©2013. International Journal of Applied Philosophy 27:2. ISSN 0738-098X. pp. 195–206doi: 10.5840/ijap20131296

Responsible Sports Spectatorship and the Problem of Fantasy Leagues

Scott F. AikinVanderbilt University

ABSTRACT: Given a variety of cases of failed spectatorship, a set of criteria for properly attending to a sporting event are defined. In light of these criteria, it is shown that Fantasy League participation occasions a peculiar kind of failure of sports spectatorship.

KEYWORDS: sports ethics, spectator ethics, fantasy leagues, gambling

There are better and worse ways to take in a game. There are epistemic ele-ments, as one should have fewer distractions, a clear view of the action, and

knowledge of the details of the game’s rules in order to make sense of what is happening. There are also ethical elements regarding the spirit with which one watches the game. This essay will be survey a number of cases exemplary of both responsible and irresponsible spectatorship along this ethotic line. The relevant cases of irresponsible spectatorship are where some interest distorts the way spectators take up with the game they are watching. From this survey, two conclusions follow. The first is that responsible spectatorship has similar sports ethical commitments as good sporting behavior, specifically, having a respect for the game. The second conclusion is that participation in fantasy leagues occasions a unique form of distortion of proper spectator performance.

I

Tim has been switching between two NFL games. He will watch the Atlanta-Carolina game only so long as Atlanta has the ball and Carolina is on defense. He cheers when Carolina is able to stop Atlanta’s run or when they intercept a pass. He is anguished when Atlanta moves the ball or scores. But when Carolina has the ball, he has no interest in the game and switches over to the Packers-Bears game. At first, it seems he is rooting for the Bears, but on further inspection, his only interest is the Bears handing the ball off to their running back. Even in situations where a pass would be a better play, Tim is pulling for a handoff.

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Jason is watching an NFL game, the Tennessee Titans versus the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts quarterback throws a perfect pass to a wide receiver in the end zone. The receiver drops the ball. Jason is subsequently elated. On the next play, the Colts run the ball, and the running back scores a touchdown. Jason is subsequently pleased.

Behavior such as Tim’s and Jason’s is, for lack of a better term, weird. Their reac-tions to the games are clearly partisan, but their partisan ties to the games have disrupted their seeing the games as coherent wholes. Tim roots for handoffs in passing situations, and Jason seems to have conflicting attitudes about the Colts scoring. What explains their disjointed perspectives? Why would someone watch a football game and have interest in the results of the various plays, but have no interest in how they fit into the game itself? The answer is that Tim and Jason own fantasy league teams. Tim’s team defense is the Carolina Panthers, and his fantasy league (FL) team running back plays for the Bears. Consequently, his partisanship in the games extends only to that defense and that running back. The fewer points and yards allowed by Carolina’s defense, the better Tim’s fantasy team does, and the more yards gained by the Bears running back, the more yards his fantasy offense gains. As a consequence, Tim hopes that the Bears will hand the ball off to his back, regardless of the consequences for the rest of the offense.

Jason, too, is an owner of a FL team, except he does not have any players in the game. His opponent for the week, however, has one of the Colts receivers on his fantasy league team. So Jason’s elation that the receiver dropped the ball in the end zone was because his opponent’s team would not collect those points for a score. Moreover, once the Colts score a running touchdown, that ends the Colts’ possession, and the receiver cannot collect any points.

That Tim and Jason’s behavior is explainable does not detract from how ob-jectionable it is. Tim and Jason’s interests have distorted their comportment to-ward the games they are watching to the point where they cannot be responsible spectators. FL participation occasions a unique form of failure to live up to the requirements of responsible spectatorship. Some theoretical apparatus must be assembled for this claim to be well-supported.

II

In philosophy of sport, the ethics of spectatorship is undertheorized compared to that of the sporting behavior of participants. This is understandable, at least to the extent that our interest in sport is occasioned by our interest in playing the games. However, we are more likely to watch a football game than play in one. As there are questions of to the axiology of on-field performance, there are also questions of the norms of how to comport oneself in the stands and even in front of the television when watching these games. I agree with much of the criticism of the culture of spectatorship in that it contributes to the commercialization and the cheapening of some sports.1 Moreover, I share the same concerns that hang in the heads of many, that doing is better than watching.2 However, the reality is that we are spectators, and we are spectators often. There are games on every weekend. And we watch. Theorizing sport spectatorship is necessary.

