Today is the day I participate in a fantasy football draft, and I’m only mildly interested.
I haven’t been very successful in fantasy football seasons since I began drafting teams while still in my 20s — back before the days of computers, when our “commissioner” logged wins and losses and compiled statistics on paper. It was a very time-consuming job.
The team names can be funny. I remember sitting around a big table in the basement of Worthington’s Michael’s restaurant one evening for drafting purposes, and the commissioner polled each one of us to ascertain our nicknames. When it was my turn, I chimed in, “The Knights Who Say Ni.”
He was obviously not familiar with Monty Python. He looked at me as if I had bats flying out of my ears.
“How do you spell ‘Ni’?” he asked me.
OK, where was I? Oh, yes, my luke-warm interest in fantasy football.
My problem, I think, has always been that I’m too much in love with my original picks. When my players fail to score points, I tend to hang onto them anyway figuring that (just my luck) the very week I cut them they’ll suddenly get hot.
Fantasy football is a huge, huge business, and I’m sure it’s been made more popular due to the instant gratification of the computer. Online sites associated with ESPN and Yahoo, etc., etc. do all the grunt work so that all you’ve got to do as an owner is enjoy the show.
Problem is, I enjoy football so much — the ACTUAL GAME, that is — that fantasy football is only a pale imitation of the real thing. Trying to keep track of who’s scoring points for me, or for my opponent, is less fun that seeing for myself whether the REAL Minnesota Vikings or REAL Green Bay Packers are getting the job done.
But this year, my wife, Sandy, is joining the same fantasy football league that I was asked to join. This is good. This is excellent, in fact.
Sandy is a football fan, but not near as rabid as I am. She loves to watch the Vikings on TV, but when the Vikings game is done, she’d just as soon spend the rest of her day doing something else. When she’s got a fantasy team, however, she’s interested in football games for the whole day.
That means, of course, that we can spend the whole Sunday together watching NFL games — which is what I love to do, anyway. Togetherness in a marriage is a wonderful thing, don’t you agree? And to think that it’s fantasy football that brings us together in the fall!
