The first football game of the 2020 NFL season kicked off between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans, and with it comes the return of fantasy football. While the rest of us scour professional rankings to rebuild our rosters after recent fantasy football drafts, the super-powered players in the AGBO Superhero League are ramping up their efforts once again. This year, Robert Downey Jr. will man a team, and he’s making sure that the group’s efforts – all in fun – will raise a lot of money in Chadwick Boseman’s name.
Maybe you are unfamiliar with the AGBO Superhero League. Basically, it’s a fantasy football competition that was founded by the Russo Brothers, the helmers of multiple Marvel Studios movies. And in the league, the all-stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe compete against each other on a weekly basis.
This year, per Robert Downey Jr.’s Instagram video, the members of AGBO are ensuring that $250,000 will be donated to charities in his memory. That’s a very sweet gesture that continues to keep the late actor on the industry’s radar, and do some real good in his name.
Robert Downey Jr., himself, chose his own The Footprint Coalition as the beneficiary of his fantasy football earnings. Launched earlier in 2020, the organization aims to reduce and even reverse the planet’s carbon footprint by leaning heavily on advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence.
You can actually track the progress of the entire AGBO league. They have an incredible Website that lays out all of the teams, and who plays whom on a week-by-week basis. The teams this year are run by such high-profile Avengers as Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Elizabeth Olsen, Karen Gillan, Paul Rudd and Simu Liu. They even got Ryan Reynolds involved, which is awesome.
You know what would be better? If the actors in this marvelous fantasy football league could get back to making Marvel Studios movies. We are in limbo in terms of the MCU, with our last trip arriving more than one year ago (when Spider-Man: Far From Home took the wallcrawler on a European vacation). Black Widow was supposed to have opened by now, and currently is on track for a November release. If it’s not able to hold on to that slate, then a slew of release dates are going to shift, affecting the MCU as a whole for the next few years.
It’s also hard to come to terms with the loss of Chadwick Boseman. Still. It’s fantastic that Robert Downey Jr. and the members of the AGBO Superhero League are donating monies in his name. But we prefer an alternate universe where Boseman was still with us, preparing a decade of entertaining films for his fans around the globe.
