I have to just come right out and say it.  I don’t understand football.  I’ve been trying to get a grasp on the game for the past several years but for some reason the rules never stick in my head.  Okay, I’ve always known that getting a touchdown is either a good or a bad thing, depending on the team you’re routing for and that it’s worth six points.  I know that the guys who got the touchdown also get a chance at a bonus point called a field goal but I really think that field goals are a little on the bad sportsmanship side of things because isn’t that just rubbing it in to the other team that they just scored?  Maybe the rules keep falling out of my head because I over-analyze them. 

 My husband tells me that I need to leave the emotion out of football.  I think that makes him a bit of a hypocrite because he’s the one who’s always whooping and hollering at the TV.  He’s the one that yells “that a boy!” or “that fumble should come out of your pay check” so loud that the pictures on the walls rattle.  He also has rules as to how to talk to him when football is on.  If it were any other show on TV I could turn to him and tell him about my day or ask him questions of the meaning of the universe and he’ll gladly listen and answer all of my questions in a sweet, in depth way that makes me feel listened to.  However, when football is on, it’s a whole other story.  I have to address all of my questions and comments to the TV.  I have to face the TV as though I’m speaking directly to it and not to my husband.  The reason for this is so that he doesn’t feel obligated to turn to me and look me in the eye as he normally would so he doesn’t miss a second of the game that’s on.  (Here’s a little information for you:  I record what ever football game my husband wants to watch on the DVR since he often has to work on the weekends.  The games that he watches are all pre-recorded.  You know what that means?  He can pause them but he won’t.  He’ll fast-forward through commercials but won’t pause the game.)

 After years of asking the same questions over and over I started feeling stupid about not knowing anything about football so I decided to do something about it.  The easiest thing I could have probably done was to go to the library and check out a book on the ins and outs of football.  But no, I thought I needed to throw myself into something that would force me to learn something.  I joined a fantasy football team.

 As the only woman in a heavily male dominated work environment, it wasn’t hard to find a fantasy football league.  I found a league to join within the first hour of me asking around.  It just so happened that a guy in my department was putting one together and when I asked if I could join he told me to call his wife since she was that year’s commissioner.  I was relieved to know that I wouldn’t be the only woman in the league so in my mind that meant that there would be someone else that didn’t know that much about football too.  Yeah, I was wrong.  She was the commissioner for a reason.  She told me that she had a few spots left and informed me of the cost.  I thought this was a bonus since I didn’t know I could win money in the end.  I think I heard her roll her eyes over the phone at my complete ignorance.  She suggested that I get a fantasy football magazine or two to help me with my draft choices.

 I got the magazines she recommended and also read the rules to fantasy football online.  I thought I had a firm grasp as to what to expect on draft night.  Yeah, no I didn’t.  I didn’t even wear the right clothes to the draft.  I thought wearing a skirt and ballet flats would be a cute choice to wear to a draft but apparently the appropriate clothing consists of jeans and either a jersey from your favorite team or at least a football-themed t-shirt.  It wasn’t that anyone commented on my wardrobe choice, but it was pretty evident that they disapproved of my lack of team spirit.  I shrugged it off since I couldn’t exactly change what I was wearing and found a seat in the crowded living room.  I pulled out my list of players and waited for the Saints hat to be thrust in front of me so I could pick a number indicating my number in the draft pick.  I fell somewhere in the middle.

 I know that I wanted the Packers defensive team for my first choice but that was one of the first picked and I missed out on that.  I panicked a bit since that was the only defensive team I thought to write down and when my turn came I said I wanted the Bears as my defensive team because in my mind the Bears were the Packers’ biggest rivals.  It made sense to me.  How was I supposed to know that it wasn’t going to be a good year for them?  Oh, yeah, I guess I would have seen that if I would have known a little bit about football before I started with the league and if I would have read the stats and seen what everyone else had known because they were mind readers when it came to the predictions of football stats.

