Since achieving middle age, I'm now solidly in the demographic where companies are trying very hard to sell me nostalgia. Bands like AC/DC and Metallica toured stadiums across the country, and last weekend's Black Sabbath show in Birmingham, England sold out in minutes and was seen by thousands more on pay-per-view. Atari is selling watches with games in them (the crown is a controller, which is kind of cool) and you can get old concert shirt designs at Walmart. Las Vegas even has a cafe near the Strip dedicated to 80s nostalgia. Everywhere I look, people are packaging good memories and selling them at inflated prices.
I buy into it sometimes, but I try to discount nostalgia in fantasy football. And if you want a successful season, you'll discount it as well.
We all have memories of Christian McCaffrey wrecking fantasy teams with standout performances. The good memories are when he wrecked your opponent, and the bad ones are, well, you know. But his name will be there when you hold your draft or auction, and a bit of nostalgia might creep into your mind. I know you won't take him with a top-three pick, but at what point do you remember what he's done previously and pull the trigger? How about Travis Kelce? Cooper Kupp? Tyreek Hill? At some point all those guys will be drafted in your league, and I think most of them will go too early. Not because we don't realize they're older and less productive, but because nostalgia encourages us to overlook better potential for a "name" player.
Brand recognition can be very lucrative. If you've seen something before and you liked it, you're more likely to give it another try. That's why you're never more than a few years away from another "Jurassic Park" movie (spoiler: the new one is just like the other ones). There's goodwill built into the brand, even if it's in your subconscious. But in fantasy football, you aren't wasting a couple of hours and money on a movie ticket. You're wasting draft capital, and the opportunity cost of whoever you passed up to buy into the known brand again. And if you do it too often, it can even cost you your season.
The media doesn't help, either. Television, radio, print and web outlets are incentivized (i.e. forced) to provide positive coverage of a team in order to stay in their good graces and keep their access to interviews and other information. So if you hear how determined McCaffrey is to come back strong, or how much chemistry Davante Adams and Cooper Kupp are building with their new teams, how much can you believe? Is it actual reporting, or the kind of feel-good coverage the team and the league expects? I suspect mostly the latter, and it can affect your decisions on draft day.
You don't want to ignore these players entirely, of course. You just don't want to take them when better, less-famous players are available. So how do you do that? Well, knowing is half the battle. Just acknowledging that name bias exists and trying to avoid it will help counter its effects. It's more than many of your opponents will do over the summer. You can also ask yourself how you'd feel about a player if they had the same history but you had never heard of them before. If a guy had missed most of the season in three of the past five years, and has already signed the biggest deal of his career, how eager would you be to make him your premier runner? If a 32-year-old receiver not named "Cooper Kupp" hadn't had a 1000-yard season or played more than 12 games since 2021, would he still be on your radar screen? Is there still nostalgia for his 145-1947-16 campaign four years ago, and could that nostalgia hurt you in 2025?
Sure. But you might get burned, too. That player might end up doing great for a different manager. Nothing is 100 percent. But in general, we tend to romanticize heroic efforts and remember them at the worst times. If that nostalgia makes you take a guy a couple of rounds too early, it can impact the rest of your draft and hurt your roster for several weeks. That's not a risk I usually want to take.
You still have several weeks before the serious fantasy preparations start, but you can get in the right mindset to prepare yourself for success. I think being aware of name bias, and resisting the temptation to inflate a player's value because based on their performances from years past, will help you avoid reaching for them on draft day.
Do you find yourself latching on to guys who have more name recognition years after their standout performances? Has it helped you (or burned you) in the past? Share your thoughts below.