Tuesday Morning Hangover

Me: "I was so excited that I finally won, I completely forgot all about TMH" Steve: "Can't be hungover if the party's still going.." #weekeight

If you recall from last year, I declared week seven a league holiday. I briefly mentioned it last week, but I decided with week eight officially being the middle of the season it would serve as a better time.  Every year I'll usually take a week off from my typical loving and "war-ing" tangents to talk about the league as a whole. Within a holiday always comes a historic look back. One reason this league is Elite is because of how vigorously we play this game. In a football career, players have prime years. In this sport, I believe we’re all in the prime years of fantasy football careers.

When a player first enters the NFL they’re young, football is their primary focus and the only thing left for them to do is mature. It's the same with fantasy football...Ryan and I started playing FF at 18 & 19 and it quickly became our favorite hobby. We actually auto drafted our rookie years (an intelligent move in hindsight actually considering we knew nothing). We still were an eight man league the following year Justin, Nathan and Mike joined the Elite. We never even used waivers back then (with an 8 man league, our benches could outscore teams today). It didn't become a ten team league till the third year of Dan, Hery, Francois & Steve. The fourth year we tried a twelve team league (but we try to forget that year) Ostensibly I think, “if I could go back to the early years of the league with the knowledge I have now, I’d dominate those boys.” The same applies to you all, too. 

Which brings us to our prime years, today. No one is older than thirty, yet everyone has at least five years experience. I've realized this wonderful opportunity and it’s one reason I play this game with such a voracious drive. I have zero responsibility. I work full time and have small things on the side, but otherwise I’m in control with 1000% of everything I do in a day with no one to say otherwise. As evident in this late post, this doesn't mean that all I do is fantasy football, but I probably spend more time on it than say...a thirty eight year old man. Now to me, The Educators or Gotham Knights winning would be a higher level of degree than me winning this year. They also have jobs, but they also have wives…I don’t mean that a wife gets in the way, but I kind of do, just like winning it all with a wife and kids would be harder than with just a wife and so on.

I don’t mean all of this to say one championship is better than another, but it does get harder the older and more responsibilities you gain just like football gets harder the older and more responsibilities you are given. It’s not from a skill perspective, but from a time allotment. I already pick and choose what segments I watch on the Fantasy Show now (if I watch it at all). You might think you have no free time now, imagine what you’ll think when you’re forty. It’s not that you won’t care to win, but waivers won’t be the first thing on your mind Wednesday morning the rest of your life.  

Who knows, I might look back five years from now and realize I know even more and require even less time to prepare. You can only know what you know now. 

This is what makes the game fun, as of right now, anyone can win and after playing in this league, you should be able to win in any other league, too. I sincerely hope everyone wins it all some year, with me mixed in, like an every other year type thing…yeah, that works. Heh. 

I’m out like my losing streak…

CBK