This is Part 2 of a 5-part series, The Christian’s Guide to Fantasy Football.

Here’s Part I.

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Part II – To Pay or Not To Pay

In Part 1 we talked about why playing Fantasy Football is something every sports fan should do. In Part II, we’re going to look at one of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make as a Christian when choosing a fantasy league: whether or not you’ll be playing for money.

Gambling is one of those issues that seems to divide Christians like Moses divided the Scarlet Lake. There are Christians who think gambling is always wrong, and as such would never play a game when prize money is at stake. On the flip side, there are also Christians who love gambling as much as they love their own families, and would never consider doing anything unless there was some cash on the line. (“Hey honey, I’ll bet you five bucks I can take the trash out in 60 seconds or less.”)

Personally, I fall into the gray area in the middle that says that there’s nothing wrong with placing friendly wagers here and there, as long as it is done with moderation and wisdom (you can read more of my thoughts on gambling, specifically on playing poker for money, here if you like). If you feel the same way I do about gambling, then throwing a few bucks into a pot for the winner of your league is a fun way to keep everyone involved.

Entry Fees

Fantasy league entry fees typically fall somewhere between ten and fifty dollars to join, with the prize money either going all to the winner or split between the top 3. For the record, I suggest paying out for first, second, and third place. There’s nothing worse than losing in the fantasy championships because LaDanian Tomlinson was taken out of the game after the first series, leaving you with a second place finish and NO MONEY. At least if they pay out a second place prize you can take the few bucks you’ve won and buy yourself something that will make you feel happy. Like a margarita, a gallon of ice cream, or a life.

Some leagues might also pay out to the guy who came in last place, giving him his entry fee back as a way of helping him restore his dignity. Other leagues will make the last place finisher buy all the snacks for next year’s draft. One thing you’ll never find is a league that pays out all the money to the guy who finishes last. (But if you ever hear of such a league, please let me join know so I can join it and dominate it for the rest of my life.)

There is a Reason

If you’re unsure as to whether or not you want to play fantasy sports with some of your hard-earned money on the line, consider the following reasons I’ve compiled for and against gambling. While these are not hard and fast rules to live by, they should help you figure out whether playing for money is right for you.

Reasons not to play for money:

• You have a strong conviction against it.
• You struggle with a gambling addiction.
• You are a coach in a professional sports league.
• You know nothing about sports.
• You have no money.
• You are incarcerated.
• The entry fee for your league is $75,000 dollars.
• You haven’t had gainful employment in 3 years.
• You play Dungeons and Dragons.
• You prayed about it and an audible voice came down from heaven saying, “Hey. This is God. Don’t gamble.”

Reasons to go ahead and play for money:

• It keeps you interested in football for the entire season.
• You view the entry fee as an entertainment expense, like buying movie tickets or a new CD.
• You found fifty bucks on your way to the draft.
• Your league’s entry fee is $1.00.
• Winning fantasy sports leagues is your sole source of income.
• You will donate all of your winnings to your church’s new building fund.
• You plan on colluding with other owners to cheat your way to a championship.
• You are the commissioner of your league and can modify the scoring rules during the season to your advantage.
• The other owners in your league have a combined IQ of 67.
• You prayed about it and an audible voice came down from heaven saying, “Hey. This is God. Let it Ride!”

In the end if you find yourself agonizing over whether or not you should play for money, the best thing to do is to go to a casino, hit up the roulette wheel, and put $100 on black. If it lands on black, you just made $100! Congratulations, go spend it on your fantasy league (after you tithe 10% of course). After all, it’s house money you’re playing with.

What if it lands on red, you ask? Well, then you’re out $100, and you should probably try and win it back.And really, there’s no better way to do that then playing fantasy football for money. So go ahead and ante up!

You should also get out of that casino immediately, as it’s no place for someone like you to be hanging around.

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(to keep reading) – Part III – The Art of Naming

(The preceding may or may not be included in Bryan’s book-in-progress, “Let There Be Touchdowns: Why God is a Sports Fan and Why You Should Be Too”. If you’d like to stay current on what’s happening with the book, leave your name and email address here.)

As always, feedback, props, criticisms, and comments are strongly encouraged. Italics: the new bold, no?

We don’t condone gambling here at PFB, we encourage it. No, I kid. (Although, as I’ve said before, I have no problem with gambling in moderation.)

