Fantasy Football Hell

You know that place where you second and third-guess every decision you make? Where you over-analyze the smallest of details and as a result go against your gut instincts?

You know that place where you're banging your head against the wall because you started Willie Parker over Michael Turner in a must-win week 12 fantasy match-up and now you're stuck screaming at the TV during the Colts-Chargers game because Joseph Addai is you're only hope at overcoming a 35-point deficit.

Yeah... that's where I am right now.

Two things about this NFL season:

1. I'm going to assassinate Dominic Rhodes, who got every significant crunch time carry for the Colts, and allowed Joe Addai to slowly kill my fantasy team like an NFL version of the AIDS virus. I'm not sure when Dungy lost faith in Jigga Joe, but it screwed over two of my fantasy teams this year and...

2. How can you not love the Falcons right now, even after the playoff loss. This is just a great young team that has been able to reinvent itself with Matt Ryan, Michael Turner and Roddy White, and really leave the Michael Vick era behind. With a physical D and the uncanny ability to hang with almost any opponent, they're just captivating to watch. I say these guys come back big in 2009. I mean, didn't you see that drive in the fourth quarter where Matty Ice literally willed the team down the field. Forget the two picks, there was bound to be mistakes due to inexperience, what's good is that he still threw the ball with confidence even after some mis-steps. Kid's going to be great.

What I really want to talk about though, is fantasy football hell.

There is no other game, sport or recreational activity on the planet that causes the same amount of stress as does Fantasy Football - the #1 cause of heart attacks in American males age 16-30.

Why? Well it's simple really: it takes no knowledge of the actual sport of football to be able to play fantasy football.

Take for example a girl in one of my fantasy leagues. For the purposes of this column, we'll call her Laura Anacone. Last season, the inaugural season for this particular league, Laura decided to draft LT with the second overall pick in our draft. Very respectable, except for the fact that the LT she drafted was Lawrence Taylor.

"I'll take Lawrence Taylor," she said, and then managed to somehow not come in last and beat out real football fans, who watch football, in the playoffs.

I don't care that Donovan McNabb doesn't know games can end in a tie - well, I do, but what I care more about is the fact that the kid in my 12-team league's championship game drafted Ricky Williams in the fourth round of our draft this year when Michael Turner, Ronnie Brown, Chris Johnson, Matt Forte, LenDale White, Darren McFadden, and Jonathan Stewart were all still on the board.

All this individual did was read Matt Berry, ESPN's Talented Mr. Roto, religiously each week and do his darndest to follow every recommendation Berry made. Through that, and sheer luck (he scored the second fewest total points over the course of the regular season in a 12 team league and somehow managed an 8-5 record because he caught teams on shit weeks), he made it to the championship game.

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is the kind of shit that makes real football fans - the kind that saw the potential in Michael "the Burner" Turner from watching him back up LT (no, not Lawrence Taylor, Laura) and grabbed him just at the right spot in round 5, the kind who waited an extra round for Larry Fitz instead of pulling the trigger on Anquan Boldin because they knew Boldin's only played a full 16 games twice in a six year career - it makes those fans nuts.

Just nuts enough to do it all over again next season.