This is my Fantasy World

As if my reality isn’t busy enough, I am also fully consumed by a fantasy world...and this is an especially involved time in my fantasy world...

My fantasies don’t involve women... Not these fantasies, anyway... No, the fantasy world I refer to involves lots and lots of men...

Professional athletes, to be more specific...

I am a total fantasy sports addict... I play in fantasy leagues for sports I don’t even follow...

In case you’re unfamiliar with how fantasy sports leagues work, you get together with several other people, either live or on-line, and through some sort of drafting process, each person puts together a fantasy roster of real athletes in whatever sport your league involves... Then when the real athletes compete, you get points for the statistics they accumulate... The more stats your real athletes accumulate, the better your fantasy team does...

I just began the playoffs in one fantasy hockey league... My other fantasy hockey league is a rotisserie league--where we just compile statistics all season long and don’t play against each other head-to-head--so there are no playoffs... Whoever has the most points at the end of the season wins... I don’t follow hockey at all... I would struggle to name all of the teams in the NHL (or even tell you how many teams there are), I couldn’t tell you what teams are good and what teams are bad, and I haven’t watched a single minute of hockey in about five years... But fantasy hockey is something to do in between fantasy football and fantasy baseball, so I play... In my head-to-head league, I finished the regular season in second place out of 12 teams, so I have a first-round bye in the playoffs this week... In my rotisserie league, I’m in third place out of 12 teams, and barring a miracle or a total collapse in the next month, that’s where I’ll finish...

Fantasy hockey is pretty boring, really... Any given NHL team only plays a few times a week, so most of fantasy hockey is just shuffling guys in and out of my starting lineup based on whether they’re playing or not that night... Maybe once a week, I have to make some sort of strategic decision about starting one guy over another...but that’s about it... And since both of my teams are in public leagues--leagues with other people from all over the country, none of whom I know personally--about 8 of the 12 teams in each league have been abandoned by their owners since about mid-October... Competition is not exactly real stiff in these leagues... I think this is going to be my last season of fantasy hockey for awhile...

I would have played fantasy arena football this winter, as I have in past years, but the Arena Football League had some cash flow and labor problems this year and suspended the season... I’ve also played fantasy NASCAR in the past but quickly lost interest in that... That seemed more like chance than strategy... I could have Tony Stewart in my lineup, but if he hits the wall in the first lap because some rookie tried to drive through Stewart's trunk, the rest of the race is a snoozer for me...

Fortunately for me, the fantasy dry spell is almost over... Fantasy baseball season is right around the corner! I already drafted one of my two teams last week... It’s kind of an odd league... Not only is it pretty odd to draft a baseball team a month before the season starts (any number of injuries, trades, demotions, reassignments, etc. can happen in a month of spring training and the World Baseball Classic), the stat categories are odd, and for the second year in a row, a stat category was added on the day of the draft, which really irritates me... But I just try to look at it as a new and different challenge...

I draft my second baseball team next week in a league that I’m really excited about... It’s a league full of guys I’ve competed with for years in baseball and football, including my brother-in-law and two coworkers, all three of whom are my favorite competitors... They challenge me, and they amuse me with their banter and trash talk on the league messageboard... For the most part, everyone in the league competes throughout the entire season, which can be a challenge in a long baseball season that overlaps football season in its final couple of months... This group of guys is a lot of fun...

And, of course, I’m putting together a couple of NCAA men’s basketball brackets... I have watched about 20 minutes of college basketball all year long... Basketball bores me to tears... I don’t understand basketball, I don’t care about basketball, and I certainly can’t play basketball... I may live in Indiana, but I wasn’t raised here, so I don’t have the Hoosier basketball DNA in my blood... For some reason, though, I love the NCAA tourney... I’m one of the millions who loves it every year when the Southwestern Delaware Polytechnic School for Lepers wins their podunk conference, gets into the tournament, and then knocks off someone like North Carolina... Every year, I fill out a few brackets, and every year, I get completely smoked in the opening weekend because I know nothing about college hoops... But I still have fun...

All the while, I’m keeping an eye on NFL news because I’m in a dynasty fantasy football league--where we keep about half our rosters from year to year--that I absolutely love, so I need to keep up with the off-season happenings... I was also in three other fantasy football leagues last fall, which proved to be too much for me and for the Mrs.... I’ll be cutting back this year... Otherwise, I’ll be drafting an attorney in a fantasy divorce league...minus the fantasy...

So if you’ll excuse me, I need to check out the sports section... I need to know how many goals Alexander Ovechkin scored last night, I need to see how Johan Santana’s throwing elbow is feeling, and I need to decide how North Dakota State is going to fare against Kansas on Friday... I should be done with all of this about the time I need to take my daughters to gymnastics tonight...

I wonder if they have fantasy gymnastics there...