Back To Reality...Fall Of The Leader

A couple of months ago, John asked me to join his fantasy football league. Now, I know what fantasy football is because I have watched my dad and brother play it for years, but I have never wanted to partake. I play fantasy basketball because I love basketball and kind-of follow it, but football is something I have always hated and have never been able to stand to watch it. At first I told him that I would not join because I don't understand football and nor do I like football, but he asked a couple more times and I figured, why not? I can always ask John or my dad (who is undefeated every year he has played) for help.

The first thing you do in fantasy football is a "draft" with the other people in the league. For the draft, I spent hours with my dad prepping me on who are the best players to "draft". I was randomly selected to pick 5th out of 10 people. My dad and I came up with three possible drafting routes to take depending on who got picked in the first round ahead of me. Lucky for me, I was able to select who I wanted on my first pick, Peyton Manning! I was so nervous for the draft because I was the only girl in the league, it was my first year playing and I had no idea who any body was. I really didn't want to slow the process down and was totally freaked out. I found out soon enough, however, that I had done so much prepping with my dad, I selected my players faster than anyone else in the league.

Now skip forward to the beginning of the football season. I still have no idea who anybody is or what I am doing but with the help of my dad and John, I have selected the players that will start for me. My first week is against Spencer, John's roommate. Now, let me add that there is always smack talk going on between the players that are matched up for the week, so you can only imagine what he was saying to me. Spencer is, of course, favored to beat me by about ten points, so my interest was low because I figured I was going to lose. All it took was just this one week of competition to make me want to kick ass and beat all the boys! Our first match up was the best. It came down to the very end of the Monday night game to determine who was going to win the first week between me and Spencer. By some miracle, I managed to beat him by one-one hundreth (.01) of a point!! That is the absolute closest anyone can come to beating their opponent. It literally came down to 1 yard from the whole weekend. I was hooked!

Since that victory, five weeks have passed. I am the only person in the league who is 6-0. Not even in my dad's league is anyone 6-0! I am on the computer constantly. I read up on players, review stats and determine which players are facing the weakest teams. Basically, I am addicted. I check my phone no less than 50 times a day to see if anyone has proposed a trade to me. I even keep my phone right next to me in bed so I can check it just before I fall asleep and in the middle of the night if I happen to wake up. It's actually kinda sick. John just shakes his head at me and says, "you're not checking your phone again, are you?". He has even started putting limits on the number of times I can check my phone when we are in bed for the night watching tv. Winning is just so amazing. I love watching the games and checking the stat tracker on the computer during the games. I am way more into it than any of the guys (John and Spencer anyway). Sadly though, my reign came to an end yesterday.

Week 7 match up: Kristine vs. John. He had a stellar record of 2-4 (I am trying to be nice), while mine was an incredible 6-0 going into this match up, but from the first plays of the morning games, he maintained a solid lead. All in all, he was pretty nice about it. He would just smile at me and say nothing, but I knew what that smile meant. He was basically telling me that he was destroying me and was loving every minute of it. The silence was worse than the verbal beating I was preparing myself for. Heading into the Monday night game he is ahead 39-65. My chances of victory are slim to none, but I am okay with that. This loss has brought me back down to reality and made me realize I am not as great as I thought. For 6 weeks, I was the fantasy guru. I sat on my high horse believing I would not get knocked off, at least not by Mr. 2-4, but it happened. I suppose of all the possible losses, I would rather lose to John than anyone else, but it still sucks. So, I just have to pull myself together and bounce back from this truly awful ass-kicking. I face the new #1 and #3 the next two weeks. They are big games, but for now, I am just going to bank on a very slim, outside chance Tiki gets me 26 points and Glenn gets John negative points and somehow, I win this match up!