Only in fantasy leagues is obsession seen as a good thing
Published: 03 Sep. 2004, 21:39
But there is one thing that stays forever. If you play in this league, you know what I am talking about. If you win your fantasy league, divine intervention is about the only thing stopping you from bragging about it ― forever.
If your league has not already started, most likely you will have a week before one of the most important days of your life: Draft Day.
Playing in a fantasy league means you are a serious person. If the following statements seem familiar, you have the right mentality and enough fire in you to be part of this universe:
*You have marked down on the calendar your draft day while your PDA is set on alarm as well.
*Your “things to do list” is topped with “sleepers” and “busts.”
*You are armed with “cheat sheets” and you have constructed painstakingly a model on Excel gauging your pals’ possible drafts choices.
*You wonder whether you should subscribe to yet another fantasy expert newswire.
*You are still trying to recover from “Ricky Williams shock.”
This is the minimum level of intensity you should have when you are willing to plunk down a good chunk of money into a fantasy league, mainly because you will be contending with people like these (real-life examples from my league):
*Someone who is about to get married but admit he hasn’t told his future wife that he’s in a fantasy league.
*Someone who is getting married and has promised his future wife that he will bring her a championship as a wedding gift, although she has no clue what a fantasy league is.
So if you have the tiniest shred of doubt, you should not be playing this game. If you do, you are wasting your bucks. You just won’t stand a chance. Nada. Zip. These are people that have injury reports of players paged, e-mailed and text messaged to their cell phone.
These are people that look for the slightest edge. They have memorized bye weeks, analyzed strength of schedule AND the weather pattern. If you find any of this strange, again you better not charge your credit card.
If you’re not sufficiently dedicated to your fantasy league, you won’t understand why your best buddy puts you on hold because he has to talk to someone NOW, due to a trade deadline. You’ll be puzzled as to why your pal who is a lifelong Green Bay Packers fan wishes Ahman Green (who is on your roster) would slip on a banana peel and hurt himself so he’d be benched for the rest of the season. And you certainly would not get why your buddy calls you at 2 a.m. because he wants to talk about a trade.
This is a unique world where you are part of something and totally alone at the same time. Legions of devoted people want you to fail and they don’t hide it. But it’s the same people who want you to fail that will admire you with awe once you have won a championship.
If you are ready to become part of all this, welcome to fantasy land. Whether you are 5049th or 78th out of 10,000, it’s all the same. Just have some serious fun.
by Brian Lee
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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