Women Do! candidate?

I was happily reading NPR in bed from my new NPR iPhone app, when I came across this article about women playing Fantasy Football, supposedly in increasing numbers (you know, because a staggering 14% of Yahoo! fantasy football players are women this year, although no numbers from previous years are reported for comparison). As a woman who's played fantasy football for the past six years, I had to rise from my posting hiatus to write about this piece of crappy journalism.

It contains other shocking revelations such as this:

Casselano and her teammate Susie Schoenberger say it's a slightly different game with women. Both admitted that looks sometimes played into their picks.

"I'm sure many guys don't pick some of their players based on looks," Schoenberger says.

Now wasn't that an insightful question! I'm sure guys get asked about drafting by a player's looks all the time. To Schoenberger's credit, she goes on to clarify that most women don't use looks as the main factor for their draft picks, and she only would if all of her favorite players were no longer available and there was nothing else left to go on. So I think she was trying to make the best of a terrible question.

And this:

Paul Charchian, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and host of a fantasy football radio show, says the men he talks to haven't minded women joining them on the virtual field. In fact, for men who are married to these fantasy enthusiasts, it's a point of pride.

"It's almost one-upping your friends who have to try to carve out a few hours to sit in front of the TV on Sunday because their wife doesn't like it," Charchian says. "And they don't understand it and it's an area of contention."

Charchian also says there's more to men enjoying their partners' interest in fantasy football than simple camaraderie. "It is hot. Absolutely," he says.

Wow. I'm so glad that NPR was able to devote their reporting horsepower to get to the bottom of this very important story.