans to eat more and spend less time in the IHOP. 

“I am going to eat very little food the day before, so I’m very hungry during the challenge. I think I can eat 16 total waffles and pancakes so I’d only have to spend 8 hours there,” Lee said.

Lee is considered a very unlucky loser by the Fantasy Football community since his team put up the third most points scored for the entire year. However, his league plays week-to-week matchups, meaning they compete weekly against other teams and whoever’s team scores more points wins that week. So while his team did perform well over the course of the whole season, they failed to put up points on a weekly basis.

Exiting the water, junior Ian Krumwiede prepares to return to class after his Fantasy Football punishment. (Photo courtesy of Ian Krumwiede)

Similar to Lee, junior Ian Krumwiede also lost his fantasy league and his league-mates decided to punish him in a more unique way. 

“I had to jump into the water by the back parking lot of Redwood during lunch, and I wasn’t allowed to change out of my clothes so I had to go the rest of my classes smelling like the creek and all soaking wet,” Krumwiede said.

Krumwiede felt his punishment was better than some of the others, but it was still very humiliating.

“[My punishment] was more embarrassing than mentally or physically challenging since there were a couple of videos that were taken and I got a lot of questions in my later classes about it,” Krumwiede said. 

Some players have already started to look ahead to next year, hoping the early start will be beneficial to their individual success.

“I have already started to plan my draft strategy for next year. I definitely don’t want to get last again. It’s time for someone else to do the punishment,” Lee said.