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That there are norms that can be broken in being a spectator can be shown with a few simple examples. Consider:

Larry has placed a bet on the Miami-New York game. Despite the fact that they are favored by four points, Larry picks New York. For Larry to win the bet, New York must win by at least five points. Toward the end of the game, New York is up only by two points and they have the ball. They are running out the clock, getting first down after first down. They come into field goal range, but they do not kick a field goal. They continue to run out the clock, and they win by two. Larry is screaming at the TV: “Kick the field goal, you freaking idiots!”

Larry lost his bet. On top of that, Larry lost his senses, at least as a football specta-tor. Here’s why: he was pulling for New York to score three points to put them over the five-point mark. But no coach would ever relinquish possession at the end of a football game to nevertheless be within a touchdown of a loss. Had New York kicked a field goal, Miami would have gotten the ball back, and they would only have needed a touchdown to win. Larry’s interest in a specific outcome of the game has distorted his view of how play ought to go in the game.

Similar distortions can happen with excessively partisan spectators. Some rivalry games bring out the hate in people, and as a consequence, they become blind to failures of sporting play from their own teams. Consider:

Jill is a Cowboys fan, and as a consequence, she cannot stand those Redskins. This is a down year for the ‘Skins, and today the Cowboys are beating them. Badly. By the end of the third quarter, the Cowboys are scoring at will, and the ‘Skins haven’t as much made a first down. As Cowboys starters make their way to the bench to make way for the reserves, Jill can’t contain herself: “Naw! Keep the first-stringers in. Drop a hundred them!”

I will admit that there are some teams I, myself, would not mind seeing on the receiving end of such a drubbing. But there is a difference between taking pleasure in seeing a blowout occur and pulling for one. Moreover, running up the score is not just taking one’s means to the end of a convincing win, but it its either a form of self-aggrandizement or (inclusively) a form of humiliating one’s opponent. It is not good sportsmanship to do it, and it is not good spectatorship to wish for it. Consider a further case:

Barry is a Giants fan, and the Giants are on the Eagles’ 1, trying to make a touchdown. The running back dives, but he’s short. However, after the tackle, he bounces into the end zone. Barry shouts “Touchdown!” He knows the Gi-ants have clearly not made a touchdown, and when the referees say it’s not a touchdown, Barry goes crazy about how blind they are.

Barry should want his Giants to score real touchdowns, and to pull for false ones is a failure to be sporting as a fan.3

The Larry, Jill and Barry cases are supposed to show something: there are norms for responsible spectatorship. Watching the game de re does not yet make one a responsible spectator. Even if one watches every play with all the requisite

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epistemic care. In fact, it seems one could be a responsible spectator and miss large parts of the action. Consider:

Alicia goes over to Allen’s house to watch the Lions game. In the middle of the first quarter, she receives an urgent call on her cell phone. She leaves to take the call, and it takes her well into the second quarter to resolve the issue. She returns, she apologizes for the interruption, and she asks, “What did I miss?” Allen fills Alicia in about the various scores and important plays, and she is back up to speed.

By getting Allen’s rough picture of how the game’s gone, Alicia can make proper sense of the coming action. She’s ready to watch the rest of the game, as she now has the requisite knowledge to see how the current plays fit with the rest of the action.

From the Larry, Barry, Jill, and Alicia examples above, it is clear there are norms governing responsible spectatorship. Larry, Barry, and Jill fail them in some way, and Alicia succeeds in following them in her way. Larry and Alicia show that spectators have a responsibility to make sense of the games they watch in terms of the game itself. Larry’s pulling for a meaningless (and potentially costly) field goal runs counter to the objectives of the game. It wouldn’t make sense in the game to do that. Alicia strives to make sense of the action coming in terms of how it is a narrative consequence of action before. Barry and Jill’s failure is not the failure of coherence, but a failure of the spectatorial analogue of sportsmanship. Jill is pull-ing for her team to do something that would be unsportsmanlike. Barry is pulling for his team to be given a touchdown he knows they don’t deserve. Here is a first rough characterization of this family of requirements of responsible spectatorship:

(RS1) Responsible spectators (a) strive to make sense of the individual games they watch in terms of the objectives of the game, and (b) pull for properly sporting actions in the games.

