Fantastic Football

I remember visits to the library which took place years before we had access to the modern internet in our home. There were these rather odd books about football and baseball on the shelf. At the time, I had eyes only for basketball, but I had a working knowledge of those other two sports. What I didn't understand were these books which appeared to be manuals for very strange versions of them. It was called fantasy sports, and I just couldn't grasp it at all. It appeared that you played the sport on paper, and it was somehow associated with the exploits of real athletes. What I knew at the time was video games which simulated those sports. How this worked I really couldn't imagine. Probably most people were the same, although the concept of fantasy sports had existed well before I came upon it.

By the time I had reached high school, I came across fantasy sports again. I now had internet access at home and at school, and fantasy sports had made the jump online that would bring them to the masses. Jumping into it on a whim, I began to enjoy it immensely. It heightened great NFL games and added spice to the otherwise forgettable ones. What was and is very amusing is the strange nature of rooting when one is a fantasy sports devotee. It's like being a gambler. There are no straight-forward, simple motivations like wanting one team to win. You have some of the players in a game, and your rivals have the rest. Thus you root for complicated scenarios in which your players rack up the most points possible and those of your competitors get the least- very difficult when you have the quarterback and a fellow team has his leading receiver.

 Much of the time I was engaged in fantasy sports while at school. The library was an ideal place, and it was certainly not crowded with many other students trying to make use of it on their own initiative. There was a particular class I had that first year which met in the library. We students were left on our own most days to get the work done. I struggled to do so all year, as my focus was primarily on the fantasy football team I was running. Suffice it to say that while I performed adequately in both the league and the class, I finished first in neither. I was hooked, and would remain so for some time. Added to football was baseball as my interest in that sport grew.

I never won a league or even got all that close, but it was assured that much of my leisure time was tied up with the tracking of pro sports statistics and their application to the fictional weekly games which existed only on a website. Eventually, my interest waned somewhat, and the minor expense became too much when measured against the lesser enjoyment I was deriving. This was even before I became anything like a social being, so it was not a question of insufficient time or diffusion of focus and energy. As I began to have more to do with my fellow humans in real life, though, there was not even a question that I might return to fantasy sports. That has now changed, as I have been drawn into a league populated by real-life friends who I know by their names and faces, not their fanciful self-chosen nicknames. As the season progresses, I may have something to say now and then about the experience. It should be interesting.