One thing that Whitman College seems to lack for the average student is the presence of sports passion. This isn’t to say that we don’t have athletic successes or that our games have empty bleachers, although most of the attendance can be attributed to supporting friends as opposed to caring about what happens in the game. While attending the Northwest Conference basketball championship at Whitworth University last semester, it was apparent what we at Whitman are missing. The bleachers were full of screaming fans in costume, full body paint or whatever else they could come up with, displaying sports passion rarely seen on the Whitman campus.

I attribute some of this to the lack of a Whitman football team that the entire school can rally around Saturday after Saturday. Football is America’s most popular sport by far, but that passion that America feels for NCAA and NFL football doesn’t seem to permeate the Whitman bubble. The informed awareness that Whitman students usually have about politics or pop culture somehow doesn’t extend to our nation’s favorite sport. However, an easy way to start thinking about football and its importance to American culture is through fantasy sports.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of fantasy sports, it is a fairly basic concept. Before the season, your league will have a draft in which certain players are eligible to be selected. When the real season starts, fantasy teams will receive points each week depending on how their players perform in their real games.

The most important aspect of fantasy football has nothing to do with the actual sport being played. The ability to talk smack to your friends after a big win, or the communal bonding over a trade gone bad immediately gives you something in common with everyone playing in your league. Not only within your league, but the fantasy-sports-playing world. About 17 percent of America enjoys nothing more than bragging about how awesome their team is, or lamenting to whomever will listen about how miserable they are because their team can’t catch a break.

By monitoring and rooting on your fantasy team, you have already given yourself a vested interest in watching certain games, and there is no more fun way to watch sports than in a crowd. Watching sports, like football or baseball, with lots of stop-and-start action gives plenty of time for conversation about the game, as well as bonding with whomever else is enjoying the game with you. By watching games that have a few of your fantasy players involved, it will only be a matter of time before having become a proficient fan and made a new friend or two.

Few things connect all Americans like sports do, and simply playing fantasy sports can help connect Whitman students too. We may not have a football team to rally around, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do what so many Americans do on a weekend: sit down with our friends, eat some snacks and yell at the football teams on TV.