Fantasy Island

Fantasy Football (FF) is a funny term. Everyone knows that FF has taken over mainstream male culture when summer starts to fade into fall (Not to exclude women, but let's be honest, a higher percentage of guys are participating in FF). You can't watch a sports station or check a sports website without hearing about injury updates and trade rumors and depth chart swapping and how all of this will impact your team. And if you're anything like me, FF was too overwhelming and ruined my viewing experience. I had a team (the Bears), and I watched them. Trying to catch the last few minutes of the Chiefs game to see if Larry Johnson would break 100 yards seemed silly. Why would I root for someone who isn't directly helping my hometown helmet-bashers?

Well, last season, wanting to be a part of the phenomenon as opposed to looking in, I joined a league. Maybe it was the Bill Simmons articles, maybe it was the lure of winning money and proving my dominance in football knowledge, but either way, once I joined I decided not to take it lightly. I began listening to pod casts, taking notes, making spreadsheets, watching ESPN, pillaging through their website, taking pointers from any voice of reason I could imagine, hopefully preparing myself for success. Well, long story short, I did well. Lead the league in cumulative points for the season (won me $30), lead the league in points in 3 different weeks (another $12), but lost my semi-final playoff game and ended up taking 4th (net -$8 after the $50 entry fee).

Generally, I found the experience extremely enjoyable. My logic of not wanting to root for anyone not playing for the Bears was completely flawed. Take this season for example: I expect nothing from the Bears. Their lackluster 19-14 victory because of a poorly written rule over the woeful Lions is nothing more than a perfect encapsulation of how I predict their season to go: Shows flashes of upside, but really, only a few plays better than a crappy team, so with some luck, might end up .500.

Not to get caught up in sports posts these days, but this goes right back to my die-hard mentality about the Cubs. The same way I can truly appreciate the relief of not having to watch the Cubs every because they are 20 games under .500 is the same way I can become engrossed in checking the scores and box scores of 8 different games every weekend, with lucrative possibilities abound. The ante went up to $75 this year, so the better my fantasy team does, the closer I am to a Christmas bonus.

You hear nay-sayers point out all these adult men only fantasizing about playing football instead of actually doing it, about all of us that are trying to hold on to glory by fanning our feathers and imposing our football domination. And the ironic insult, calling us all nerds for crunching numbers and extrapolating entire seasons about this punishing game we all wish we were stars of.

But I'm here to say that as much as FF isn't real life, it's real for those of us who participate. It gives us something to occupy our time with. It brings us closer to friends, and maintains relationships with those that have spread out around the country or world. It keeps our interest in a long, slow, depressing fall season where new TV shows bomb, the weather gets worse and worse, and year after year, our home team continues to under-perform. We all know that FF isn't the real thing, and that there is as much luck as skill involved in drafting the proper crop of players, but if this small miracle of online athlete tracking can yield such positive results, it is something that should be relished as opposed to questioned. Seeing the 'Fantasy Tracker' on the bottom of the screen might annoy some, but to many of us, it's just one more way to survive, to give us hope, to give us something to look forward to each week and each year.