Thanksgiving to December 25th – Holiday Shopping Season
January – April 15th – Tax Season
June 1st to November 1st – Hurricane Season
Mid-August to NFL Kickoff – Fantasy Football Season
It’s that time a year ago when 30 million + Americans (Roughly 24
million of them being of the male species) put lives hold, ignore our spouses
and become a lot less productive at work. That is because of one very important
cause, fantasy football. We bask in the glory of a pretend professional draft,
we begin the ancient ritual of poking fun of a friend because they have a lame
team nickname or because they unknowingly fake drafted a player who is not
expected to play for 4 weeks because of a torn MCL. That fact that we even know
that a torn MCL is not as bad as a torn ACL has shown how far we’ve come in the
journey of life…but we subject ourselves to these trivialities anyway. Not
because we really want Eli Manning to throw for 300 yards with 3 Touchdown
passes and no interceptions (30 points) it’s because there is a value to
fantasy football that almost nobody understands unless it’s become a part of
your annual rite of passage.
At this juncture, most humans understand the general concept of fantasy
football. Each team selects real life football athletes (no team can own the
same individual). Then each week your chosen players stats are measured against
your opponents chosen players and a scoring system determines who has the
biggest scrotum…or least that’s how our league works.
The league I play in began somewhere in the mid 90’s. My best guess is
1995 or 1996. The history is a bit murky but it was organized by camp friends.
To make the league more interesting and special, it held its first draft in the
final days of camp that summer in a dining hall where the chartered members of
this league eat together over many summers. The original league had 10 teams
but roughly 14-15 players (some of who co-owned teams together).
Our league began with a very simple scoring concept. Each week your
team was measured on Pass Yards, Pass TDS, Pass %, RB Yards, RB TDS, WR Yards,
WR Receptions, WR TDS, Defensive Takeaways. Out of those 9 categories, your
team would need to outduel your opponent in at least 5 of them to get a Win. As
the season comes to an end, the teams with the best records go head to head in
a playoff and in the end someone gets to brag about how awesome they are for an
entire year while someone always gets defensive and says “I would have won if
Joe Running Back didn’t get turf toe.” It began with an ancient writing utensil
they refer to as a pencil and this system in which people corresponded, called
postal mail. It was such a simpler time.
What I described in the preceding paragraphs is only about 5% of what
happens in our league. To us, the draft has become a ritual, the league has
became a brotherhood and our scoring system has had minor tweaks to ensure the
deck gets stacked up against those who take the game way too serious. For us,
the league of 10 teams and 14-15 guys has become a very comfortable league of
12 teams with 12 single owners. In the last 17 years or so, we have only
replaced 1 owner (more on that in a bit). Like Philadelphia Eagles Season
tickets, we can easily count 10-15 people in the camp circle who would love to
be in our league. But as morbid as it may sound, only death breeds team
vacancies.
At the time our league began, we were in the age ranges of 16-22 years
old. None of us were married, most of us were in college and nearly all of us
had a full head of hair. The annual draft nights would be filled with fart
jokes, cheap beer and bragging on who was the most recent guy to get laid…For
the record, it was never me. In just a matter of a few years, the draft has
gotten progressively more mature. We are home owners, husbands, fathers, some
have been divorced, many of us have gone on to graduate from multiple colleges.
Most of us have gotten fatter, some balder and others have a few strands of
gray. But the one thing that has not changed is our connection to each other and
that’s ultimately my point of Fantasy Football.
To me it’s a metaphor of life. It’s like the kid who wants to have a
catch with his father not because he likes tossing a ball around but because he
wants to spend time with his father. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the competition
of Fantasy Football but what I enjoy most is the one time of the year that I
get to see friends who live busy lives and otherwise would find it difficult to
carve out the time. It’s a mini-reunion. It’s the opportunity to not rag about
who got Adrian Peterson but to brag about who has aged more gracefully.
Then there are times, when life interrupts this fanciful empire we have
built for ourselves. In June, 2005, one of our team owners suddenly passed
away. Albeit the friend was the older of the bunch, mid-50’s but he was a
beloved friend and a passionate guy who spent years as the official patriarch
of the group, which is why we name our championship trophy “The Asherman” in
his honor. It has been the only time we had a team opening. It was a wakeup
call because the reality is one day, hopefully many years down the road this
league will be a legacy from most of us. It will likely be torched on to our
kids and hopefully their kids too. In a way we have become a business owned by
12 buddies who would like nothing more then to hand down our gift to our
offspring as if it was the world’s greatest trust fund minus the money and
multiply the fun.
To me, Fantasy Football is a brotherhood, a way for me to celebrate
Labor Day with others, a way for me to laugh with others and is often the case,
laugh at myself. It’s a way to give a ribbing and take a ribbing. It’s the
connection that was made many years ago at a camp with men that I am proud to
know. It’s a celebration of friendship and gift that we hope to pass on for
generations. It’s an escape of the everyday world of diapering, nagging and
paying the bills. It’s also a challenge, amusement and way to measure greatness
among a circle of friends. It’s an amazement of stat evolution. We use to get
our handwritten stats in the mail each week. Now we know the scores at every
second thanks to modern technology.
So to you Mike Noble, Lance Noble, Adam Kramaroff, Brandon Rubenstein,
Aaron Sachs, Mike Demar, Mike Staff, Jarad Benn, Sean Banks, Mike Kramer and
Eric Price, I say good luck to all. Lets play fair…and I can’t wait to kick
your assess…I mean have funJ
to my 2013 SFFL (Slipper Fantasy Football League) friends. One last thing, I
aged the best.
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