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I was crazy excited about football season coming around this year. Not preseason. But that first Thursday night game between New Orleans and Indianapolis. I was in a sports bar in Atlanta with a 20′ screen, an enormous plate of nachos and several Coors Lights.

But my favorite part of football season is my fantasy football team. There are certain teams that I like (Seattle, Indy, Vikings, Lions…) and teams I despise (Buffalo). But fantasy football gives me a reason to watch other games I previously would not have watched.

There are lots of ways leagues can be organized, and lots of ways you can spend money on it, but my league works like this. Fifty bucks from each of the leagues 12 team owners. We get together a couple of weeks before the season starts to pick our teams: some in person, some on the computer, one or two on the phone. Each team gets to draft two QBs, four RBs, five WRs, two Kickers and two Defenses. It kind of goes without saying that players can only be drafted once.

After the draft, a season schedule is put into place and you compete head-to-head with one other team each week. Each team plays one QB, two RBs, three WRs, one kicker and one defense. The points accrued by your players are added up and hopefully your guys score more points than your league cohort. The top four teams make it to the playoffs during week 16 and the final week of the regular season is the Fantasy Superbowl. If you make it to the playoffs, you’ll win some cash, but if you win the The Superbowl you’ll take home more than $200.

Tonight was a great example of why Fantasy Football is so great. I was playing my friend Jane. It was The Simpsons vs. the Stealthy Snuffelupagi. My quarterback is Vince Young; Jane has Drew Brees. Tonight’s Monday Night Game? Tennessee at New Orleans, Baby! Vince against Drew! I went into the game nine points down. Vince threw two touchdowns (three fantasy points each) and Drew threw FOUR interceptions. I ended up losing the game 51-49, but it was a lot of fun to watch. I didn’t want Drew to throw a touchdown, but I totally wanted Reggae Bush to score a couple of touchdowns. I kinda wanted New Orleans to win, but I wanted Vince to score all the points. I was torn, but it gave me great personal drama to watch NBC for a couple of hours tonight.

One other great thing going on in Fantasy Football is the Internet. When my league first formed in 1998, the Internet was still stagnant stodgy dial-up pages. To get your scores, team owners would have to pick up the Monday morning newspaper (Gasp!) and reference the box scores to add up your points (the Horror!!). Now, in 2007, I simply log-in to Sportsline.com and let Firefox do the addition. This has frankly got to be one of the greatest features of the web.

And I’m not the only one having a great time with this. It supposedly has become a multibillion dollar fixation. But contrary to some complaints by cynical naysayers, this is totally increasing my interest in the game. I still root for my favorite teams and players. Now, I’m just a little more interested in more of the games. In fact, I also play in a pool at my current company where I pick winners and rank my confidence in the winners from 1-16.

Spending a little bit of my cash gets me a little more interested. And having a twisted sort of personal attachment to 11 NFL players and two defenses/special teams really gets me more in tune with what is going on in the National Football League.

Now I just have to get over the fact that I’m 1-2 so far in the season.

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