As far as Fantasy Football punishments go, the Waffle House challenge has to be the worst.
If you’re not familiar, the rules of the Waffle House challenge are simple: If you lose your fantasy football league, you have to spend 24 hours in a Waffle House. But you get to take one hour off of your time for every waffle you eat.
We’ve seen others conquer the Waffle House challenge before after coming in last in their league.
And sure, everybody thinks they’d just eat 24 waffles and walk out a couple hours later. But it’s not that easy.
Just ask Lee Sanderlin.
The Mississippi man went viral on Twitter overnight after chronicling his journey completing the Waffle House challenge and it sounds like pure hell.
Things started out pretty good, with Sanderlin making the decision that he would enjoy his first two waffles and slather them down with butter and syrup. Probably not a good strategy overall but hey, if you’re going to be eating nothing but waffles for the foreseeable future, might as well enjoy them while you can.
He took those first two waffles down in half an hour, shaving two hours off his time right off the bat.
After the next two, though – well, that’s when the pain started to set in.
I mean, we’re not talking about tiny waffles here. These aren’t the kind of waffles that come frozen in your freezer. These are waffles the size of a plate, made by the hands of a short-order Waffle House cook who’s taken a few bullets to the chest in his time.
No, really.
At least there’s a jukebox at Waffle House so he has some good tunes to listen to while he suffers through the waffles, right?
Just kidding. Somebody played fucking “Wagon Wheel.” As if this punishment wasn’t already bad enough.
Luckily some kids came along to provide him with some better music to help him power through the pain.
Sanderlin also had some rules working in his favor (if you want to call it that): He could leave the Waffle House and hang out in the parking lot, and if he spewed his waffles he wouldn’t be penalized.
But that didn’t change his strategy.
Back for waffle number five (did I mention how big those waffles are?)
This is where things Sanderlin started to run into trouble though. You’ve gotta think that at a certain point, each bite just turns into agony.
He finally found the strength to polish it off though.
And Twitter was cheering him on.
Time for number six.
But it was a struggle.
We also got a look at Sanderlin’s Fantasy Football roster that caused him to have to spend 24 hours in a Waffle House. And…yeah, I see why he lost.
He finally got down waffle number six though, and at that point he was left with another 12 hours to go.
But then disaster struck in the bushes outside of the Brandon, Mississippi Waffle House.
Puke and rally, baby. Puke and rally.
With help from some Rolaids donated by some kind strangers and LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem for a shot of adrenaline, Sanderlin went to work on waffle number seven.
And…well, it didn’t go well.
Sanderlin then took a quick break to charge his phone in his car, and when he came back he had a new strategy: Try to drink coffee and shit out the brick of waffles sitting in his stomach.
Not a bad idea, honestly.
He had entered the overnight hours at his friendly Waffle House, where the staff took their smoke breaks and he had the restaurant all to himself.
And he still had 8 hours to go, and hadn’t even polished off that seventh waffle yet.
But he eventually got it down.
Sanderlin also developed a game plan (hopefully one that would work out better from him than his Fantasy Football game plan): Take it easy for the next few hours, then at 6 AM, knock out two more waffles and be done by 7.
So that’s what he did.
And it seemed to be going well.
Waffle number 8 went down pretty quickly.
Then he had just one quarter of number 9 left to spring himself from the Waffle House.
I can just imagine how terrible that waffle tasted. Sure, it’s only a quarter of a waffle at that point, but after already eating 8 of those bad boys, even a quarter of a waffle has gotta be enough to make you want to run into oncoming traffic.
But our hero finished it off.
After 9 waffles and 15 hours, Sanderlin had finally paid off his debt and was free to walk out of the Waffle House.
For those keeping track at home, one waffle from Waffle House contains 410 calories. So Sanderlin threw back over 3,500 calories over the course of 15 hours – and that’s not counting any syrup or butter. (Of course a few of those calories are in the outside bushes now).
And sure, he was a little worse for the wear walking out of there.
But man, what an entertaining journey it was.
And I bet he doesn’t draft Carson Wentz again next year.
