I love surprises. Underdog stories. The unexpected. It’s part of why sports are good. That is, unless I picked guy-who-wins-too-much Sébastien Ogier in The Rally Takeover’s Fantasy World Rally Championship game. Then don’t surprise me, or I’ll get mad when lesser-known drivers actually make things interesting.
There’s good reason why half my picks in our running Kinja-based fantasy game are usually entries like “Rally Chicken,” “a Jettamino full of currywurst,” or “ETERNAL VENGEANCE FOR THE MITSUBISHI LANCER EVOLUTION” (which must be typed in all caps). I can’t for the life of me take fantasy games seriously and still live with myself.
I think I’m too competitive, and want to win too much. Winning is good! Then I start to take how my picks are doing in the race too seriously, and I ultimately end up rooting for the most boring and predictable outcome.
As a fan, I hate that! Yes, Ogier is highly likely to win—even without the mighty wind of Volkswagen domination lifting him up this year. But I’d rather see someone who hasn’t won very often yet like Ott Tänak or Kris Meeke get it, or better yet, a complete surprise. A 2016-spec car! Someone running in the lower WRC2 class! Lorenzo Bertelli!
I’m just entering a game that costs nothing besides five minutes of trolling another Kinja blog, with the sole goal of beating Raphael Orlove. I can’t imagine putting real money down on these things.
I’ve lucked out sometimes by picking drivers I like—Jari-Matti Latvala, for example, who won Rally Sweden. But I don’t want to watch a race, a game, or much of anything where everything goes according to plan. The races and games we talk about the most aren’t the predictable ones. They’re the ones that give OU’s football team the name “Chokelahoma.”
Some fans just want to watch the world burn, and for us, fantasy games make it impossible. Give me chaos, mayhem, and, well, a Juho Hänninen win would be pretty sweet.