Quizzed yesterday by Nets.com’s Ben Couch, Yi Jianlian professed to never having heard of fantasy sports.  As it turns out, the newly acquired Swamp C is only slightly less informed than the hosts of a major Northeastern radio program. Boston Sports Media‘s Bruce Allen recaps the highlights of yesterday’s edition of “The Big Show” on WEEI.

The segment started innocuously enough, a little after 4:30 with a caller casually mentioning that LaMont Jordan was a guy who had killed his fantasy team for the last couple of years, and now here he was, playing for the team that he roots for. It seemed to be the signal that Glenn Ordway (above) and company were waiting for, as they went on a collective tirade that lasted until the 5:00 commercial break.

Pete Sheppard started it off with œFantasy Football, who gives a rat™s ass?

The Millions who sign up to play, apparently. But these guys either aren™t smart enough to understand it, or somehow the word Fantasy threatens their cigar-smoking, leather chap-wearing, motorcycle riding existence. They mock what they can™t understand.

Ordway then followed up with his œI must say¦ introduction that he uses when he wants to get serious and pretend that he has an actual important message he wants to get across¦œI gotta throw this out there¦please people, we have no problem with anyone playing fantasy football, ok, if you could get a date, it would probably improve your life a little bit, but there™s nothing wrong with it¦BUT ITS NOT THE SAME GAME AS THE REAL GAME OF FOOTBALL.

Really Glenn? How did you figure that out?

œThe problem is, but now there are these geeks out there, who are now taking fantasy football, crossing the line, and think its actually REAL football.”

Think about how totally absurd that entire statement is. A œproblem? Is that a problem like the financial crashes or the housing crisis? Is it something we should all be concerned about? œGeeks – the buzzword for anyone who knows how to use a keyboard. œcrossing the line – whoa! These guys have taken it way too far. THEY™VE CROSSED THE LINE. Um, what line exactly is that? They œthink it™s actually REAL football. Once again, WHO thinks fantasy football is real? What in the world is he talking about?

Though I’m slightly less outraged than Allen — if you can’t mock someone else’s leisure time pursuits on hate radio, where else can you do it? — such anti-fantasy rhetoric seems like commercial suicide. Who do Ordway and Sheppard think are listening to their program every day?  I’ll take a wild guess it’s not Adalius Thomas and Laurence Maroney.