A couple years ago I would have been the first person to mock a fantasy football enthusist. The whole idea seemed like using sports as an excuse for guys to play make-believe. From the outside fantasy football (or fantasy anything) seemed like a phenomenal waste of time. Then.... Last year one of my friends from college set up a fantasy league and asked me to join. I was reluctant, but decided to go ahead and do it... but I wasn't going to spend much time with it. Then we had our draft, then week 1 rolled around. I was immediately hooked. It was so much fun. It was a game that depended on the outcome of other games. I loved it. Football games that I never would have cared about suddenly became exciting nail-biters. There was a week where both me and my opponent had RB's playing on Monday night. We went back and forth and it came down to the last play. As Houston was running the 2 minute drill going down the field Foster caught a screen pass for 9 yards to set up a field goal. He needed 15, and I lost by two tenths of a point or something like that. It was insane; more exciting that any playoff game I saw last year.
I've noticed this year the fantasy football craze has become even more prevalent in mainstream culture. Before the games start on Sunday there is a 2 hour show on the NFL network where they analyze what fantasy players to put in the game and which ones to leave on the bench. I'm starting to think things have gone too far. Our fake game that we play on top of the real games has become more interesting. If it has been so much fun to pull back one level why not take the next step? Let's get real meta with this and start fantasy fantasy football.
The idea of fantasy fantasy football is simple. You have to know a couple groups of people playing normal fantasy football, which shouldn't be hard. Once they make their draft a second group (the fantasy fantasy league) checks out their picks and then drafts a team composed of participants in the first league. Just imagine the awesomeness.
Until we get fantasy fantasy football I will be content with normal fantasy football. When the season is over I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I guess I'll sign up for a fantasy golf league or something... maybe fantasy hockey. No amount of desperation could make me play fantasy baseball.
