I’ve been playing fantasy football for seven years, which seems like a very short time compared to so many others in this space. It is over half a decade. I have changed a lot in seven years, I’m sure you have too, and so has the way I draft. Being introduced to dynasty (and recently auction drafting, which I may work up the nerve to write about when I feel like I actually know what I am doing) has changed things even more. Outside my “home” leagues there was another world of fantasy football I could never imagine.
My first league was an auto-draft league. The entire thing. I cannot even imagine doing a league completely on auto-draft now unless it’s just to see what you end up with and go trade crazy. Trades used to (and sometimes still) terrify me. Getting dragged for what others consider a “bad trade” will do that to you, but you learn and move on and hopefully become a better player.
But back to that first league. It was on the Fox Sports Fantasy app (RIP) and to this day it is my favorite app (nostalgia is a bitch. Don’t get me started on that last Star Wars movie). I don’t remember a lot of it except I know I had Tom Brady and OBJ, so when some people wanted a redo, I absolutely objected. I didn’t know what fantasy football was. I have watched football since I was an infant (my mother said she would literally put me in front of the game and I was mesmerized by that star on the helmets). I thought fantasy football was a team you fantasized you could have with a bunch of players from every team to make one Uber Team. And I guess it kind of is, but not every team you draft is a “fantasy”. I didn’t know we had to set lineups. I didn’t know what the waiver wire was. Trade deadlines never occurred to me. I said yes to the league because I didn’t want to be the only one not involved in the fun. Yay FOMO! I think I made the playoffs that season, and I have been hooked ever since
Fantasy football has been a big part of getting me through some very difficult moments in my life. From my moms’ major stroke in 2016 and my fathers’ death in 2019, life has been kind of a bitch. And then 2020 happened. Sadly, politics and Covid took most of my “home leagues”. An invite through Twitter to join my first dynasty league helped keep me in the game and has introduced me to some amazing people that have also allowed fantasy football to be a positive force in their lives when so much negativity exists around us. I have people make fun of my “obsession”. They tell me they do not have time for fantasy because they “have lives”. Letting people know how much it has helped me in my darkest days seems to make it more “acceptable” as a hobby (even if it is an obsession).
I admit I am not one for stats, which has kept me from writing about fantasy because so many people have a much deeper knowledge of this game than I ever will. I am sure plenty of players on my teams have been drafted with my heart instead of my head. I want to draft Cowboys and Steelers because those are my teams, but then I blame myself when they get injured. I want my gut feeling on a player to be right, and I love the feeling of grabbing a player at value and having my league mates wail in despair that they have sniped once again. Mostly I just love waking up on Sunday mornings, stress about my lineups, ask 100 Start Sit questions on Twitter, do what I want anyway, and accept my fate at 12 PM kickoff. It is like Christmas morning EVERY TIME, and when you find something that gives you that feeling, you embrace it.
Unless you lose the championship by getting cute and playing Ty Montgomery as a wide receiver as a “cheat code”. Sigh.
How were you introduced to fantasy? Has it changed your life or is it just a much-needed break from the awfulness that is the real world?
Cheers friends and happy drafting. September is close.
Follow Heather Murray on Twitter @awkwardtastical.