What Are Ya? Chicken?
For the first time in my life, I placed dead last in my fantasy football league.
Things were great. My fourteen-person league drafted in early August on a Zoom call, opportunity hanging in the hot summer air. As the draft clock ticked down and trash talk commenced, I wrote checks that I was confident my roster would cash. I selected Bijan Robinson with the second overall pick, the captain that would lead me to a humble cash prize and calendar year of bragging rights.
I reached down to tie my Hokas at a high school track five months later, shaking my head disappointedly and scoffing at the confidence I had on draft day. Two friends lounged in lawn chairs they had brought, gawking and jeering like spectators at the colosseum. I started a livestream on my Instagram account and handed over my phone as my followers were notified of it. They would document my situation in real time. Anyone who wanted to see would.
“I’ll start the timer when you take your first bite,” one of them said. I nodded solemnly, then looked down at my fate. Over three pounds of golden brown chicken and its accompanying sides. It had all been properly doused in a greasy soybean/canola oil blend to achieve a satisfying crisp, then placed in a resilient styrofoam tray. 2,100 calories sat in my hand. The daunting, indifferent Caniac Combo.
I was instructed to ingest one component – fries/bread/chicken/drink – of the combo as quickly as possible, then run a lap around the track, repeating this process until the meal was gone and a mile had been clocked. My punishment for not only losing, but losing more than all thirteen of my leaguemates.
I began shoveling the fries and a grueling unspecified amount of time began. They had lost a considerable amount of heat on the ride over and threatened to get soggy. Luckily, I would eat them so fast they wouldn’t get the chance. Not even three handfuls in, the base of my jaw ached from the insistent chewing. I chose to start with them thinking they’d be the easiest to vacuum down. Although I ended up being correct, the gravity of how miserable the bread and tenders would be sat heavy on my shoulders. After roughly 90 seconds, I plucked the final fries from the tray and galloped from the starting line. The pointed fingers and laughs of my friends stayed behind, but I’d see them again soon at the end of the lap.
Although Bijan Robinson was not wholly to blame for my fantasy football undoing, seeing that he was my first round pick and face of my team, he also served as the face of my punishment. I thought about all the goal line opportunities that were given to Robinson’s teammate, Tyler Allgeier, and the extra fantasy points they could’ve produced. The marquee matchups in which Robinson was a no-show haunted the dark corners of my mind like a bad dream. At a respectable pace, I neared the end of the first lap. The fries sat lightly in my stomach as I hoped they would, but my breath got shorter. I thought about the stats. Bijan Robinson rushed for 1,478 yards in the 2025 regular season. By the end of my punishment, which had just started, I’d have logged more.
The fellas were delighted to see me back at the starting line, but not enough to hand me the tray of food. Breathing hard, I bent down for it and started on the bread. I took an ambitious bite, and for the first time felt the nausea I so deeply feared. They read comments on the livestream, which teetered between twelve and nineteen people throughout. Eat faster! The commissioner of the league commented. Let’s make him run two miles! It was sanctioned humiliation under the rule of his iron fist, of course he was watching. The bread proved to be a challenge, but like any cornered man fighting for his survival, I adapted. I balled up the bread, creating a greasy film across the entirety of my palm. Though they’d sit like rocks, they were smaller and more manageable. Soon the remainder of the toast, which was coated in Canes Sauce, was on its way down. My legs forced me forward once more.
If it hadn’t been clear I was out of shape on the first lap, the second lap showed me with an updated prescription. I was silently embarrassed by my burning hips and staccato breath after only 500 meters. On the second straight, I looked over to see a young couple teaching their son the fundamentals of lacrosse. I could only hope for the boy that, if he ever discovered fantasy football, he would be a more competent general manager. The mother caught my eye and quickly asked in a tone that suggested she had already been theorizing the answer, “What exactly are you doing?”
“I lost my fantasy league,” I called back, pumping my arms. “I have to eat a Caniac Combo and run a mile.” The young couple burst into a laugh not meant for strangers. They, too, had joined the ranks of the Pointers and Laughers without knowing. I grinned and shrugged as I jogged past, rendered completely winded from partaking in the micro-conversation.
