I have been invited to participate for a second year in a row in a fantasy football league with some friends. It costs $20.00 to play and the top two teams split up the money. I played last year for the first time and came in last place. I’m pretty sure that’s why they invited me back. When they held our draft last year I showed up with everything I thought was necessary to draft a successful fantasy football team. That included a six-pack of beer and… well, actually that’s all I brought was the beer. It wasn’t fantasy beer, it was real beer. In fact it was a six-pack of pretty good beer – Sam Adams Boston Lager. But that was all I brought. I didn’t even have a pen. All of the other guys had stacks and stacks of papers and notes and draft guides and all kinds of other fantasy football documentation. I felt like I was having a bad dream where I had arrived at a test site to take the SAT without ever having looked at a study guide or a sample test and having forgotten my #2 pencil! But I had beer. Some of the other guys had beer also, so I didn’t feel totally out-of-place, but it was cheap beer. Budweiser and Miller Lite were well represented. I quickly became very thankful that I hadn’t brought my usual drink of choice… Chardonnay. One of the guys was nice enough to give me some of his spare player worksheets so that I could document all of my picks.
I love football. In fact, I’m a hard-core, eternally loyal, purple and gold bleeding Minnesota Vikings fan and have been since I was a kid. But I don’t follow the entire NFL like all of these other guys. They know who every player is, what positions they play and which teams they play for. Let alone not having the time to keep track of all of that, I just don’t find it that interesting. Some of these guys are also participating every year in multiple fantasy football leagues. Talk about a time suck! I will admit it was kind of fun last year, but one league is enough for me to satisfy my… umm… football fantasies.
Speaking of that, I think they should change the name of fantasy football to something more appropriate. The term armchair quarterback, of course, comes from fans sitting in their armchairs, watching a sporting event and screaming instructions at the players on the TV screen. Maybe instead of fantasy football, it should be called Armchair Football. In my opinion, the term fantasy football has a kind of sexual connotation to it. Perhaps that stems from when I run around the house in my Vikings jersey and football helmet pretending I’m a football player and my wife puts on her sexy Vikings cheerleader outfit and…. yeah…. uhhh… nevermind…
Anyway, if you are playing fantasy football this year, I wish you the best! May I suggest a glass of Chardonnay with your nachos and chicken wings this Sunday?
The Brown Road Chronicles 