When the internet blew up the fantasy sports industry back in the late 90’s, the world became a much better place. Home leagues could accommodate that one guy who couldn’t get out of traveling for his wife’s baby cousin’s daughter’s bat mitzvah the weekend of your live draft while the door opened wide for friends who had moved away over the years to reconnect on the fantasy baseball diamond. With such a gift being endowed to the human (nerd) race, you’d think the world would be inclined to give a little something back.
How about one nation, one time-zone?
Is that so much to ask?
Listen, I get it. The Earth rotates around the sun and it gets lighter or darker sooner for some people than it does for others. But why do we have to change the actual time based on what part of the country I reside? If people in New York go into the office when it’s light out at 9am, is it that tough for people in California to be in the office at the same exact time, except for the fact that it’s a little darker out? You’re in an office! With electricity! You can turn the freakin’ lights on, can’t you?
If you work outdoors, then you can just adjust your work hours. Gotta pave a road? Farm your land? Dig a ditch? Fine. If you live on the east coast, you work from 9-to-5. If you live in California, your “office hours” are from 12-to-8. What’s the big deal? Do we really need to have these rotating time zones based on how far east or west we live?
If fantasy baseball waivers have a deadline of Sunday at 11pm, then it should be Sunday at 11pm for everyone. Not Sunday at 11pm for New Yorkers, 10pm for the folks in Minneapolis, 9pm for those in Denver and 8pm for everyone in Los Angeles. That’s abusive to the brain.
After all, who sets these deadlines? If you play in multiple leagues with different commissioners, chances are you could have multiple deadlines. What if in one league, my commish is based in St. Louis and he starts making deadlines using the central time zone? As a Californian, I now have to adjust my calendar to accommodate a two-hour time difference. What if I have to travel for work to Tallahassee and find myself in the eastern time zone for the waiver deadline? The calendar on my phone isn’t making that adjustment so now I run the risk of losing out on waivers because of that.
Or what about lineup lock for DFS games? If lineups lock at 7pm for you, they should lock at 7pm for me. I shouldn’t have to sit there and worry about running to a computer or getting better cell phone service at 4pm. What’s that all about? These DFS sites set up their contests for early slates and late slates all the time. Just like us, they’re at the whim of the schedule makers. So now some poor dude who lives in San Francisco has to worry about the early slates at 10am when the games start at 1pm and then shift over at 4pm for games that start at 7pm and don’t even get me started about throwing in a midday slate because my brain, my phone calendar and my lineups just can’t handle that right now!
People cry all the time about east coast bias in sports reporting and what not. What about time zone bias? Just because I happen to prefer a different neck of the woods doesn’t mean I should be penalized because of some shifting time zone issue. We should all live by one clock and one clock only. One nation, one time-zone.