Addicted to Fantasy Football????

Hi, my name is Bill (you all know me as HybridTheory), and I am addicted to Fantasy Football. It started innocently enough back in 1999. I was fresh out of college and absolutely loved football, so I got involved in a league and really didn’t do much preparation. I had been in a few leagues before, but it never really clicked. I read some articles, got some cheat-sheets and dove in head first. I took Edgerrin James with pick 1.07 and even after everyone made fun of me for taking a rookie, I was the one laughing at the end of the year. I won, and let me tell you, I didn’t realize just how addicted I was. My problem has only grown deeper throughout the years. Soon I was in 2 – 3 leagues a year, until now I am around 14 leagues, I think. Dynasty, Auction, Re-Draft, Survivor, Cutthroat….you name it, I just can’t get enough. I don’t even play “free” leagues anymore; I don’t have time for that childish nonsense.

There are many signs of addiction, so let me point out a few for you. If you find yourself in Church checking out the injury report and subsequently changing your lineups using your internet friendly phone while the pastor is talking, that’s a pretty good sign you might have a problem. When you are with your kids at a Pumpkin Patch in October having fun riding hay rides, and all that good stuff, and you are texting up to 8 different people in various leagues about trades you want to make before the deadline tomorrow, that is another sign of a brewing problem. When you stay awake at night because you are having a hard time deciding if you should spend over $60 on a QB in a $500 cap auction league that is yet another sign of a potential problem. When your son (who is 7) is watching pre-season football with you and says “Larry Johnson looks a lot better than last year, I bet you will draft him higher this year”, that’s a good sign that you may have reached the need for FFA (Fantasy Football Anonymous). Although that instance did make me smile. Many people sit on the couch watching Football on Sunday, but do you sit there with your laptop with multiple tabs open to every league you own just waiting for someone to seriously get injured so you can pick up that players back-up? Turns out that everyone else at my Sister’s barbeque doesn’t really care if Steve Smith just beat the crap out of one of his teammates. Yet for some reason, it is a very valuable piece of information for me. When your main reason for having a Blackberry is so you can get live streaming information on your Fantasy teams even while you are on vacation in Cancun, that probably signals that you might need some help.

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