I’d noted earlier that there are both epistemic and ethical elements to sports spectatorship. Alicia, here, as part of the cognitive ethic of responsible spectator-ship, strives to understand what’s occurred in the game previously in order to understand what’s to come. Games unfold, and a team’s prior success or failure at some play or tactic helps make sense of what comes next. So part of the ethic of responsible spectatorship is not just watching with the right attitudes, but also working to improve understanding of play. The same ethic here extends to the interest in replays (as second, and sometimes better, chances to make sense of the action), the informal rule of not talking during important plays (don’t be a distraction), and not standing right in front of the television and thereby prevent-ing others from watching (or changing the channel in the middle of the action).4

Clearly these norms of spectatorship need to be coordinated with other norms of respect for others. Consider:

Ramona is watching the Raiders game. Her roommate, Tom, is looking for his car keys. It’s third down, but Tom nevertheless asks Ramona if she’s seen his keys. Ramona responds, “SHUSH! It’s third down!”

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Now, Ramona hasn’t done Tom any great harm, but she’s failing to be attentive to his needs, which is something he prima facie deserves as her roommate. Versions of the Ramona case can be made progressively more egregious, as Ramona may refuse to help Tom at all to look for his keys because she doesn’t want to miss even one play, or she may not pay Tom’s calls for help any heed when his head gets stuck behind the sofa while looking back there. Ramona is a responsible spectator in an epistemic sense, but irresponsible in an ethotic sense. The norms of spectatorship must be placed within a wider context of other ethical norms. Ramona’s care for the game makes her negligent of the care she owes to others. We can see similar distortions occur in cases of excessive partisanship. Consider:

Gary is a die-hard Dolphins fan. The trouble is that the Dolphins lose. Often. And by large margins. Gary nevertheless watches these games with the right kind of spectating comportments, but he is so upset by his team’s losses, he is in a bad mood for the rest of the weekend after the games. Consequently, Gary is generally impossible to be around after a Dolphins loss. And so after the Dolphins lose, Gary sulks in his garage instead of doing things with his wife and children.

In one sense, one might just want to say to Gary: you need to get over it, the Dolphins don’t win. But the problem is not that people have this tendency with losing teams. It would still be a problem even if the team won regularly. The problem with both Ramona and Gary is that we have indulgence of one set of norms to the exclusion of all others. Spectatorship can be pleasurable, but the commitments to it must still fit into our broader lives. The fact of others to whom we owe things sharing the world with us is something that spectatorship should not obscure, even when we are excellent spectators. Consider the following hard case:

Beth and Jeremy are having a Super Bowl party. Beth, however, is worried. She’s a serious football fan, and she’s concerned that having all those people over who are more interested in the commercials will ruin her experience. They might talk when it’s third down, and she doesn’t think she can handle that. Jeremy isn’t much of a fan, but he wants to have a Super Bowl party to connect with some of his co-workers. They agree that they will have separate rooms for viewing: one room will have the casual fans, and the other will be the no-talking-when-it’s-third-down room.

Many football fans I pose this case to agree that the arrangements are unusual but understandable. Whether Jeremy and Beth’s strategy is ultimately acceptable is not of interest here, but that the two are trying to coordinate the norms of spec-tatorship with other ethical norms is important. Responsible spectators not only attend to the games in the appropriate ways, but they also attend to the demands of others around them.5 Ramona and Gary’s failure of responsible spectatorship is that they failed on this end. And so an amendment to the first version of the norm of responsible spectatorship is in order.

(RS2) Responsible spectators (a) strive to make sense of the individual games they watch in terms of the objectives of the game, (b) pull for properly sporting

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actions in the game, and (c) pursue these ends in ways that appropriately fit with their wider ethical obligations.

