That time of year has come nigh.
The time when the weather starts to cool down and superhuman men strap on the shoulder pads and don their helmets and play some football ("American Football" for those of you outside of the U.S.).
The preseason kicked off with the Hall of Fame weekend on Saturday with the Falcons beating the Colts 27-21 and continued on Monday with the Chicago Bears actually beating the Miami Dolphins 27-24. Do I expect this good fortune to last for the Bears? Expect? No. Hope? Of course. I'm a fan of Chicago sports. We never expect, but we always hope. Hope is all we've got.
In addition to being able to watch the Bears play on TV (along with other teams that I happen to tune in to), this time of year also brings registration for fantasy football leagues.
YESSS!!!!
I've been playing fantasy football since 2001 when my friends needed another player to round out their league and signed me up against my will. I didn't want to play, but, once I actually decided to pay attention to it, I was hooked. A couple years ago, I even signed up to play fantasy baseball and, while I don't like it nearly as much, I still do play despite trying to quit before this current season.
Now I regularly play fantasy football in two leagues. Such is the case this year as well. Both are free leagues, of course, as we don't feel it's right to pay someone for services that can be rendered for free. We're just going to deal with money issues on our own and work out our own method to make it a keeper league for next year.
I signed up for one league with my old high school buddies who are the ones that got me in to it in the first place. Like always, I am the Geneva Snappers -- a name that makes absolutely no sense since Geneva, Illinois', closest source of water is the Fox River and Snappers, as I've used it, refers to sharks. Yeah. Okay. Heck, considering how landlocked we are, I can't even viably use the name in reference to turtles. Alas, I use it anyway.
My other team, in a league run by one of my brothers-in-law, is called Ms. Davis' Prom Date. I've been trying to be a bit more creative with these names as everyone else in that league tends to be a bit more smart assed in their naming. Mine, being the film fan I am, is a reference to Billy Bob in Varsity Blues when he asks his sex ed teacher, "Miss Davis, will you be my prom date?" all the while staring at her chest.
My baseball team in my BiL's league was named High-Priced Talent in reference to Major League when one coach comments to another "I didn't know we could afford any high-priced talent." "Dorn? No, he's just high priced." I thought it was clever, at least.
We play our leagues through Yahoo! Sports and, what I like, is that they've been adding little features to their site. For one, we can now trash talk through little speech bubble posts on our team pages. We can also make personal notes via a Post-It like section on our team's homepage very akin to the Stickies application in Mac OS-X. It's very cool. I gotta play around with the interface a little more and see what else is available. But it does look to be much more fun than in the past. We shall see.
So, anybody looking to play in a fantasy football league? Let me know and, if we have room, maybe I can get you signed up. No guarantees, but I'll try.
