Fantasy football is pretty much the best part of football season coming back. Sure there are the amazing touchdown receptions, astonishing defensive plays, and being able be distracted by life’s real problems by rooting for your own team to crush the rest of their division. But fans that aren’t so diehard when it comes to a specific team, or for those who need one more reason to get pumped up for a Sunday full of NFL action, fantasy football is the icing on top of delicious football cake every week.
Except for this week, because ESPN’s fantasy football app and site both went down on the first Sunday of the NFL season. This wasn’t just a brief outage either, the system was offline and not refreshing for anyone for hours on end. It’s the football version of HBOGo refusing to load the Game of Thrones premiere, except with a lot more dramatic endings and battles between two intense coalitions of very strong men.
As might be expected, the internet immediately took their torches and pitchforks off the wall and went all in on mocking ESPN’s failure to have their fantasy system up on one of the most important days of the year.
ESPN’s official fantasy twitter account was so optimistic at the beginning of today’s slate of games.
Game on! Good luck in Week 1! #FantasyFootball
— ESPN Fantasy Sports (@ESPNFantasy) September 11, 2016
But that early excitement didn’t translate into an actual working platform. Twitter wasted no time taking it to task.
When u want to check your players but realize the ESPN fantasy football app is not loading up.#ESPNFantasyFootball pic.twitter.com/Gr3DT6yKVL
— Gus{topher) (@GusDaBus10) September 11, 2016
Half hour into the season and the ESPN fantasy football app doesn't work @ESPNFantasy pic.twitter.com/LScym3uGQE
— HEAD OF THE TABLE 🔱 (@Hollywood_Hop) September 11, 2016
WHY IS MY ESPN #FantasyFootball APP NOT WORKING!! #NFL pic.twitter.com/DFHLmJRIpj
— Jonathan Mitchell (@Jon_Mitchell3) September 11, 2016
https://twitter.com/CraigGarris/status/775027901821431808
[ESPN FANTASY HQ]
"you think anybody's gonna use our fantasy football stuff Sunday"
"eh it's the weekend prolly not"
"aight have a good one"— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) September 11, 2016
I'll support the presidential candidate who fixes the ESPN Fantasy Football app
— Milan Opsenica (@milopsen) September 11, 2016
don't let ESPN fantasy football not working distract you from the fact the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead in the finals
— Kenny (@Kenny_CLE) September 11, 2016
Some early games are over and the ESPN fantasy football app is still down pic.twitter.com/0KiI1Ui45Z
— King Lou 🇲🇽 (@iKingWZRD) September 11, 2016
Some die-hard fantasy participants joked about finding another way to figure out how their matchup is going.
ESPN Fantasy Football site crashing, so here I am tallying points on graph paper over candlelight, just like my father's father before him.
— Joe Kaiser (@Joe_P_Kaiser) September 11, 2016
Trying to figure out my fantasy football scores without the ESPN app pic.twitter.com/DgoqBMR8QE
— Men's Thoughts (@Males_Thoughts) September 11, 2016
https://twitter.com/Bryantlester_/status/775062210708054016
There was even a pointed joke from a former Grantland writer.
https://twitter.com/dave_schilling/status/775039929881546752
And of course, the requisite joke about who might have been behind the crisis.
https://twitter.com/ovotn/status/775036044811046912
To make things even worse, the app keeps coming back online for 2-3 minutes before crashing again. Moments of false hope in a sea of fantasy football strife.
Oh good. ESPN #FantasyFootball app resumed after a 3-hour crash in time for me to see my team is losing, 87-54. pic.twitter.com/txbNBGdewL
— Erik Hogstrom (@erik1966lutig) September 11, 2016
Some people found a silver lining and that’s all that really matters. After all, there are hours of football left in the day.
The @espn fantasy football server crash tweets are far more entertaining than looking at my team anyway
— melissa (@melbra_) September 11, 2016