So what is now the geekiest hobby a guy can have? It used to be video games with guys from the movie King of Kong being the stereotypical video game nerds. However, Nintendo's Wii has now made video games an acceptable form of entertainment with even the females participating and organizing Wii parties. Tuesdays used to be the day when male nerds would leave the basement and step outside because it was the day when new comics would come out so maybe comic books is the dorkiest male hobby? Yet comic books, just like video games, have also become more acceptable due to the box office success of many of the recent comic book inspired movies. I would argue that it is not video game or comic books that make girlfriends cringe as I believe that the new reason for almost all women to reconsider their love of a fellow man is fantasy sports.
Fantasy sports is different than video games and comic books in that the hobby is almost exclusively male. I know many females who enjoy playing Wii Sports. Women will watch a good superhero movie like The Dark Knight because it does not carry a negative stigma for being associated with a comic book. But how many girls do you know that care about stats like WHIP, OBP, ERA or VORP? When was the last time you heard two women spending an inordinate amount of time deciding on whether they should use their next draft pick on Kevin Slowey or Scott Baker? To put it simply, fantasy sports is still a big sausage party.
Knocked Up was one of those movies secretly described as a guy flick but in reality was more romantic comedy and actually extinguished any chance that fantasy sports would be accepted by women. Whenever you mention fantasy sports to a woman there is a good chance that the scene with Paul Rudd's character "Pete" is what they think about. Guys will remember that scene for the exceptional one-liner delivered by a fantasy baseball colleague to Pete as he gets dragged out of his fantasy baseball draft by his controlling wife, "Hey, don't let the door hit you in the vagina on the way out!" Women, however, will use that scene as their reference point to what their own husbands and boyfriends are doing one Sunday every year.
The sad thing is that Knocked Up scene is eerily accurate to what a fantasy pool draft is actually like. Ten guys wearing their favorite team's jersey sitting in a small room with the stank that only they can create with the assistance of beer and pizza, making jokes that only other fantasy geeks could appreciate with the usual jeering occurring when somebody selects a player already taken or mispronounces a name. The actual draft day is far less ridiculous than the preparation that usually goes into drafting. If fantasy pool fanatics only spent as much time studying in college/university as they do researching The Talented Mr Roto's opinion on Brandon Lyon's shoulder injury then we would have an influx of doctors, granted they would be more McNerdy than McDreamy.
Fantasy sports is a huge multi-million dollar industry and with the upcoming baseball season, March Madness, NHL and NBA playoffs there is a good chance that your guy will be a little distracted thinking about whether they should go with Alexander Ovechkin or Sidney Crosby in their playoff pool. To those who think they can change their man's love of fantasy sports I have some advice: don't try to change him. Heck, don't even try to understand him. Just rewatch New Moon while your significant other does massive fist pumping after getting Lebron for Okafor and Nash.
point taken, but at least fantasy sports are inherently tied to, well, sports.