I would sell my soul to have Tony Romo throw 50 touchdowns this year. To some people that may seem absurd, but anyone who plays fantasy football understands.
After watching Tom Brady miserably throwing incomplete Hail Maries to cap the end of the Super Bowl, I have been impatiently waiting for this Thursday to come.
Thursday begins the football season, which means the beginning of the fantasy football season. This will inevitably lead to long Sunday and Monday nights until the football season is over. Fantasy football hasn’t been a game to me for a long time. It’s an obsession.
I’ve been obsessively playing competitive fantasy football for eight years now, and I still love it just as much as I did that first season. I also hate it just as much. The sheer frustration this game gives to everyone cannot be expressed in any way other than through experience.
I am only one of millions of people who will go into a Monday night game at some point during the season needing a ridiculous amount of points from a specific player. Most of the time, I find myself angry next to an empty six-pack. However, once in a while that player will pull through and for one week I will be on top of the world and that player will be my idol – until the next week when he plays poorly. The six-pack is usually empty at the end of a Monday night regardless of the circumstances.
I have spent every day since the end of February ritually reading news on anything football-related. Brett Favre, Chad Johnson and Adam “Pacman” Jones are all players who have made spotlights for themselves in the offseason. I am very bored with reading about their individual soap operas, but as long as there is football news of any sort, I will read it.
In fantasy football, every bit of knowledge one comes across gives one a better chance to win. The knowledge Adam Schefter, a reporter for NFL Network, has is the epitome of what every competitive fantasy football player aspires to know. The guy is literally an encyclopedia of football knowledge.
People always ask me how I can root for my home team, the Dolphins, when I need a player on the opposing team to score a few touchdowns. My response last year would be, “I just want Marshawn Lynch and Lee Evans to get 100 yards and a touchdown each, and then let the Dolphins win, as long as they don’t run the ball.”
It sounds a little ridiculous, but as a competitive fantasy football player, I need to make sure my players hit their mark while supporting my home team. That is roughly how a player roots for his home team throughout the season.