Greeting me at the end of my lap was a dense cloud of the tenders’ oily aroma. At over 800 calories and 78 grams of protein, the six tenders were the rough equivalent of a small whole chicken. They were cold and sad after nearly ten minutes of being bombarded by the winter wind, waiting to be eaten. After the first bite, I felt utterly helpless. My labored breathing made chewing hard. Each swallow was met by a shiver deep in my stomach. The pestering diminished after a minute as my friends watched in awe. The comments on the livestream started singing a different tune.
“You got this”
“Halfway done”
“Wow, he’s really doing it”
Their tone had shifted as I slugged through the hardest part of the gauntlet. It often does. The one holding the camera, Kyle, had been in a similar predicament two years earlier. After finishing with an equally abysmal record that landed me on the track with the Caniac Combo, he was sentenced to 24 hours inside a Waffle House, subtracting an hour with each waffle eaten. This punishment was a tipping point for our beloved league. Prior years had ended in cowardice as the loser forewent their punishments, thus leading to their indefinite banishment. Kyle took on the responsibility of correcting course for the future of the league. What began as a humiliating punishment became an admirable feat of strength. I went through the same spectator cycle as I watched – mockery, transfixation, celebration – as he decimated twenty waffles in four hours. I remembered this as I ate the last tender, much to the disagreement of my stomach. Like Kyle, I wasn’t just being punished for my fantasy football ineptitude, I was being trusted with the future of the league. It was imperative that I suffered to protect its integrity.
That nice thought didn’t make the suffering any more tolerable. I tried to breathe through my nose to no avail. Every gasp smelled like grease and savory sauce. I felt like a kangaroo carrying a sandbag in its pouch, the mass of food bouncing as I ran. My belly groaned and cried with the anguish of a hurt animal. I felt genuinely at risk of reintroducing the food to the outside world. Still, I pushed forth knowing I was closer to the end than the start.
Unlike the earlier laps, my friends handed me the large lemonade when I returned to the start, even putting the straw through the lid for me. They offered me words of encouragement as I guzzled, having to stop frequently due to brain freezes. Its tart flavor twisted my mouth into a knot. I longed for water. I longed for air. Though I would get it soon, it still felt five forevers away. I removed the lid and pointed the bottom of the cup toward the sky until there was only ice left. With the lemonade sloshing about and my stomach feeling like a raging sea, I took a deep breath and stepped into the last 400. One more lap that was worth a $30 league entry fee, a full NFL regular season, and 14 marks in my fantasy team’s loss column. One more lap.
As I buckled down and fought my body to continue, I saw a shadow parallel to me. It was the other spectator, Patrick. To my amazement, he was running with me with the livestreaming phone in hand. He carried the roughly fifteen viewers that had watched, commented, and cringed throughout the entirety of the challenge. It could be perceived that he sought ultimate humiliation, a magnified look at my reactions in my most intimate moments of suffering. But it wasn’t. It was an act of unity. My friends, both on-site and on the stream, would join me as ultimate failure was becoming the ultimate victory. Like Kyle at Waffle House, I would be hailed as a hero when weighed against the banished losers for years’ past. So we ran, picking up the pace with a new-found bounce. The woes of the 2025 fantasy football season were seconds away from being an artifact of the past.
Sprint the last 100, a commenter said. Why not, I thought. I’d sprint for my friends, for my league, for myself.
Because of that decision to sprint I promptly threw up upon crossing the finish line. It had taken me 19 minutes and 25 seconds to fulfill my destiny. I caught my breath and fell to my back, laying in the light like a sunbathing turtle. Comments flooded in.
“Absolute cinema”
“Exceeded expectations”
“That was awesome”
I grabbed the phone and spoke directly to my hecklers-turned-supporters. Almost twenty people who were seeing me at my lowest were now building me back up bigger, stronger, and taller. As my heart rate returned to a resting state and the sweat on my temples dried, I made three declarations.
I will not finish last in fantasy football next season.
I will not eat Raising Canes again any time in the foreseeable future.
And I am not a chicken.
