Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Posted by Monte Walker at 10:48 PM
The most hated time of the year for a lot of wives is looming. Draft dates and pre-draft dates have already been penciled in. Wings are being heated up and beverages are being cooled down...it must be time for another stake to claim of Peyton Manning or Shawn Alexander. As a matter of fact, I’ve been playing this sleeveless plaid shirt wearing, couch-potato sport that they call fantasy football for twelve years now. How long is that...well, the Dallas Cowboys went to the Super Bowl my first year....Vinny Testeverde was the QB for the Cleveland Browns (there were no Baltimore Ravens yet)...Errict Rhett was the talk of the draft that year...and "internet" to my friends probably had something to do with fishing. I started my own league with friends the following year. I found out that being a commissioner of a fantasy football league was a pretty time-consuming ordeal. In those days, lineups/waivers/trades had to be phoned in (no email or internet with my friends), which usually meant I made 10 phone calls on Thursday night and spent about 5 hours updating an excel spreadsheet each week. We actually had to get our stats out of a newspaper on Monday (hahahahaha). Rules were also in their early stages of trial and error perfection. Around 1998 software programs finally came to fruition with automated scoring through email updates (we actually made a rule - You have to have an email address to play). My league invested in one of those companies before finally moving our league to a popular national website who has handled all of our fantasy football needs since 2000. Also, the job of commissioner of your league has been reduced to changing the year on the web page from 2005 to 2006. All of this and some ask, "Why do you play fantasy football?" If you were to ask any of the guys in our league, the only answer you would get would be "bragging rights and trash talk." Don’t ask my why it is so much of a power-trip to lay ownership to the rights to Chad Johnson’s stats and claim your intelligence over your buddy because he had more yards than Tory Holt in week 3. I have no idea how we can get so involved...but we do. I guess it’s the power of actually creating your own dream-team and trying to put together a championship. Every year since 1995 I have felt on draft night that I was going to run-away with the championship, but have come up short every year except for "The Miracle of 1996." Guys that play this ridiculous "sport" have their winning teams memorized and know exactly who their starting quarterback was (I alternated Vinny and Mark Brunell that year). For the newcomers to fantasy football, I have some recommendations for you. 1. Stay away! This can sometimes make you root for a guy who’s playing the Cowboys (well, for some people anyway). 2. If you’re not in my league...I don’t care about your team. The last thing I have time for is hearing how good your team is in your "other league." 3. If you’re going to play this crazy game...cook for your wife a lot. Nine times out of ten, she hates the fact that you play...be nice to her. And finally, sharpen your elbows and thicken your skin, another year of fantasy football is about to begin.
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