One of the things we see with Ramona and Gary’s cases was that a kind of narcis-sistic self-indulgence in their spectating was why they broke RS2.6 Ramona can’t be bothered in the midst of the Raiders game, Gary must live out his psychodrama of living and dying with this team. Both do so at the expense of others, and re-sponsible spectators don’t do that.7

III

Let us return to Tim and Jason. They do not necessarily break the rules of ethical integration we’d seen with Ramona and Gary. The two do, nevertheless, suffer from a similar vice. Their engagement with the sport is entirely self-indulgent and narcissistic, and this distorts the way they take up with the games they watch.

Tim and Jason are instantiations of a broader problem of interests external to the game influencing spectating. We’d seen this how Larry’s bet distorts how he sees the game. Moreover, Tim and Jason suffer form a distortion of interest in the specific outcomes, just as Jill and Barry do. Because they desire specific outcomes in the game, they consequently pull for play that is contrary to the good of the game. In all these cases, interest distorts one’s relation to sporting events, and the vice that is continuous through them is that of narcissistic self-indulgence.8 The damage done, though, is not to those around these spectators, but to the relation-ship they have to the games themselves. Watching the games ends up being less about witnessing excellence, taking in a contest, seeing a game unfold, but about one’s team winning, regardless of the game’s quality.

Larry, Jill, and Barry each nevertheless see the games as wholes. The action unfolds, and each event fits into the story of the game. Despite the ways in which their interests affect inappropriate reactions to events on the field, they are still watching the games as games. Notice that this is not the case with Tim and Jason, our FL owners. When these two watch football games, their interests in the events on the field so distort their spectating, they do not make sense of the games. In their case, they not only instantiate the vices we’d seen in Larry, Jill, and Barry (in that they pull for meaningless and counter-productive plays), but they do not have any of their (mitigated) virtues of making sense of the games. Watching the games for these spectators is primarily an activity of keeping tabs on how their FL teams (or those of their competitors) are collecting points. The games themselves are simply occasions for their FL teams to perform well or not. So as a consequence, these spectators, too, are self-indulgent. But in these cases, their self-indulgence is not for the sake of being an attentive spectator or for the sake of any other good extrinsic to the games (e.g., money or some civic pride) but for the sake of their FL teams. As such, FL’s occasion a unique failure of responsible spectatorship for their team owners, one that shares the vices of watching the game to keep track of a bet or through the lens of excessive partisanship, but because the ways player performance is extracted from the game, fractures interest in the continuity of the game.

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IV

There are other interest-related failures of spectatorship I take to nevertheless be acceptably responsible spectatorship. That is, there are some cases where it is ac-ceptable and responsible spectatorship to fail with some of the epistemic norms of responsible spectatorship. Alicia, above, who had to take an urgent call in the middle of the game, is such a case. It is just a game, and one she can catch up with once the call is over. It would be irresponsible of Alicia, of course depending on the urgency of the call, to ignore her phone in the midst of the game. Further, Ramona can miss a few plays to help Tom look for his keys, and maybe Gary should just miss the Dolphins game altogether on his son’s birthday. Missing part of the game (and even the whole game) is still consistent with being a responsible spectator.

Further, there are other interest-distortions that are ultima facie acceptable, but are not cases of responsible spectatorship. Consider:

David’s daughter, Sara, is on the volleyball team. He watches the game intently, but it is Sara’s play that has all of David’s attention. Her form in her serve, her teamwork, and her digs. He watches them all, and he pulls for Sara to do well. He’s anguished when she struggles, and he feels elated when she’s doing well. But he’s not got his eye on the scoreboard, he’s not paying attention to the rest of the team or what the other team’s doing. He’s just watching Sara, and cheering on his daughter.

