I was about to say… these last place fantasy football punishments are getting out of hand.
That’s what fantasy football is all about, right? When you sign up for your fantasy football league full of friends or family (or both), you aren’t trying to win. You are just trying to not lose. Especially if there’s a last place punishment involved. It typically doesn’t get more humiliating than having one random draft day in August determine the next couple months of your life, and ultimately lead you to a last place punishment.
We’ve seen some incredibly creative fantasy football loser penalties in the past couple of years. Probably none more crazy than a guy having to spend 24 hours in a Waffle House, and being able to knock an hour off with every waffle that he ate. As the saying goes, if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen (don’t play fantasy football if you can’t handle the last place punishment).
Which brings us to a last place fantasy football punishment that is currently going viral online. You’ve likely seen this clip shared on some pretty big NFL-adjacent social media pages, and no one was sure if it was real or not. Personally, I was skeptical… because I don’t know if I’d play fantasy football if this was my league’s last place punishment:
“Trending: A kid has gone viral for having to ENLIST in the US Army as his punishment for losing his fantasy football league.”
That video has gone mega-viral in the past couple of days, and has especially increased in popularity (and popped up on a number of different social media accounts) today.
We here at Whiskey Riff tracked down the original video, which was posted by a TikToker named Alex Luger. The clip has been viewed over 440,000 times on his TikTok account (more if you count all of the accounts on X aggregating it), and has this caption that reads:
“I drafted Daniel Jones as my No. 1 pick so I kinda deserve it.”
@fitnesswalexx I drafted Daniel Jones as my number 1 pick so I kinda deserve it.. #fantasyfootball #fantasypunishments #military #fyp #xyz ♬ Gulf war intro – MS.Ae
Whiskey Riff reached out to Luger to see if we could get more information on this viral post… and most importantly discern whether or not he actually enlisted in the army as a fantasy football punishment.
And of course… he didn’t. In fact, he confirmed that he enlisted in the Army Reserves and currently servicing as a cadet in the University of Oregon’s ROTC program:
“I am currently in the Army Reserves as well as the University of Oregon’s ROTC as a Cadet. I’ve been in for about a year now. My father was an enlisted Marine Infantryman and his only advice to me about the military was to make sure to invest in my education early on. So I got an Army scholarship that is helping me pay for school, and after I’m done, I will be an Army Officer.”
But that still didn’t clear up whether or not he enlisted because he lost his fantasy football league.
So we followed up with the University of Oregon ROTC member, and he clarified when and where the video was taken, and that he did not enlist as a fantasy football punishment. In fact, he had joined the Army Reserves and the ROTC months before the fantasy football season began:
“The video was taken last October in a Chinook helicopter on the way to a field training exercise (FTX) for ROTC. I enlisted a couple of months before fantasy started.”
So though the viral clip is debunked, there is one thing that Alex Luger was being truthful about. He shared with us that part of the story does line up, and that he did finish last in his fantasy football league because of an ill-advised first round draft pick:
“I did however choose Daniel Jones as my first draft pick, and did end up in last place last year.”
Brutal…
