First off, let me say that the reason I haven't posted to this thing in over seven months is because a) time has been as scarce as expendable income and b) my fiancée is needier than the kids are, so even when they were being cool, she would find something to whine about that involved me not sitting in front of the computer and thinking of mildly clever things to say. Also, whoever viewed this blog from Alaska, thank you. Tell Sarah Palin the Russians are getting tired of her staring at them all the time. And not in a "Lisa-Ann-hot-MILF-next-door-porn" type of staring, but rather a "would’ve-been-VP-if-she-had-kept-her-mouth-shut" kind of way.
I hate fantasy football. I'm sure I'm not the first frustrated owner to say that, especially in a season that has been as unpredictable as this one, but I really hate it. Even on the rare week that I win, I still hate it, because it ends up being more of a "shew, thank God I survived" feeling, as opposed to the "I just kicked his ass, bring me a leg of meat and a flagon of mead!" feeling that it should be. Because, at its essence, that is what fantasy football is: a nerdier way to show your friends that you are better than them at something. And when our friends remind us repeatedly that we are not, in fact, better than them, it tends to piss us off; we have to face the fact that we are failures, our kids are stupid, our jobs suck, and our wives have been screwing the milkman for the last several months, ever since the “incident”. (We told her a hundred times already, we didn’t realize we were that drunk.)
Ok, so maybe it isn’t quite that serious. But guys are, by nature, a competitive bunch, and when we lose on a regular basis, it tends to make us not want to be involved in whatever we are losing at anymore. (This explains the high divorce rate. Has a man ever actually won an argument?) Which brings me to my point: I hate fantasy football. I have been playing for six years, and have joined at least two leagues each year, if not three. Actually, that’s a lie. The first year I played, I was only in one league, a generic ESPN online affair. Guess how many times I’ve won it all? The first year I played, in a generic ESPN online affair. And I was pissing that season away until Daunte Culpepper got hurt. (Thank you, Kerry Collins!) So basically, my fantasy experience is a lot like sex before marriage. I got the good stuff right off the bat, but I haven’t tasted it since I’ve been committed. But, like sex after marriage, I press on diligently in the hopes that I will get to savor the sweet fruit once more.
I will admit, though, that my favorite part of fantasy is the draft; then again, I’m the same guy who makes a chart and takes notes during the offseason portion of Madden. (Gotta make sure I get the best ILB available in the draft, but I can’t reach! Don’t have much cap room.) In both my fantasy drafts this year, I had my laptop out, making a spreadsheet of each owner’s picks. For the first draft, I was in a hotel room two hours from home, with a Blackberry earpiece, laptop, six-pack of Shiner, and three different sets of rankings. My buddy had me on speakerphone on the other end, so I could hear each pick. Oh yeah, I was drafting for both myself and my fiancée. And you know what? I loved it. It was a bit of a rush, actually. For the second draft, the league where I am the commissioner, I made a poster board of draft order, with minimum and maximum roster requirements. I brought each owner a manila folder with two sets of rankings and a pen. I’m a huge nerd like that. I love organization, and the little thrill of being able to get a draft/league going. After that, things aren’t as much fun.
In my Fox league (the one with the fiancée), there are only eight teams, so everyone makes the playoffs. To be honest, I’m barely keeping up with it, aside from making sure my lineup is okay each week. Bless her heart, she obsesses over it like a stock market analyst. I’m so proud. But my ESPN league is wearing me out. I drafted Matt Forte and Darren McFadden, even though I didn’t want either of them. Of course, I sat Forte the first week, since he barely scored more points last season than I did. Guess who scored 44 points on my bench? Guess who lost by twelve? (By the way, our scoring system is badly skewed.) So, the next week, I played Forte, but sat Jahvid Best. Guess who scored 54 on the bench, in a game I lost by eleven? Long story short, every substitution I have made this year has been the wrong one, and it’s starting to get to me. Thankfully, my piss-poor substitution tendencies haven’t mattered the last couple weeks, since my entire team has decided to suck en masse.
The good news in all this is, even with a 2-6 record, I’m only one game out of a playoff spot (Fantasy football: Now with the added realism of feeling like an NFC West team!) and I own the tiebreaker against the dude ahead of me. Even better, I still have three division games left. Unless Aaron Rodgers completely disintegrates during the bye week (which is a possibility, have you seen Green Bay’s offensive line? Neither have they. People are starting to wonder if they weren’t in an accident or something), I feel pretty good about my chances. After all, my losses have been close, and all but one of them were due to me benching the wrong guy. Even better, one of the games is against a jackwagon who drafted four Dallas players as starters, including Romo. (Speaking of Dallas, was anyone else sad to see Romo get hurt? Not that I care if he is healthy or not, but it was much more fun watching the Cowboys implode with him making bad decisions, as opposed to watching them implode by not even remotely pretending to care anymore.) Looking at my schedule, I’ve got 2 guys I’ve already beat, and another with a losing record. Even if I don’t sneak into the playoffs, I’m really starting to think I’ve got a good chance.
Hmmm. Stubborn optimism in the face of repeated failure. I guess that is what fantasy football is all about.
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