It's just a fantasy... not the real thing

I've been participating in a fantasy football league on Yahoo.com. This is about the sixth year I've been doing it. When taken seriously it greatly affects the way I pay attention to football. As a fan of the NFL I keep up to date on all the teams (the Green Bay Packers in particular) and many of the players. It's something I've been into for forty years (did I write 40?!?) so when online fantasy sports came along it was a natural thing to get into the pro football version. For anyone reading this who isn't familiar with FF here's a short explanation: after finding and joining an internet league each member creates a team name (my usual - Best Damn Badgers). The names of active football players are assigned among the various teams. There are a set number of positions for each week's game and points for the team's performance are based on what your chosen starting players do in the real games. With our FF teams made up of players from a variety of real teams we get some strange matchups such as my quarterback's favorite receiver could be on the team I'm against, etc. While watching the games on TV I'll watch the statistics shown at the bottom of the TV screen from other games to see how other players are doing as well as watching live updated stats on the web. Yes, it is a little intense. I took last season off after spending 4 years in a league with other people in the company I work for. As fun and interesting as I found it to be I liked stepping back from it and just watching the games for a season with nothing extra associated with the action on the field. So now I'm back into it. I joined a "public" league, I do not know any of the league members personally but there's a message board where we can exchange thoughts about each others abilities to beat one another (smack talk), badgers can be a little belligerent, at the end of many of my messages I urge the readers to get off my message and maybe get a life while they're at it. I've been in the middle of the pack (10 teams) for most of the season and last week I moved up to fourth place which is the last playoff spot, now I need to hold on or move up to stay in position to be in the playoffs. My opponent this week, the "Schrutes' Beets". I hope I win,...wouldn't want to get beat by the Beets!

This is where it all begins.