The best dude in fantasy sports
If I say the name “Scott Fish,” you, reading this, will likely have one of two reactions: “Oh, he’s the fantasy charity guy,” or “Who?”
(A third, less likely response is “That sounds like the most boring character in Finding Nemo,” but that’s not really relevant to the point I’m making.)
I made it a few years on the fringes of the fantasy industry before I knew who he was myself. That’s on me, not him, but still. I started with SB Nation in 2013 and had no idea who he was. I moved to PFF in 2016 and I had seen some retweets of his, heard about something called the “Scott Fish Bowl,” but that was about it. But then in April of 2018, my son Lucas was going in for his third heart surgery (of four! But we think he’s done now), and I tweeted out a plaintive little plea for a GoFundMe, because his health issues were bleeding us dry.
That GoFundMe, if you recall, did gangbusters. I had hoped that I might get close to the goal of $10,000 over the course of the few weeks from pre-surgery to post-. Instead, I blew past that mark in under 24 hours and ultimately raised more than the goal (which came in handy, because Laurie couldn’t go back to work for a bit after the surgery).
I got donations aplenty, and I got several tweets and DMs wishing us luck as well. And then this guy, Scott Fish, sends me a tweet out of the blue about DMing him, so I did.
I didn’t know this dude, and he didn’t know me. But instantly, he offered to run a charity completely for me to raise some money for my kid. To be totally fair, he wasn’t the only person to make such an offer, but he was the first, and the most generous. I thanked him, though at the time I was already blowing past the donation goal and didn’t want to be greedy, so I suggested he run the charity for someone more in need.
But as a result of us sharing DMs, I followed him, and I learned more. As I mentioned above, the Scott Fish Bowl was a term I had heard, but I didn’t know what it was. But I learned. For the few of you who don’t know, the Scott Fish Bowl is (I assume? It’s gotta be) the biggest fantasy football league in the world, with more than 10,000 signups this year and more than 1,400 players divided into individual 12-team leagues. It’s made up of a boatload of fantasy industry professionals and another boatload of fans. It’s to play fantasy football, sure. But it’s also a charity driver. It earned Scott the title of The Athletic Fantasy’s 2018 Person of the Year, and while I don’t know if The Athletic continued that practice, it probably should earn Scott the title every year.
As part of the league, Scott typically encourages (though doesn’t require) a donation to FantasyCares.net, his drive that raises money for Toys for Tots and has led to him and others filling dozens of Target carts with toys each year. This year, because of … well, everything in the world, he’s not doing the specific FantasyCares drive, though there is the 24-hour SFB Podathon going on (right now!) to raise money and everybody is encouraged to donate there (I did!) or to their own favorite charity.
If you’re reading this Monday, this year’s drafts start today. If you’re on Twitter, you’ll see hundreds of references to the draft or its hashtag, #SFBX (it’s the 10th iteration of the league), and, if you aren’t in the league, it’ll probably be annoying. But remember that the annoyance is for a good cause.
But you can go any number of places to learn about Scott’s giant charity work. I can’t write it as well as Nando Di Fino did in that Athletic piece or as well as any number of writers have written about the great league. Just Google him. I just wanted to tell my part of the story. I wasn’t anybody, just some guy who had a kid who needed surgery. That’s sympathetic, sure. But Scott already raises tens of thousands of dollars for charity every year. Even if he knew me, there was no reason he should have gone out of his way to try to raise money for me, let alone money on top of the ridiculous amount he already raises.
Despite that, he made the offer, and if everyone else hadn’t already been so crazy generous, I probably would have taken him up on the offer. I’ve played in the Scott Fish Bowl each of the three years (counting this year) since that, and while yes, I love a fantasy draft, I’d like to just take a minute at the start of this year’s league to think back on just an awesome dude, who does more for people with less than the vast majority of people, and who brings everyone together in as fun a way as possible in the process.
The Scott Fish Bowl is fun. The man himself? He’s a legend.