Daniel Radcliffe is a fantasy football addict, has team named ‘Barkevious Mingo’s mother’

Harry Potter is a huge fantasy football buff. Well, Harry might have his hands full with evil spells and Lord Voldemort, but the actor who plays him is glued to the computer on Sundays tracking his fantasy team like the rest of us.

Radcliffe was the subject of a lengthy interview with The New York Times Magazine’s Susan Dominus. In the feature, Radcliffe boasts that he is a huge American football fan and claims he knows the name of every starter in the NFL. The New York Times’ 6th Floor blog was intrigued by Radcliffe’s NFL obsession, so they delved deeper into the fantasy football subject. The 6th Floor’s Samantha Henig asked Radcliffe how he became such a big fan.

“It’s just a fantastic sport,” Radcliffe told Henig. “I watched it ever since I came over and was doing “Equus” in the Broadhurst Theater. I got christened a Giants fan that year by the crew who were working there. I took an interest then, but when I got into fantasy football, that’s when my level of obsession with the game increased and my understanding of it grew very quickly as I realized that if I was not going to completely embarrass myself in this league then I was going to have to put in some serious time learning about it.”

Radcliffe’s favorite sport is cricket. He said he would never do any type of fantasy cricket league because he could never bring himself to root against the English cricket team if there were fantasy implications. But the best part of Radcliffe’s passion for fantasy football is his team name, “Barkevious Mingo’s mum,” which is a tribute to the Cleveland Browns linebacker.

“I just think Barkevious Mingo is the greatest name I’ve ever heard, and the fact that his mum invented that name is also amazing,” Radcliffe explained. “And in that league I have the Cleveland defense as well, and they had an amazing game the other day against Buffalo, so I’m incredibly grateful to the Cleveland defense, Barkevious Mingo and his mother.”

Radcliffe added that he started doing mock drafts “embarrassingly early” to prepare for the 2013 season. Perhaps the saddest part of his interview came when he was asked for his Super Bowl prediction.

“The one thing I’m still really bad at is the conferences and remembering who’s in each conference, so I can’t remember if both these teams can get to the Super Bowl, because they might be the same conference, but I think that Saints/Broncos would be an amazing game,” Radcliffe said. “I haven’t actually lost hope that the Giants can make the playoffs.”

It isn’t easy being a Giants fan this year. Antrel Rolle’s comments after Sunday’s loss to the Philadelphia Eagles were a reminder of that. My advice to Radcliffe — give up on the Giants and focus on your fantasy team. If you had Cleveland’s defense against the Bills last week, you’re already in better shape than the G-Men are.

Thanks to LBS reader Laurie for the tip