David is a deficient spectator of a volleyball game. In fact, his interest has the same sort of distortions that we saw in the FL cases with Tim and Jason. He’s pulling for one player to do well, and that interest fractures the way he takes up with the rest of the game. What is the difference between David’s performance and Tim and Jason’s? Not much in terms of the actions internal to spectating—pulling for one player to do well, regardless of what happens in the game is an error of attending to the game. However, it is the coordinating reasons that distinguish David’s performance from Tim and Jason’s, as David’s interest in the game is not his own self-gratification, but in the flourishing of an other. David’s interest is, as other cases of coordinating optimal spectating with the obligations of care for others, a case where he acceptably mitigates his performance as a spectator of a volleyball game in favor of performing as a supportive father.

Again, responsible spectators coordinate their performances as spectators with the other obligations they have. Performing optimally as a spectator is only a prima facie duty, and it is easily trumped by the legitimate demands of others. So, as David performs poorly as a spectator, he nevertheless performs responsibly, as he has, I think, attended appropriately to the game by watching his daughter’s performance.

Can this qualification of responsible spectatorship be extended to Tim and Jason? No. Their performance as spectators has the similar interest-distortion that David’s has, but this non-optimal performance is not occasioned in Tim and Jason’s case by their obligations to others, but their own interests in keeping tabs on their FL performances. There are no others’ needs being met, no other-interested role being played. Only the greedy self-gratification of collecting further points

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for a team consisting of bytes and bits in cyberspace. They caretakers of shadows, masters of nothing.

V

I anticipate four lines of criticism of what I’ve argued. They are, roughly: #1: My argument proves too much, as sports are nevertheless entertainment for specta-tors. Holding them to the demands of disinterested interest ignores virtuously partisan fans. #2: My argument proves too little, as there are significant ethical consequences of spectating left out, such as rioting when the team wins or loses and the gamesmanship of disruptive cheering. #3: The argument begs the ques-tion, as the case is made from particularly loaded notions like the good of the game and properly sporting play, which themselves seem to do all the heavy theoretical lifting. Finally, #4: FL’s are merely other games, and so participating in them may yield non-optimal spectating of some game, that is no more objectionable than the fact that watching golf may get in the way of watching baseball. My plan is to develop and answer these objections serially.

#1, the proves too much objection, is that not all spectator interest is viciously distorting. So with fantasy league teams, often the metrics for the individual players are themselves positive team- and game-contributions. If that’s the case, having an interest in a player playing well and collecting FL points is coextensive with an interest in the team and game’s improvement. Further, as has been argued by Nicholas Dixon (2001), moderate partisanship is actually ideal for spectators. Moderate partisans are, on the one hand, loyal team- (and player-) supporters, but they are also, on the other hand, admirers of the game itself. We should resist the temptation to call those who are disinterested spectators the true fans of the game, Dixon argues, because they do not embody the virtue of loyalty. The pur-ists are “too ethereal”9 in their interests, and in their attention to the games, they “hardly qualif(y) as fan(s) at all.”10 For sure, there can be stubborn, over-zealous partisans, but Dixon argues:

The ideal attitude for fans . . . [is] the tenacious loyalty of the partisan, tempered by the purist’s realization that teams that violate the rules or spirit of the game do not deserve our support.11

The moderate partisan occupies a mean between the two vicious extremes of spectating, and so interest can be an occasion of virtuous spectatorship.

A few distinctions are in order to reply to the proves too much objection. First, there is a difference between evaluating people and evaluating their performances. Dixon’s case is for a virtue-analysis of fans, which amounts to a case that people embody a breadth of virtues, and particularly loyalty. My view here is not about evaluating the spectators, but their spectating. The thesis is that specific kinds of interests in game outcome are occasions for failing to properly attend to games. Interest need not guarantee those distortions, but it is a constitutive condition for them. Dixon, again, is clear that to be the ideal fan, the spectator must manage two potentially inconsistent demands of loyalty and purity. Further, note that Dixon’s case hangs on the idea that fan loyalty is commendable, but as J. S. Russell notes, such loyalty must first be appropriately established. For sure, our interest in sport

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is conceived as occasion to embody the virtues, but these virtues are meaningful only in the contest of appropriate action both in the stands and on the field, which itself is not a matter of partisanship. Russell argues:

For some, it becomes more difficult to be partisan when they have a true apprecia-tion of the skills, trials and sacrifices that go into being an athlete. Rather they wish to see the skills of each athlete exhibited to the best of his or her ability and to see the sport develop and flourish through this.12

And so though one may have team affiliations, partisanship should be occasion for deepened appreciation for the game. But, again, that deepened appreciation for the game mitigates partisanship and spectator interest.

