A few of you might remember that a while ago I told you all of this bizarre game I was playing called Fantasy Football. The first fourteen weeks of the NFL season are our regular season, and the last three weeks are our playoffs. Over the regular season I dominated the league. My team ‘Cthulhu’s Chosen’ was 11 and 3, with 2 losses coming from the same team (‘Unpunished Authors’ my nemesis). Well, the season is almost over and, dammit, I lost. I was rolling along smoothly thru the playoffs, my nemesis eliminated the first week, when in the second week had both the leading candidates for the league MVP crap out on me in the same week. LaDainian Tomlinson, who had been putting up 25-30 fantasy points per week, posted only 8.62! Drew Brees similarly underperformed. My stellar defense also was well blow average. SO now I only have the consolation 3^rd place game to play. I am confident I shall be victorious, after all, last weeks horrible performance would still have triumphed over the opponent I play this week.

The game as a whole was enjoyable although there were a few problems. This year we only had 8 teams, down from 10 last year and 12 two years ago. Normally less teams means better teams, a plus, but when it gets down to 8 teams, there is no possibility of not making the playoffs. The top 8 teams make it, so there is not much point in worrying about the regular season. For a lot of my co-players this is not their only league. Many play in ‘money leagues’ (pay to play with cash prizes to the winners). So this league may not inspire them to put a lot of effort into it.

On the plus side I found a lot of online help this year which made it a lot easier to keep up. I started listening to 2 podcasts Fantasy Football Advice, who advised me to draft Drew Brees which turned out to be a genius move, and The Fantasy Football Guys, 2 guys out of Philly, not always the best advice but an entertaining podcast nonetheless. I also have been using the NFLFreaks website for a lot of the stat tracking and start/bench advice. It was really nice to not have to rely on the Yahoo stat trackers for most of my decisions as I have in the past.

Overall a still think Fantasy Football is still a great game. I’m not so enamored that I’m ready to start playing in money leagues, but if any of you out there have an opportunity to play in a friend’s free league, give it a shot.