Fantasy Football NFL Season Begins
Sean Alexander and Larry Johnson Head Rosters
Fantasy football players crave far more than the standard National Football League games. They hunger for yards, touchdowns and individual statistics.
Fantasy football enthusiasts have a frighteningly dangerous addiction. It's high time we lay off gamblers, steroid users and heavy drinkers and take a long, hard look at these fantasy football fanatics.
Believe me when I say that I understand the modus operandi of these psychotic individuals, because I'm one of them. In fact, I'm such a fantasy sports freak that I even wrote a novel with a plot, based on fantasy football, called The League.
This is just one aspect of my sickness, though. I, and the rest of my kind, spend countless hours each week trolling the Internet, reading National Football League injury reports, searching for quotes from NFL head coaches about their players and listening to any sports talk show in the nation that will give the slightest indication of who is going to play well on Sundays.
I've even subscribed to a newspaper in another city once, just so I could read the inside information on that town's NFL team and which running back was expected to amass the best statistics during the coming season. This is what fantasy football is all about, after all - numbers. Unlike the steroid user, who covets girth, strength and better recuperative powers, the fantasy football addict lusts for pure statistics.
Most fantasy football players would give up their favorite set of golf clubs, in exchange for a 100-yard rushing game and three touchdowns from Sean Alexander on any given Sunday. They'd scour their computers for an advantage, even at their employer's expense, and they would hand their wives the checkbook and send them shopping, just to catch a glimpse of Steve Smith, making a spectacular scoring grab, shortly before they scurry off to NFL.com to see how the rest of their players are doing.
Some spend thousands of dollars, so they can enter high-priced tournaments, pitting their own arrogance against that of hundreds of other sickos, all claiming to have superior knowledge of the NFL and all of its players.
Then, each weekend, they gather at bars and in basements, channel-surfing from one game to the next, never having the slightest interest in the outcome of the NFL games they're watching.
They scream, "Go, go, go," as Kansas City's Larry Johnson races into daylight, poised to score a touchdown for the Chiefs and six points for their own fantasy football teams. Meanwhile, in another chair, someone else leaps up and shouts, "Tackle him, tackle him," because this nutcase has the Chief's place kicker and wants KC stopped just short enough that the coach will elect to go for the field goal.
It's absolute madness, and something has to be done.
Anyway, I'm not sure what the answer is; I'm too busy working on a fantasy sports sequel to The League.
Oh, and I have to click over to NFL.com to see how Thomas Jones is doing.
