The Story Behind the Armchair Quarterback: How a Fantasy Football Trophy Was Born
When I first decided to sculpt the Armchair Quarterback trophy for my fantasy football league, I knew exactly what I wanted it to look like.
At the time, I was an art student at Kent State University taking several figure-based courses, including figure sculpture. We'd spend weeks working on a single piece, trying to get every detail just right.
And when you're sculpting the human figure, proportions matter.
Get the proportions wrong and something just looks...off. You might not even be able to put your finger on it, but you know something isn't right.
Most of the models we worked from were in pretty good shape. They had the typical athletic—or at least reasonably fit—human proportions. After a while, I was getting pretty comfortable sculpting the "typical" figure.
But that wasn't going to work for my fantasy football trophy.
I needed something different.
I needed a guy with some heft.
Some weight.
Someone who looked like he had spent an unhealthy amount of Sundays planted firmly in a recliner, watching football, yelling at the TV, and questioning every coaching decision made from September through January.
Enter my cousin Johnny. 
When I called cousin Johnny, I honestly wasn't sure how he was going to react.
I basically had to tell him, "Hey, I need you to be the model for a sculpture. I'm looking for a guy who's out of shape and spends most of his time sitting in a recliner watching football."
Fortunately, cousin Johnny has a pretty good sense of humor.
He started laughing when I explained what I had in mind and was completely onboard.
So I took a bunch of photographs, made some quick sketches, added a few notes, and got to work.
About a month later, I had the sculpture I'd been imagining.
And it was exactly right.
This wasn't supposed to be some generic football trophy with a player standing triumphantly on top. I wanted something that actually represented fantasy football—and, more importantly, the guys in my league.
Because let's be honest: fantasy football isn't played on the field.
It's played from the couch.
We're all armchair quarterbacks.
We second-guess every play call, complain about every dropped pass, celebrate touchdowns by players we've never met, and somehow convince ourselves that we could run the team better than the actual coaches.
That's what I wanted the trophy to capture.
The original version was cast in plaster rather than resin, but it did the job. It became the trophy that recorded every champion in our league's history.
Eventually, I upgraded it and created an even better version using resin.
And that sculpture became the trophy you see today on my website:
And thank God for my cousin Johnny.
Because let's be honest, it wouldn't have been nearly as funny—or nearly as authentic—with some nice, relatively fit guy sitting proudly in a recliner.
That's not the fantasy football experience I know.
The Armchair Quarterback was born from a real fantasy football league, a real friendship, and a little bit of artistic experimentation. That's what makes these trophies different.
They're not generic trophies made in China and pulled from a catalog.
They're made to capture the personality, humor, and ridiculousness that make fantasy football so much fun.
And one more thing about Cousin Johnny...
I'm happy to report that cousin Johnny has lost a ton of weight and is in much better health these days.
So while he may have been the perfect model for the Armchair Quarterback, he's no longer quite as qualified for the job.
Sorry, Johnny. You'll always be immortalized in bronze—or, at least, resin.
