Fantasy Football

Although I profess to like the NFL and football, I must confess I am not quite into this whole Fantasy Football hype. For those of you who have no idea what Fantasy Football is, you can find some information on it here.

In all honesty, I don't even know that much about it, so I'm probably not the best person to ask. In fact, I don't even know anything beyond what the average fan knows when it comes to the NFL.

But Fantasy Football is a different ballgame from what we see on our televisions. Participants have the opportunity to create their own "dream team" that competes with other "dream teams" throughout the season. Players are pulled from the existing teams that you watch on TV every Sunday and Monday. The scoring system we're familiar with where one scores by kicking a field goal, getting a touchdown, or scoring a safety, etc. is similar to the one in Fantasy Football, with a few variations. Since participants pull players from several different teams and several different positions, it's easy to imagine that it would be difficult to rank your Fantasy Team against others based off of Touchdowns, etc. Rather, you score points for things as simple as a catch or interception.

The upside to this is that chances are your team will score quite a bit throughout the weekend. The downside is that you always have to be connected to some sort of technology to participate in Fantasy Football. You have a few options to keep track of your "score". You can watch every single game at home, you can go to the official Fantasy Football site and browse through the extensive database and see how each player is doing, or you can rely on your smartphone to pester you throughout the day with updates on your players and how well your team is doing. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, as I do not participate in Fantasy Football.)

In addition, some Fantasy Football leagues, such as the one on CBS.com, require you to pay additional money to be part of the "league". So in addition to spending your weekend on the couch, you spend money to spend your weekend on the couch. Am I the only one that doesn't see the benefit here?

I suppose this could vary for people who live elsewhere, but being here in the beautiful state of Colorado, I wanna spend at least some of my weekend out on the road driving, or maybe playing basketball in the park, or hanging out with friends. Granted, many friends do form their own Fantasy Football leagues and participate in this together, but all the same, I'd much rather pick two or three games to watch with friends each weekend rather than watch five or more.

Perhaps it is just my personal bias that no one can possibly be using their time wisely if football is all each weekend is for them. Maybe it's because we're painting our house right now and refinishing some hardwood, that I feel I don't even have time to watch two games as of late!

Ultimately, like most things, it all comes down to what sounds like a good weekend to each individual. I'm sure there are great people who spend their weekends watching games and improving their "dream teams". There are also great people that I know that can't tolerate watching one game so wouldn't ever dream of watching each game.

In the meantime, as much as Darren McFadden's 70 yard TD against the Jets just caught my eye, the TV is going off, and it's back to work.