Who Is Better: James Harden or Tracy McGrady? | Hour 2

This episode of The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz kicks off with a nostalgic trip down memory lane, as the crew reminisces about the early days of fantasy football. Before the internet and advanced statistics, managing a fantasy league was a truly manual affair, fraught with challenges and even accusations of scandal. The conversation then shifts to the world of professional wrestling, with a discussion about whether All Elite Wrestling (AEW) talent might be borrowing catchphrases from the show's own Greg Cote. Finally, the episode culminates in a heated debate about two NBA legends: James Harden and Tracy McGrady.

The Bygone Era of Hand-Calculated Fantasy Football

Chris Cote, Mike Ryan, and Dan Le Batard recall a time when fantasy football was a far cry from the app-driven, instant-update experience of today. Mike Ryan, who started playing fantasy football at 16 in 1997, vividly describes the painstaking process of managing a league before the internet. "The only way to tally the scores, you had to wait until Monday morning, and then do it again after Monday Night Football Tuesday morning," Ryan explains. "You would have to wait Monday morning for the newspaper to arrive on your doorstep. And you would open up the sports section and you look at the box scores." Players would then manually tally up points, a process that sounds almost archaic to younger generations like Chris Cote, who admits, "I've heard of these like by-hand fantasy leagues, but it's just I didn't think they were that popular."

Jessica Smetana shares details about her fantasy league, which started in 1976 and has incredibly unique, complex rules. For instance, running backs don't get points until they rush for at least 60 yards, and wide receivers need at least five catches or 60 receiving yards to score. Kicker points are disproportionately high. This leads to many players scoring zero points in a given week, making it a challenging and often frustrating experience. "I agree, and it's expensive," Smetana says, "I don't know why I keep doing it. I think it's the 'provenance' of the '76."