Breaking Down Fantasy Football with Matthew Berry

The self-christened “Talented Mr. Roto,” Matthew Berry—author of the New York Times Best Seller “Fantasy Life” stopped by this morning to discuss fantasy football. While you may be asking why we’d have a fantasy expert on—Howard has not only never expressed any interest in, but in fact has openly mocked it—but Mr. Roto is an official member of the Howard Stern Show fantasy league.

That means he and Gary Dell’Abate, JD Harmeyer, Scott Salem, Jon Hein, Will Murray, Jason Kaplan, Steve Brandano, and Ben Barto all draft players onto fictional teams and compete against each other.

Matthew had the idea that each member should take the “Wonderlic Test”—an intelligence test they administer to NFL players – and the order of the league picks will be based on your score: highest picks first, lowest picks last.

Here is what we learned about each league member from Matt’s appearance.

STEVE BRANDANO* – Steve scored the lowest on the Wonderlic Test, and Matthew revealed that Steve plays the game with his heart instead of his head.

‘That’s because he’s a dummy,’ Howard replied.

Steve is a huge Patriots fan and gets upset when someone else picks “his guy”—Steve was enraged last year when Jon Hein picked Tom Brady.

BEN BARTO – Ben came in ninth place, even though he is considered an intelligent guy and he works his ass off around the office. That’s pretty much all anybody knows about Ben.

LISA ANN – Lisa Ann is a famous porn star—best known for playing Sarah Palin—and a fantasy football fanatic.

WILL MURRAY – Will, who famously scored the highest on the staff IQ test, came in seventh place on the Wonderlic. Will has built his life around goofing on JD, so he was incensed when the professional TV-watcher won the league last year.

“NOOOOOOOOOO,” is the complete text message Will sent JD the moment he won. Matt said that Will is good, but not as good as he thinks he is.

JASON KAPLAN – Jason is the league commissioner and he ranked sixth in the Wonderlic scores. According to Jon Hein, Jason is terrible at fantasy and just picks whoever Matthew Berry tells his “disciples” to draft and that’s about the extent of his fantasy knowledge.

SCOTT THE ENGINEER – Scott scored an impressive 30 on the test, which nobody expected. Scott, it was alleged, takes the full 90 seconds to make his pick, then will often pick someone who has already been drafted.

JD HARMEYER – JD was victorious last year, and is so proud of himself that he won’t let the fantasy trophy out of his sight. He even offered to accompany the prize to the engravers to ensure that nothing happened to it.

No, JD’s suit isn’t wrinkled from staying out all night celebrating his league championship. He showed up to the draft this way.

GARY DELL’ABATE – Gary did the worst of anybody last season, losing an impressive eleven straight weeks in a row—and finishing last in nearly every statistical category.

JON HEIN – Jon, who took the Wonderlic test twice, came in first place. Matt described Jon as “passive aggressive” and Jon admitted that he is when it comes to fantasy—but a game is a game.

The scene from last year’s draft

MATTHEW BERRY – Matt may be an expert, but he didn’t win the Stern Show league. Matt has his disciples—Jason, and his haters—Will. He even has people who try to steal his wife, like Steven Tyler. Matt was at the Howard Stern Birthday Bash and Steven started hitting on his beautiful wife. Once he found out she was married, however, he backed off. Matt even offered his wife a ‘free pass’, but she demurred. If it had been Adam Levine, however, she admitted that all bets were off.

Howard was interested but annoyed by the whole thing, feeling that his staff should focus on their work and not building fake football teams.

Howard asked George Takei, who was sitting in, if he had any interest at all in any of this. ‘Absolutely not’ was his reply.

Make sure to check out Matthew Berry’s “Fantasy Life” now in paperback!