Draft Day used to be a special day for everyone. That was until technology made it so easy to join so many fantasy football leagues.

Back in the days before high-speed Internet, a poor sap — at times me — had to run a fantasy football league on paper.

Basically what happened was everyone in the league would call a lineup in and then the person in charge of the league would total up everyone’s points, using either the newspaper or a dial-up Internet connection.

Though by the end of the season I was fed up with people calling me to pick up a backup for their backup quarterback, I had gained a sense of camaraderie with these guys.

As a matter of fact I gained some friends this way. Some guys who I had never talked to became good friends of mine simply because they had to call me with their lineup every week.

That was when fantasy football meant something. That was before everyone and their mother had a fantasy football team. That was when you could talk about fantasy football in public and people would ask you what you were talking about with immense interest, rather than telling you that their team included Adrian Peterson, Randy Moss and Peyton Manning.

The good thing about those days was it forced us to communicate with each other and we formed friendships because of it.

This is not the case today.

I still get together with some of the guys from the old days, as well as some newbies, and we draft our teams, but it’s not the same. After the draft, there is a limited amount of communication with the majority of people in my leagues.

Aside from the few good friends I have in of my leagues, the communication with the other members of my league is usually limited to the jackass who wants to make a trade but does not want to give up any of his best players.

Another problem with fantasy football today is the amount of leagues that are out there.

When high-speed Internet popped on the scene it caused an explosion of fantasy football leagues. Now, anyone with a keyboard can create one.

This causes problems for me, as I think I may be a fantasy football addict.

Back when everything was on paper, one league was the maximum I could handle. It was a lot of work to run a league. I had to keep up with everyone’s scores and rosters. Now the computer does the work, which allows one to have multiple teams with little effort. This season I have four fantasy football teams. This is entirely too many.

The multitude of fantasy football teams has left me to face a few problems. The first of which is having players playing for me and against me at the same time.

With four fantasy football teams, there was no way I could draft the same players for every team. Now, every week I have to root for someone to play well, but not too well because if he scores too many points it will cause me to lose in another one of my leagues. It gets to be too much.

Another problem is there is no way they can all be good. It is just not possible. There will always be at least one team that sucks if you have more than two.

By the end of the season, I am usually burned out on fantasy football. I used to find myself wishing for more, but now I can’t wait for it to end. I get tired of reading the stupid trade requests and listening to the idiot on the message board talk about the championship he is going to win — when he can’t even spell the word championship.-

I love fantasy football and will probably continue to play it until I die, but it needs to be toned down
a bit.

By ERIC MCGUFFIN
Editor
demcguff@ius.edu