Senior Justin Heller finished last place in his fantasy football league last year, and it resulted in him having to do “The Cage” punishment. This involved other league members throwing items at him while he was in a dog cage. “It was really nasty. I was getting a mix of really disgusting ingredients thrown at me, and the clean up took so long,” Heller said.

Fantasy football is a game where participants pose as managers of their own football teams. Competitors join a league and decide which players are on their team through a draft, where they select players in the NFL to play for them. Once the teams are decided, competitors match their teams up head to head for every week of the NFL season, and players earn points based on a system of how many catches, yards, and touchdowns they get, and after the week, the team with the most points wins.

Typically, leagues will have a cash prize at the end of the season for the winner of the end of season tournament. A problem with this is that at the end of the year, competitors with no chance of making the playoffs don’t have a reason to keep up with their team and set their lineups anymore. As a way to ensure players who are eliminated still have a reason to play, leagues will implement a punishment for the player who has the worst record at the end of the year.

These punishments can get cruel, so competitors will take these leagues seriously to make sure they don’t have to do an end of year punishment. “I usually focus more on not getting last and doing the punishment than winning and getting the cash prize,” sophomore Jack Sisco said.

Friend groups do these leagues and often include a punishment for whoever earns last place to ensure everyone participates. A popular punishment among students is the “Milk Mile,” where the loser will run a mile on the track and have to drink milk in between the laps with the goal of finishing a gallon over the four laps. The running, plus the large milk intake, often leads to participants vomiting during the mile. Junior Deniz Wright had to experience this punishment after a last place finish in his league last year. “It was way worse than I expected. I felt super nauseous by the third lap, and I still had to drink a ton of milk,” Wright said

The idea of a punishment for last place makes sense in theory; it ensures everyone participates. An issue is that these punishments can be too harsh. Punishments like the “Milk Mile” and “The Cage” are meant to demean and humiliate the person who got last. “Having a punishment is kind of needed for the league to run, but people always go way too far,“ Sisco said.