A Rough Time of Year

This time of year is always rough for me. Holiday letdown, you ask? Nope. Sad that I’m a year older? Not really. Stressed that I still haven’t figured out what to get my hot wife for her birthday? Not at all.

The truth is my fantasy football season is over.

Go ahead and start laughing about how pathetic that is, but it’s the honest truth. With the exception of the 1990 and 1991 football seasons when I was on my mission, I’ve been in a fantasy football league every year since 1988. It’s become a part of the rhythm of my life.

Each year towards the end of August, two things happen.
1) We completely decimate our checking and savings buying back to school clothes and supplies and taking care of 3 birthdays in the last week of the month
2) We have our fantasy football draft

Draft day is one of my favorite days of the year. A fantasy football draft is nothing that anyone on the outside looking in can understand - you have to experience it to comprehend it’s awesomeness. After 16 years of marriage, Andrea is still perplexed by it. I’ll spare you the details, but what it comes down to is about 3 hours of a bunch of guys doing everything they can to make every other guy in the room feel as stupid as possible. Amidst all the insults and taunts, the goal is to choose a group of real football players that will determine your overall happiness for the next 12 months. That’s not an understatement. If you suck at the draft, your life will suck for the next 16 weeks for sure and will likely continue with a post-season nasty aftertaste that you will not be able to wash out of your mouth.

Any wife of a fantasy football player understands how much their husband’s mood depends on something so completely out his control. After draft day, the mood of a dedicated fantasy football player is dictated entirely by how well you did on draft day. If your players suck, then your team sucks. And if your team sucks, you are going to be completely ridiculed by everyone else. Our fantasy football league has a website where we can post pictures and articles to either proclaim how great we are or let everyone else know how lousy they are. I won’t share any of the things that have been written on the site because my mom and dad may read this and I value my church membership, but here are a few of the pictures that have shown up on there through the years:

Just a regular picture of a couple of my competitors working something out. Pretty normal behavior for them from what I understand.

One of the more flattering pictures of my cousins

Even I have had a bad year or two. When I'm not doing so hot, I tend to let myself go a bit...

In my opinion, the best pictures are when we a previous picture is used to fight back with a subsequent picture. In this case, after referring to me as "Monty Burns" I returned the favor to my cheerleading cousin a couple of days later.

The Championship composite shot.

A good champ always declares victory and does his best to mock everyone else in a single picture. That's me, as Monty Burns, claiming the championship trophy last year.

Two weeks ago, our season ended. Now, I have no outlet for my trash-talking and photoshopping projects. The other night I almost taunted Andrea on what she was wearing. It had been nearly two weeks since I had said something completely rude and insulting to anyone and I was going through trash-talking withdrawals. Thankfully, I caught myself just in time, so that the start of the sentence, “Dang, you look so…” had a happy ending instead of being an unimaginable disaster.

For the next 8 months, I’ll be wandering aimlessly through the sports fan wilderness trying to be interested in baseball or basketball and counting the days until the happy day when my checking account is empty and I’m making fun of how small my friends man parts are. August can’t get here fast enough.

Blast From the Past

Me and Lexie at San Francisco a few years back.