In Defense Of My Fantasy Football League

In anticipation of the NFL getting started this weekend, my fantasy football draft was held earlier this week. Once it was over, I sat back and thought about just how perfect my league is for me. You see, I like fantasy sports well enough, but I really like them when they are low-maintenance. The fact that my fantasy golf roster has to be updated three times in a weekend just kills me. I have never been one of those guys who is nine leagues and spends hours maintaining my roster. God love you if you have that kind of time and dedication, but I just don't. I have one fantasy football team and I spend a grand total of 10 minutes a week thinking about match-ups and who might be available on the waiver wire. (The weird thing about me is that I totally could be that "obsessive fantasy guy" with little-to-no effort. I currently have that kind of time on my hands.) I just don't care about statistics, I only care about wins and losses. I think this is why I don't like baseball nearly as much as most Bostonians.

Anyway, the fact that I am wired this way is exactly why my league is great. First off, it only has eight teams in it, which I admit is odd. (Odd, yes. But not psychotic, which was another friend's reaction when I told him that there are only eight teams. You would have thought I said I don't like puppies.) But, you see, because there are so few teams you can pick up talent later in the season without having to know who Jacksonville's fifth wide receiver is. It's like Fantasy Football set to beginner level. Plus, because there are so few teams everyone gets really quality players. For example, this year I have Maurice Jones-Drew, Aaron Rodgers, Frank Gore and Anquan Boldin. It makes for very high scoring and every match-up is close, which I feel like is the point of the whole exercise. Who wants to be in a fantasy league where every game is a race to score 25 points? Finally, the schedule with only eight teams is perfect - everyone plays the other teams twice, two playoffs rounds and we avoid NFL Week 17, where you never know who will play or for how long.

Also, we have over the years added the wrinkle of having one keeper from last year's team. While this seems like a minor issue, you have no idea how much it streamlines the entire draft. It shaves at least a half an hour off the process which is great because no one wants to admit it, but fantasy drafts get tedious around hour number three. By simply getting rid of one round we save enough time that everyone leaves happy and without repeating the same jokes forty-seven times. Plus, because we have had the same eight guys in the league for so long I can pretty much predict who will be drafting who and plan my draft accordingly. I never have to wonder if a certain player is going to fall to my spot because as long as their are Philadelphia Eagles on the board and Brian is drafting ahead of me, that is who he will be taking. Really, I could draft for everyone else's team at this point.

The hardest thing about my league is figuring out how to conduct a draft because the members of my league are scattered around eight cities in six states. Also, five of the eight members are married and four of those five have young kids, which is another reason why a low-maintenance league is the way to go for us. We were going to Skype it out, but then one of us (me) noted that we are not long-lost relatives. I don't need to see these guys' faces. We ended up doing an online conference call, which made us all feel very important and yet a couple of us never even had to change out of our pajamas. So, yeah, my eight-team, one-keeper league is not for everybody. But for me, it works just fine.