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Three years ago I thought fantasy sports were for couch potatoes who’d never played a down, inning or minute of a sport in their life.

I thought it was a way for non-athletes to have something to root for in sports when they had no real rooting interest except for individuals who they “owned.” And I hated the idea of rooting for individuals rather than teams.

Since that time, I’ve learned there’s more to it than that.

I’ve taken part in two seasons of fantasy football, and am entrenched in my first season playing fantasy baseball. It’s a blast.

When a homer of a fan is cursed by circumstance with terrible professional teams, it helps to have something to follow.

I do feel very fortunate to have a couple of cousins who play professional baseball, so I have two other teams to follow when the Royals go in the tank. I’m not giving up on the team this early in the season, not at all.

It just stands to reason that without a salary cap, fans of small market big league teams will not see their teams consistently make the playoffs. More likely, most years these teams will be out of the playoff picture by the all-star break.

Sure, there are exceptions: the Rockies a year ago and the Marlins in aught-3. But what happened to the Fish the following year? And the Rockies are already buried nine games back in early May. Small market teams can do it for one or two years, when everything comes together. There is a small window of time when a group of players come up together and aren’t eligible for arbitration or free agency for three years.

After that, just like the Marlins, small market teams have to disband while the cash cow juggernauts overpay players to join their teams.

The Mets are paying Carlos Beltran just over $18.5 million to hit .275 with 30 home runs and 110 RBIs per year. The Royals could never afford that and have funding left to put any talent around him.

So my point with that is the hope for fans of small market teams is to have that two-year flash-in-a-pan where everything comes together. Then it’s back to being a cellar dweller until it happens again.

Hopefully this is one of those years for the boys in blue, but — using history as an indicator — probably not.

To fans of this lowly nature, that’s where fantasy sports can keep one’s attention and give reason to be a good fan. To most, the fan who doesn’t have another rooting interest, there’s usually no point in checking the box scores and standings to see how the Royals did come July. There’s no reason to stay connected to the game.

Same with football, although with the Chiefs there is no salary cap to blame, only stupid upper-management moves. Kansas City shows no signs of making the playoffs and finally winning a playoff game any time soon. After getting beat by Denver last year, 41-7, dropping the team to 4-9, KC fans had no reason to watch football the rest of the year. I don’t have another team I give two cents about other than the Chiefs, so football season would have been a drag.

But that’s the positive thing about fantasy sports. People have reasons — usually with money on the line, but that’s beside the point — to remain well read and fixated on the sports they love, no matter the dreadful depths to which their team takes them.

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