Monday, September 03, 2007

Feeling A Draft

We held our fantasy football draft this morning. It had been suggested that we might have to spend as long as four hours completing this process, so we placed an order to our local Pizza Hut for sustenance while we sat in front of the computer, watching the picks start to pile up. We had spent weeks leading up to today refining our selections, hoping to put together just the right combination of talent and heart.
Fantasy football may allow the most purely vicarious sports experience I have allowed myself to have. This will let me watch virtually all National Football League games with a sense of purpose: My team is spread out across the country, in both conferences. I tried to keep an open mind and remember that we wanted the best available athletes, but we all agreed that we wanted to avoid drafting any crybabies. Or we hoped that we wouldn't end up with any crybabies at the end of the day.
When we were halfway through our fifteen picks, we had only been on the clock for about forty-five minutes. When it was done, we were still waiting for our corporate sponsor to deliver our food. That's when the phone rang. It wasn't the commissioner telling us that our last two picks had been voided. It was Pizza Hut, calling to tell us that they wouldn't have any drivers to deliver our cheesy goodness for another two hours. There was a moment when, gripped by indecision, we almost succumbed to our baser instincts and started to whine. We held tough, and pushed away from the computer, having survived all fifteen rounds in just over an hour, with a group of players that we hope will become a force in fantasy football, statistically speaking. Then it was time to return to reality: Somebody had to make the sandwiches.

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