If you’re the gambling type, or the “I can’t get enough of the NFL” type, let me direct your attention to Vegas Watch, who just posted the NFL Over/Unders for 2008. Those are the win totals in the first column. (source of over/unders: Sportsbook.com)

Seeing these for the first time begs the question (actually two questions)

1. If forced to put $500 double-or-nothing on your favorite team (ignoring the money lines), would you take the over or under on wins for the season?

2. Do any of these stand out to you as a pretty good bet?

I’ll give you my answers in the comments…

editor’s note: if you came to this page wondering if playing poker is a sin, might I suggest you read my post on that exact topic?

Is poker a sport? Honestly, I don’t know. They do put it on ESPN. But then again, they put “Who’s Now” on ESPN too, and that had as much to do with sports as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have to do with winning. Sport or not, it does involve competing, and if you know anything about the game of Poker, you know that it can make for some riveting television.

If you spent any time over the past 5 years watching televised poker, then you probably know who Daniel Negreanu is. He’s the quirky Canadian player who loves to talk at the table and has a knack for reading other players better than most. One thing you might not have known is that he is a Christian.

Aaron Todd, on his blog “Gaming Guru”, interviewed Negreanu in 2006, and said of Negreanu’s conversion:

A few months after they started dating, Negreanu’s wife Lori mentioned that she was a Christian and she felt it was important for Negreanu to explore his faith. He read A Case For Christ by Lee Strobel, and when he finished, he felt like there was “no option other than believing.”

Like he does at the table, when it came to the idea of a Christian making a living by playing poker, Negreanu had a lot to say:

“There is no reference anywhere in the Bible, not one scripture that says gambling is a sin or gambling is wrong,” Negreanu says. “There are sinful things that can come out of a love for money. If you have an addiction to money and a love of money, yeah, that’s sinful, but that doesn’t have anything to do with gambling per se. You can do that if you’re a businessman or a corporate man who is just hording his money and not sharing.

“The way I look at it, it’s not how you make your money — as long as you’re not doing anything to cheat people or hurt others — it’s what you do with it. Certainly I’m going to be at a poker table with people that shouldn’t be there — where gambling has become a problem. I think gambling only becomes sinful when it becomes a problem in your life and it impedes your walk with God or with your family. From my perspective, if I’m playing with these people that are going to lose their money anyway, I can turn (bad) money into (good) money.

“It’s no different than being a stock broker. How does one believe gambling is a sin and that playing the stock market isn’t? What is the difference? You’re making an investment on something you don’t really know what is going to happen with. You do your research, like you research a poker hand. You say ‘Well, I think this has expected value, I think I will make money with this hand.’ But you don’t always, sometimes you have some bad luck or you get the wrong read. When you research a business, you say ‘Well, I think this stock is going to go up,’ and make an investment in it. Sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down. Where is the difference?”

When BLUFF Magazine asked Negreanu if there were Christians who had a problem with his profession in November of 2006, he had this to say:

I think only the ignorant ones. My wife’s family are devoted conservatives to the point where she wasn’t even allowed to watch TV as a child, but they’re fine with me. They’re totally fine with what I do for a living. They understand that, you know, there is nothing in the Bible anywhere that says gambling is a sin. Nothing. I think a lot of people misunderstand gambling — OK, it’s essentially taking money from other people. Well, there isn’t a business in the world in which that doesn’t happen. When you win on the stock market, others lose. Any business deal you make, you’re going to take someone’s money. It’s what you do with that money that separates whether you’re healthy or unhealthy. If you hoard all that money for yourself, just to own a bigger home, well, I guess that might be wrong. But there’s nothing wrong with poker according to the Bible. But having said that, a lot of people misinterpret what it says and think that what I do is wrong. To those people, I just try to talk to them and explain to them. But some of them just won’t get it. But that’s OK. I’m not really a fan of conservatism anyway.

Of course, when you make your faith public, you open yourself up to criticism. When Negreanu blogged in April about the priorities in his life (1. God, 2. Family, 3. Health, 4. Poker, and 5. Stuff), some folks jumped on him, throwing scripture back in his face.

What do you think? Do you think Negreanu is wrong to make a living playing poker? If all of a sudden you realized you were an exceptional poker player, would your conscience be okay with you making a living doing it?

Show your cards in the comments…