The term "guru" has its roots in Hinduism and in Buddhism. It means "a spiritual teacher, especially one who imparts initiation." In the Sikh religion, each of the ten first leaders are known as gurus. In American Fantasy Football, gurus are drafting experts that help civilians make money in stacking their fictional teams.
“Our news anchors, our talk show hosts, and our sports announcers have turned into two-bit spiritual guides, representatives of middle-class morality. They are always telling us what we ‘should think’ about what they call ‘social problems,'" (Bordieu, 254).
My dad runs his own "league" of Fantasy Football players. He has for many years. They get together and celebrate the draft and the end of their season in an almost ritualistic sort of way with beers, catering, cigars, and spreadsheets. The winner of the league gets a trophy every year, and the loser gets the "Toilet Bowl" trophy, which feature an actual roll of toilet paper. Whoever wins the championship that year gets to rename the team of the loser, usually something crude and cynical, which they are then forced to keep for the next season.
“The most important of these figures are treated with a respect that is often quite out of proportion with their intellectual merits," (Bordieu, 254).
Bordieu wrote this mostly about journalists. Yet, I can't help to think about the connections that this writing has with the groups of Fantasy Sports today. With the ease of access to technology today, there is that saying that everyone can become a journalist. My uncle, for example, posts live updates to both Facebook and Twitter on the way that a sports game is going and other related sports news. He never went to journalism school. He's a physical therapist for elderly patients. Yet he has a decent amount of interaction online. We take our average joes and we turn them into ideas of sensationalism, and we believe every word that they say.
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