It's more than three months until the Super Bowl...but the most relevant sporting event of your year probably begins this weekend: Your Fantasy Football League Playoffs. You've dedicated absurd amounts of time, and possibly absurd amounts of money, into managing a football team that is ultimately many times less interactive and accessible than your Madden squad.
The injustice of Fantasy is that the ultimate squad that went undefeated during the regular season can easily lose to the last seed in the first round of the playoffs based on the unfortunate realities of real-life scheduling and real-life down weeks. We're willing to try anything to boost the performance of our squad...including making playlists of inspirational music to play while adjusting our lineup for the weekend. Try these seven classics:
"Hearts on Fire" by John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Brown Band
You really can't go wrong with anything off of the numerous Rocky movie soundtracks. We're opting to avoid the immortal "Eye of The Tiger" so that it doesn't just feel like another clichéd montage, and ultimately we're bigger fans of John Cafferty's classic from Rocky IV versus the also excellent "Gonna Fly Now" composed by Bill Conti for the original Rocky. Besides, "Gonna Fly Now" might inspire you to run up staircases and do actual exercise. You can't afford to be distracted by aerobic activity right now!
"Chariots of Fire" by Vangelis
Be honest: Do you have any idea what the plot to the film Chariots Of Fire is? If you answered "yes," you were probably born before 1985 or ran cross country in high school. You should go see it if you haven't yet. Regardless of the actual film, the self-titled theme song is ingrained in our colelctive conscious thanks to a continued need for montage soundtracks. Play this song as you imagine ascending Mount Olympus to claim your prize, cheered by the gods...or as you head to the bar to claim your $50 first prize while your coworkers grumble into their beer.
"Fight Fire With Fire" by Metallica
Let's be real though. If you played for-real football, you wouldn't listen to "The Final Countdown" before you entered the arena to either crush the bodies of opponents or potentially have your own body crushed. You would listen to the fastest, heaviest music you could find. We know that the heaviest music the average dad will listen to is Metallica so we suggest "Fight Fire With Fire," a thrash classic that gets up to around 180 bpm while touching on sensitive topics such as mutually assured nuclear destruction.
"Fight The Power" by Public Enemy
One of the most important things for any coach to do is to make sure your team doesn't get arrogant. Even John Calipari wants his UK Wildcats to feel like a disrespected underdog despite having like 14 NBA first-rounders. Make your team feel like the underdog by playing "Fight The Power," with "the power" being your brother-in-law's team, who unlike you has not spent every waking hour this week finding the perfect combination of point-scorers that won't subsequently aid your opponent's QB in the process. We're sure this is totally what Public Enemy intended "Fight The Power" for.
"Lose Yourself" by Eminem
There was a period when only the '80s supplied inspirational pump-up songs but Eminem shook the foundations of warmup songs when he released "Lose Yourself." Not only will this track encourage to put everything you've got into your digital passion, it will also provide an eerily correlating narrative of your life since the fantasy season started: You've lost not only yourself, but also your girlfriend, your sleep, and your job since you aren't really supposed to be making changes to your squad on company time.
"My Apocalypse" by Arch Enemy
We were once asked what intro song we would choose if we were a closer in Major League Baseball. It got us thinking that most players totally waste their opportunity to strike fear into the hearts of their opponents. Does playing Drake really scare Felix Hernandex, Mike Trout? No. We decided that the best option was the crushingly heavy guitar opening to Arch Enemy's "My Apocalypse," which only leads into even more frightening death growls from Angela Gossow. Yeah, that's a chick singing that.
"Everybody to The Limit (Come On Fhqwgads)" by Strong Bad
You've drained all of your musical resources and your team still isn't showing the fire they need to win your league (possibly because they're not real people, but still). We warn you, bust out this track only in the most desperate of situations as it's been known to literally over-influence players, causing such high influxes of adrenaline that heart attacks are almost inevitable. We refer, of course, to "Come On Fhqwgads" by Strong Bad. Remember: It's not cheating to take it to the limit...because Da Cheat is to the limit.