 We started picking players for our offensive team.  I was surprised when I got some of the players from the list that I made up and thrilled when other people picked the names from my list.  In my mind that meant I was on the right track.  I figured I wasn’t going to get many of the people that I wanted and had come prepared with a long list just in case.  I realized that I should have picked a quarterback closer to the beginning of the night because all of the quarterbacks on my list were taken early on.  Desperate for a quarterback I said that I wanted Bart Starr.  Everyone laughed at me, even the women who were actually really kind to me as I bumbled my way through the draft.  “You can’t have Bart Starr,” some burly guy I didn’t know said. 

“Why not?  He’s a quarterback and I need a quarterback.”

“He hasn’t played football in a jillion years,” someone else said.

“Well, I know that,” I said rolling my eyes like I knew exactly what I was talking about.  I knew that Bart Starr hadn’t even coached in years.  I was almost proud of myself that I remembered Bart was a quarterback.  Everyone in the room was looking at me.  I shifted in my seat getting more uncomfortable.  I cleared my throat.  “Well, this is fantasy football.  Having Bart Starr on my team would make it true fantasy football.”

“But there’s no way to score him,” the commissioner said.

“I could just look him up online.  I’m sure I could find his stats from way back when I use them today.  All I would have to do is take the first game of the season and use it with the first game of this season, same as with the second game and so on.”

“No, you can’t do that,” someone said.  Everyone shook their head in agreement.

“So then I suppose I couldn’t use my cousin who plays for the University of Iowa?” I asked.

“Nope.”

Fantasy football was turning out to be nothing of fantasy at all.  If it were true fantasy football then I thought I should have been able to use past players and college players.  Using the combination of past, college, and current players would have made up the ultimate fantasy football team.  I could have really kicked butt.  But, apparently fantasy football rules are just as strict as regulation football rules.  You know, the ones that I don’t understand.

 At the time of the first game, I still didn’t have my line-up ready.  I was still a little upset at not getting Bart Starr as my quarterback.  One of my co-workers sat down with me and showed me how to set up my line up so I would have enough of each position on the field.  I ended up winning the first game against the guy I was playing which ticked him off since he knew I didn’t know what I was doing.  I left my lineup the same for the next three games.  The fourth game I still had my same lineup and when I read it off to the guy I was going up against he stopped me.  “Uh, your quarterback isn’t playing this week,” he told me.

“Oh,” I said surprised.  “Has he been traded?”

The guy laughed, “No, it’s his off week.”

“Oh.”  I didn’t know about off weeks.

I ran into the same problems over and over through out the season.  Since I never changed my players around I was always putting in people who were hurt or on their off weeks.  Most of the guys would tell me before the games started but sometimes they wouldn’t which would cause my score to go down.

I also could never catch on as to how to score my team.  I found that the easiest thing to do was either to ask the guy I worked with to help me, which he didn’t seem to mind the first five times, or I could just wait and let the person I was up against call me with the final score.  I didn’t care if I won.  I just didn’t want to look like a fool when it came time to call out my score since if I did it myself it was more times wrong than it was right.  After a while, my opponent would just call me up with the score and not bother asking me what I came up with.

I couldn’t wait for the season to be over.  I knew that I had committed to something that I had no business doing.  I’m sure when the other people looked at the schedule and saw that they had to play me they just shook their heads.  It turned out that I didn’t come in dead last that season.  I came in second to last.  Of course I didn’t win any money but I also had the gratification of not being a complete loser.  The guy who did come in dead last was razzed for two years about getting beat by me.

On the last day of the season, I was called with my final score.  Not only was I told that I came in second to last, I was also very politely asked to never ask to be in that particular fantasy football league again.  That was four years ago.  I thought I would try my luck this year.  I asked my co-worker if I could join.  He looked at me with sad eyes and said, “Sorry the ban still stands.”  That’s fine.  Fantasy football is all just a lie.  There’s no real fantasy about it.  They won’t let me use past players or college guys.  Forget it.  I’ll just go on asking the TV my same questions over and over again until I remember why the players wear the white jerseys.  It’s because that means they’re playing at home, right?  Or is it away?  I’ll just ask my husband.  Again.