Are You Ready for Some (Fantasy) Football??

My favorite season of sports is gearing up. In just a few short weeks, the start of the NFL and College football seasons will be upon us!

This most exciting time of the year brings with it the anticipation/agony of my annual fantasy football draft.
If you’re not familiar with fantasy football, let me explain….basically, you spend countless hours in front of your computer researching all the best and worst football players in the league and then come up with opinions about those football players in anticipation of deciding which players to put on a fake team that might compile better football statistics than your friends’ fake teams. The payoff? You win an extremely modest amount of money compared with the number of hours you’ll spend deciding what to do with your fake football team. In other words…..it’s awesome!

My wife absolutely hates this time of year. She knows that when it starts, I’m pretty much useless on Sundays. Each Sunday starts early with the NFL countdown on ESPN on my 82” TV/movie screen, then in front of my computer making some last minute lineup changes, before watching the 1pm, 4pm games, then Sunday night football downstairs with my laptop in hand, keeping an eye on the day’s fantasy stats and my team’s scoring.

I have participated in a fantasy football league with some of my close high school friends since the early 90’s. This will be our 15th year running this league. Back when we started, it was a little different than it is today. When we originally created our league in college, we would have to manually look up stats from the previous day’s games to calculate who won each week. When I look back now, I realize we had a lot of free time in college.

Of course, today everything is calculated for you, but the pressure of draft day seems way more stressful every year. Back in the day, you knew who the studs were and drafting your team seemed easier. There were maybe 10 spots total on your fantasy team and you didn’t have to worry about running backs splitting carries or which wideout you would pick based on their chance of being suspended for the first 5 games of the season due to their latest arrest.

There’s a lot of preparation/research that goes into drafting your fantasy football team so you don’t look like a fool and draft a guy who just hit the IR for the season. There’s a huge difference drafting anonymously online with people you don’t know and drafting with friends you’ve known your whole life. Make one wrong move and no one will have a problem ridiculing you for your mistake all season long.

I finished second last year due to some well-timed waiver wire additions, so the depth of my team wasn’t very solid….I just got lucky. It just shows you, that no matter how much preparation goes into drafting the perfect fantasy football team, a few injuries, a few bad weeks, can lead the best team on paper into the basement of the league standings.
If you’ve never played in a fantasy football league before and you like football, I suggest you try it. There are plenty of free leagues you can join.

My wife is convinced that I am the only guy in the world who is this obsessed with fantasy football, but I know there’s at least 9 other guys as crazy as I am, because I’m chatting with them online during the games.

I definitely don’t have the free time I once had in college, but with the time I do have, I enjoy the fall football season and my fantasy football league with my close friends.

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