In Which I Dabble in Fantasy Football

I’m a gamer. And I love football. It was really only a matter of time before this whole “fantasy football” thing caught my eye. I’ve looked into it in the past, but there was always this big hurdle–you had to get a group of like-minded individuals together to do it. I didn’t want to run a league with strangers, after all. But this year, I finally decided to give it a whirl. I contacted a group of friends, and a group of family members, hoping one of the groups would be interested.

Both were, so I’m in two leagues at the moment.

It’s only been week one, but so far, I have to say I’ve been enjoying the process (even though the team I drafted–the team that looked so awesome on paper–ended up being a bunch of incompetent morons on week one). The drafting was fun–getting a group of people together and bantering back and forth about picks and teams. And I’m enjoying tweaking my own, looking into who’s injured, what sort of teams are up against each other each week. That sort of thing. (Of course, all my tweaking and investigations did was net me a lousy 64 points this last week–second worst in the league (of 12 people.)

But one thing I’ve noticed is the fact that fantasy football is without a doubt a strategy game. It’s a complex one–one embraced by a group of people who usually want nothing to do with strategy games–but that’s what it is. All it’s missing is cardboard cards of all the players, but since it’s virtual, you really don’t need those anyway . But what it boils down to is creating a team that’s going to do better than the other team week after week. It’s practically Magic the Gathering, people.

Of course, some of that is messed up by the fact that you can create a great strategy  on paper, but then it all goes crazy when your player breaks a leg in practice in the middle of the week. Sort of like if you were dominating the other players in Risk, and then your mighty Australian army all caught Koala Flu and died. But then again, doesn’t that just make it that much more awesome, as far as strategy games are concerned?

Any other avid fantasy football players out there? It feels like there’s a wealth of knowledge I have yet to really “get” in order to excel at this game, but count me as intrigued. I’m open to any tips. The Trencin Vodniks go up against Team Rogues Gallery (in the friends league) and the Scree-Man D-Mans (in the family league). Something tells me I’m going to need all the help I can get!