With sports betting on the rise, fantasy football has taken the spotlight among many Grant High School students. Following popular trends built around punishment-based leagues, each week’s loser in these groups had to post an “embarrassing” video on TikTok. While most people chose to make their videos private, some friend groups at Grant decided to up the stakes.
Fantasy football allows participants to “draft” a team of real NFL players to compete against other members of their league’s teams, with each contender earning points depending on their players’ performances in actual games. To draft a team, curate a weekly lineup and make trades effectively, participants must have good organizational skills. With the threat of public embarrassment looming, the stakes of each decision grow much higher.
One of the TikTok accounts run by Grant students that features fantasy football punishments is called “Cheeseballs Fantasy Football.” “It started last year when all my friends just kind of wanted to do it, so we met up and did a draft. I didn’t really know anything about it, but it was pretty fun,” says Grant senior Reed Bevan, a member of the league. Since its start, the punishments have evolved into increasingly humiliating videos.
For Cheeseballs, videos were posted weekly of each loser, with punishments bringing entertaining discomfort to viewers and players alike. “There have been people that come up to me in the halls and quote some of my latest TikTok hits,” says an anonymous participant. With cramped hallways and screen-addicted teenagers, word travels fast. Unfortunately for the weekly losers, these videos were picked by other members in their league, often inspired by Tik-Tok’s constant supply of cringeworthy trends.
The winner of this league will receive around $200 accumulated from each player’s initial contribution. Meanwhile, the loser will receive one last punishment: wearing colored contacts as well as a matching hoodie, sweatpants and bucket hat, each with pictures of ramen on them, to school for two days. These awkward and humiliating punishments serve as motivation to win — or atleast to not lose. “I think it’s embarrassing, but still a funny thing to do,” says the anonymous participant.
The Lieutenants, Grant’s designated pep squad, have taken a slightly different tactic in designing their fantasy football punishment system. Like the Cheeseballs group, their league has an embarrassing TikTok video as punishment for the weekly losers. However, they don’t have a reward for the final winner. “I think it’s a good way to (bring) in a different strategy — instead of people trying to win, people … trying to not lose,” says Grant senior Alex Tadjedin, a member of the Lieutenants’ league.
This league began as a conversation in the leadership class between friends who later decided to draft a team and make a TikTok page. While some members escape the punishments by playing it safe, others attempt bolder moves. “Teams are building the safest rosters per week to not get the least amount of points, so you don’t have to do the embarrassing punishment,” says Tadjedin. “You stay away from the high-risk, high-reward players.” The setup of the Lieutenants’ fantasy football league sparked internal controversy around whether the members put enough effort into their losing videos. They landed on a compromise: the loser has to send each video to the group before posting, and the rest of the group determines if the video is embarrassing enough. The constant group chat battle as a result of their punishments made the group question if they were going to finish the rest of this season. “It’s probably safe to say this will never happen again,” says Tadjedin.
