Are Fantasy Sports Irresponsible?
[Cross-posted from SportsEthicist.com ] Fantasy Football season is just starting to spin up and millions of football fans are beginning to think about their top draft prospects or clever names for their teams. As big as it is, it is not surprising that it has started to get more and more scholarly attention. Chad Carlson and I discussed philosophical questions arising in fantasy in a podcast back in December (Mike and I also talked fantasy last August). Scott Aikin joins the fray with his relatively recent article in the International Journal of Applied Philosophy entitled “ Responsible Sports Spectatorship and the Problem of Fantasy Leagues ”. Aikin says Fantasy Sports can bring about “a unique form of distortion of proper spectator performance” (195). In sum, his argument is that those who watch sporting events for the purpose of participating in a fantasy league are failing to be what he calls “responsible spectators”. Using several different kinds of cases where a spectator intu...