#2, the proves too little objection, runs that my attention to attentive spectating ignores the broader problem of fan gamesmanship and rioting. Spectator interest, so the objection runs, has considerably worse consequences than the ones I’ve outlined here, and not to address them is to trivialize their consequences.

My answer to this objection can be short. The two cases I’ve left out, fan gamesmanship and rioting are cases wherein what is objectionable is not the spectating, but the gamesmanship and rioting. Fan gamesmanship, for example, banging drums while the other team tries to call a play, is objectionable for the same reasons why player gamesmanship is. Fan misbehavior, such as fans fight-ing, rioting and vandalizing is objectionable for the same reasons why fighting, rioting and vandalizing is objectionable. We need, I believe, no special argument for these conclusions.

#3, the begs the question objection, is to my frame of argument that interest oc-casions objectionable spectating in cases where pulling for play is not pursuant of (or contrary to) the good or spirit of the game. The argument, so the objector may hold, is viciously circular, because what is good for the game and what is its spirit is precisely what the question of spectator interest poses.

To be sure, my argument depends on a thick notion of proper sporting attitudes. This, I believe, cannot be avoided, as the demanding norms of good spectating of X will depend on the demanding norms of X. Insofar as I see there are demanding norms of sport, spectating for that sport should follow suit. That bridge principle may be problematic, but it does seem plausible—to understandingly watch a debate, a dance, or any performance, one must understand and be in sync with the norms internal to the performances. So long as sport spectatorship is of sports and not just plays of colors or an enactment of mayhem, this seems defensible. Insofar as one is watching a sport as such, then, one must manifest a respect for the game. If one is to be properly comported toward a sporting event, be it as a player or as spectator, one must take on the interests internal to the game at hand. If one plays a game, one must take the game and its practice as inherently worthy of one’s time and efforts.13 The same goes for spectators—they must see the game as something worth playing and watching for its own sake, not for the winning, the money to be had, the bragging rights, or self-aggrandizement to be consequent of it. The spectator and player take on the interests of the practice itself. This means that spectators should pull for games that have both sides play their best, that the game is a genuine and fair contest, and that the participants exhibit real (if not

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great) skill in their play. So rooting for non-existent touchdowns, blowouts, and counter-productive play is objectionable spectatorship, as these are intrusions of interests beyond the game that distort one’s relationship to it.

#4, the just another game objection, is that my targeting of FL teams is misguided, as failures of spectating for the games being played is an unintended consequence of attending appropriately to the FL game being played. One may be deficient in being a football spectator, as FL owners Tim and Jason are, but nevertheless suc-ceed in appropriately attending to the FL game. So Tim and Jason’s failures are not so egregious, as they, aren’t really football spectators at all. They are watching a different game.

Everything about this objection hangs on the concession that FL fans are not adequate spectators of the games played. But it is not as though they aren’t still watching the games. That is, if , say, one wanted to keep tabs on another untele-vised game, but the only way to do that was to watch the ticker at the bottom of another televised game, this would be an acceptable line of argument. Or that one would turn the channel from and not even watch a football game so as to watch a golf match, this would be fine, too. But the fantasy game takes place within and often against the purposes internal to the games watched. Tim and Jason do watch the football games in order to attend to their fantasy league games. Not watching a game is different from deficiently watching one.

