SportsBoner.com

Playing fantasy football isn’t just a craze. It isn’t just an excuse for “nerds” to channel their inner dork-ness towards a hobby that seems hip. If anything fantasy football is the ultimate conversation starter. Not only does it bring a wider audience and more intense fandom to the game, it lends itself to camaraderie, increased interest in pigskin sports, and mostly a degree of intimacy with professional football players that rarely existed before the advent of fantasy football and the internet.

The nice reality is that when our fantasy football draft rolls around every late August (always on a Sunday, in the afternoon for optimum participation) right before Labor Day, the most exciting aspect of fantasy football may be the draft itself. In the Dark Ages (known as pre-broadband internet era in my family), fantasy football was a niche and gathering of hardcore fans at the local bar or at a friend’s house where the draft would take place on a dry-erase board. Nowadays with countless sites, javascript draft engines, and endless sources of information, fantasy football is a major investment for annoying bragging rights among friends. The not so sad truth is that after high school and college with all my buddies spread throughout the country, our fantasy football draft bringing everyone together (albeit virtually) for one particular lazy Sunday afternoon to trade barbs and whimsical grab-ass humor as only a group of guys can do best, is something I wouldn’t soon trade for the world.

So while I’m watching the really nice throwback “Oiler-blue” uniforms of the Tennessee Titans’ preseason game against the Buffalo Bills tonight, I can’t help but feel excitement, euphoria, and bit of arousal (an authentic sports boner, no less) that football is finally back in our lives. Personally I’ve been arrogantly debating with myself whether or not to write an article offering the only nugget of wisdom I possess in my piddly brain : How to win a fantasy football league. In truth, the majority of Sportsboner.com’s traffic comes from my own fantasy league that I am the commissioner of for the better part of this decade. While I fear revealing my “valuable” secrets to a slew of my own opponents, they all have already played long enough with me to know my draft formula consists of drafting Cowboys, former Red Raiders, Peyton Manning, and Ken Griffey, Jr. (OK well in baseball at least) Wash, rinse, repeat… wash, rinse, repeat. At the very least I can contribute minimally to society by sharing my expertise in this matter.

What are my credentials you might ponder? Since fall of 2001, when I first enrolled at Texas Tech University and first discovered the wonderful distraction of fantasy football, I have personally compiled numerous achievements in this particular nonessential realm. In roughly 8 years in a span and mix of various private and public leagues, my virtual trophy case consists of 10 championship appearances: 4 league titles with 6 painful 2nd place finishes (just call me the Buffalo Bills of fantasy football), and an impressively irrelevant streak of never missing the playoffs in any of my private leagues with my buddies.

In the next coming article, I will go in-depth and detail some of the madness to the method I utilize to win at fantasy football. I’ll leave you with the most important advice for anyone that might incredulously want to succeed or even dominate their league: own your team. That nonsensical-cliched-platitude-that-ultimately-reveals-nothing means only that you should basically, own your team. Personally invest yourself into each aspect of your team: from the sexually offensive team name, to each player you draft, to the smack talk you may hurl at your friends, to the obsessive checking of your iPhone for stats while you’re at church, a bris with a moyl, at a bar, or driving (OK this last one is not recommended). After all, if you’re not personally invested, if you’re not enjoying yourself and the company of your buddies while playing make-believe GM with an imaginary football roster, then you’ll find little success.

The holy trinity of fantasy football gods: Marshall Faulk, Priest Holmes, and LaDainian Tomlinson would attest: before you own one of us, you have to own yourself. It’s not just a fantasy (apologies to Billy Joel), it’s a reflection of men… well men that are still single like me, or married men looking for any form of escapism!