a woman’s look at fantasy football

I recently saw a newscast about fantasy football leagues, and they highlighted one such league that was comprised entirely of….women! How weird! They then showed all these young women sitting around in newly purchased Reebok NFL Women’s gear, watching a football game, referencing their laptops frequently, and making jokes about how cute Tom Brady is.

And I’m not writing this post as a feminist or anything (even though I still hold a small grudge against my high school guy friends for kicking me out of their league when it became “guys only”) because my fantasy football league kind of proves the point that female fantasy leagues are oftentimes silly. There’s only four of us in the league, and we don’t even have a draft, Yahoo does that for us… my friend had Tom Brady as her starting QB until week 5, and you can pick up just about any other league’s first round draft picks on our waiver wire. But that’s not the point, is it? I mean, we have a league! And we’re girls! Give us props.

But it is exactly the point. Our league is silly, and no one cares who wins. Last year, one of the whopping four team owners forgot her Yahoo password and so did not make one change in her lineup all season. And still won a majority of her games with her automatically drafted team led by big Tom Brady in his glory day.

But if this is possible, how do men in these leagues seem to have mediocre teams at best when they research the players, make reasonable trade offers and carefully peruse the waiver wire for viable free agents? Easy. Fantasy football is a little about picking good guys, and a lot about luck. In the NFL, as long as you step foot on the football field, you can have a good week. Sure, some weeks are better than others (6 TD passes Favre?), and some are more consistent than others (Lee Evans can make or break you), but every Sunday there’s a chance that your back up running back could have the game of his life, and you got him sitting on your fantasy bench to start Larry Johnson (held to 2 rushing yards this week…).

It’s the flip of a coin, gentlemen. I guess the moral of the story is: take some chances on your fantasy team, because they might just pay off. And if not…it’s just fantasy right?