A version of this trouble, that of attending to the players and plays of football teams as mere producers of numbers for fantasy league teams recently caught headlines. In the late summer of 2011, Houston Texans running back, Arian Foster, was hampered through the preseason with hamstring issues. He, the previous year, was a points leader for many FL teams. Given the injury, many owners were unsure whether to keep him on their rosters. Foster tweeted:

4 those sincerely concerned, I’m doing ok & plan 2B back by opening day. 4 those worried abt your fantasy team, ur sick.14

Foster’s tweet resonated on two levels. First, it was an objection to treating his health as a means to an end, that of FL performance. Second, it distinguished a player’s perspective on playing the game from those who play FL. Foster wants to return so he can contribute to his team’s success, and FL owners want that return and similar contributions. But Foster’s perspective is that of a contributing teammate, one who may score points and run the ball, but one who will also be a decoy, block for a pass, and be part of the team, win or lose. The fantasy team owner’s perspective is that of aggregating a group of individual performers, each with metrics that may or may not contribute to a team’s play. The Houston Texans fan who hopes that Foster recovers does so for the same reasons why Foster hopes he can return to the game—so that the Texans team is helped, but the fantasy league owner hopes for recovery because it contributes to the health of another team, comprised of bits and bytes, a collection of private baubles.

VI

Responsible spectatorship requires coordinating the obligation to attend to and understand the game being watched from the perspective of someone who respects

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the game with obligations to others. Responsible spectators pull for sporting play and play that makes sense from the objectives of the game, and they attend to the games they watch in a way that is pursuant of understanding them from this perspective. Responsible spectators, like the players in sporting play, display respect for the game. However, being a responsible spectator also requires that spectators recognize how easily trumped this obligation is by other demands of our time and attention. One can, then, be a responsible spectator and yet fail to attend optimally to a game.

The requirement of attending properly to a game is a weak requirement, as it is really an obligation to an abstract entity, the game. However, it is an obliga-tion spectators have. And so it is especially troubling to see the irresponsible distortions that are occasioned by FL’s, as those who participate in these leagues are often those who care the most for the games. This is, I think, the irony of the failures of fantasy league team owners as spectators—they regularly took on these teams because they took themselves to be excellent at understanding the games they watched, but by taking on these teams, they compromise their integrity as spectators.15

Endnotes1. See, for example, Walsh and Giulianotti (“This Sporting Mammon”), who use the

term ‘Sporting Mammon’ to refer to the institutions commodifying sport.2. Robert Simon rightly concedes this, and he notes that “none of us can participate in

everything.” What’s required is an account as to how to be a responsible audience. Simon holds that one must be knowledgeable and not rude (Fair Play, 176–7). This is a good start.

3. See Lesley Wright (“Aesthetic Implicitness in Sport,” 83), who observes that disin-terested observers can often see the beauty of some movement or moment in a game better than the partisans.

4. See Hempill, “Revisioning Sport Spectatorism,” 48 and 52.5. See the exchange between Fisher (“Watching Sport”) and Royce (“Viewing Televised

Sporting Events”) on the breadth of relevant other-considering conditions for spectator-ship.

6. See Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism) and Wiliam Morgan (“Lasch on Sport and the Culture of Narcissism”) on the problem of narcissism in sports—both in performance and spectating.

7. Randolph Feezell rightly notes the Nagelian requirement of navigating the subjec-tive and objective perspectives when reflecting on and playing sports (“Sport and the View From Nowhere,” 6). The same must be the case for spectating.

8. In this respect, this self-indulgent element of spectating can yield excesses of what may be called pseudoparticipation. Hennig Eichberg’s model of festivity as the model for spectator involvement has no principled way to criticize this (“Sport as Festivity,” 223).

9. Dixon, “The Ethics of Supporting Sports Teams,” 15210. Ibid., 15311. Ibid.12. Russell, “Ideal Fan or Good Fans?,” 17

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9. See, for this view of games as practices and the notion of respect for the game, Butcher and Schneider, “Fair Play as Respect for the Game,” 34. The thicker notion of practice here is derived (as with Butcher and Schneider’s) from MacIntyre (After Virtue, 187).

10. Reported by CBS news. http://houston.cbslocal.com/2011/08/28/fosters-tweet-calls-some-fantasy-fans-sick/

11. I would like to thank Jason Aleksander, John Casey, Joan Forry, David Gray, Robert Talisse, and Julian Wuerth for conversations regarding and comments on previous drafts of this paper. Further, Jason’s hypothesis that I wrote this paper because I am no good at Fantasy Football deserves acknowledgement. But even so, it may impugn my motives, but it does not impugn the quality of my argument.

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