Iowa is a Fantasy Free Island

I watched parts of four NFL games on Sunday and Monday. Which means I saw commercials for DraftKings and FanDuel. Lots and lots and lots of them.

Sometime when I wasn't looking, those two fantasy sports websites took over American life. DraftKings spent a reported $16.4 million in television advertising over the last seven days, more than any other company. FanDuel wasn't far back at $10.7 million.

The two companies have added a combined total of $200 million in ad revenue to CBS, ESPN, Fox, NBC and NFL Network. I flipped over to ESPN Radio Tuesday while driving to Cedar Rapids from Iowa City, and within five seconds I heard a promo for DraftKings. That is not an exaggeration.

There's a small catch to all this if you live in Iowa. Namely, fantasy sports for cash aren't legal here. The commercials might as well be ads for bottle rockets or cannabis cupcakes. You can look, Iowa, but you better not touch.

FanDuel and DraftKings are legal to residents of 45 states. But not Arizona, Louisiana, Montana, Washington or Iowa.

The two sites proclaim themselves to be providers of games of skill. Iowa's government disagrees. Or it just can't be bothered enough to agree.

In February, Iowa legislators introduced a bill which would clarify fantasy sports as games of skill and allow cash payouts to participants. It was approved on a voice vote with just one voice of dissent, then passed in the Senate by a 32-16 vote.

But the bill languished in Iowa's House of Representatives and died. Hey, at least we still have 19 state-regulated casinos.

Fantasy sports have managed to be legal in 90 percent of the U.S. But those who say fantasy sports participation for cash isn't a form of gambling are kidding themselves.

Knowledge and skill give you a better chance to win, absolutely. But luck plays a significant role, too. You have no control over injuries, weather, bad bounces, bizarre coaching decisions, or an opponent having everything fall into place.

In the fantasy football league I was in for two decades, someone won the championship twice despite being no more informed about the NFL than he was about the Montignac Cave Paintings. But he bought a fantasy football magazine, and drafted players it told him he should pick.

It helped that one was LaDainian Tomlinson, who rushed for about 100 touchdowns one of those years. Now that is an exaggeration. But it didn't feel like one at the time.

The DraftKings and FanDuel contests are sucker games, much like the lotteries and lottery tickets our state and almost all others peddle. Why Iowans are denied the chance to lose their money in fantasy sports, I don't know. The two sites are required to issue 1099 tax forms to any player with a cumulative net profit in excess of $600 for the calendar year.

For the record, had I assembled a Week 1 team on one of those two sites, I'd be paying taxes on winnings. I surely would have selected Marcus Mariota at quarterback and Carlos Hyde at running back instead of stiffs like Peyton Manning and Adrian Peterson.

That's because fantasy football is a game of skill, and my educated guesses would have been Tennessee's Mariota racking up four touchdown passes in his first pro game, and San Francisco's Hyde accounting for 168 rushing yards and two TDs Monday against Minnesota.

If you believe that, stay away from FanDuel, DraftKings, carnival barkers, emails from Nigerian princes, or anything else involving risking cash.