Fantasy football bonds diverse groups

All the signs are here. Across Spokane, from water coolers to watering holes, small groups are speaking in low whispers as they compare notes. It’s time for another season of the national phenomenon: fantasy football.

Burly men who last laced football cleats in junior high, fresh-faced office secretaries, and geeks with secret stashes of Bill Gates trading cards are joining forces and forming leagues, where they live and die based on the statistical performances of their NFL heroes.

What started as a mid-‘60s diversion has been fertilized by the easy Internet access to such vital information as injury lists and 50-yard dash times. Now it’s what CNNMoney.com calls a billion-dollar fantasy sports market.

This billion-dollar industry includes all flavors of fantasy sports – football, baseball, golf, NASCAR and, most likely, how many times some jai alai player in Florida scratches himself, but the king of the fantasy sporting world is football.

The same people who don’t know a nickel defense or a dime package from the little change purse they carry feel qualified to take on the office jock in fantasy football. That’s part of the beauty of it. Long after knees say “No mas” and backs say “I’m on injured reserve,” dads can compete with their athletic sons, the mailroom clerk can take on the CEO, and the girlfriend can teach her macho man a thing or two on the fantasy football field.

And, like many other wars, it starts with a draft. In a fantasy football draft, from eight to 12 “team owners” take turns drafting position players for their teams.

Team owners? Many of these guys who have never contributed to their 401(k) somehow pay for owner caps and shirts to publicize their Hillyard Hash Marks team. Teams score points when the players they draft score actual points or gain yardage during NFL games.

Life has some rules. You can know little about a stock you buy. You can fail to do a title search on a home purchase. Maybe you don’t make a will.

Your family ultimately will forgive and forget.

But if you go into a fantasy football draft unprepared, you become a permanent laughingstock.

Luckily, there are reams of fantasy football draft publications, Internet updates and e-mail services that can give you the latest information. The same guys that can’t tell you their anniversary, their kids’ birthdays or who represents them in Congress spend up to an hour a day poring over football factoids so they can tell that Joe Blow from Humboldt State is displacing the aging old pro at tight end for the 49ers.

Draft day is the fantasy football linchpin. A draft is usually held at a league team owner’s home.

Tables are set up, and a big white board is brought in as the team owner’s significant other flees the home – probably to marriage counseling. Players take turns announcing their choices, making trades and putting out misinformation.

If you steal a peek at a rival owner’s draft notes, that’s not cheating; that’s just another example of the Information Age.

After the draft, and the crowing dies down, the season starts. Team owners send in their weekly lineup roster to a league commissioner. After the weekly Monday Night football game, the week’s winners and losers are revealed.

The big plus for me in playing fantasy football is the way it opens communication in the office or home. Make a one-sided trade with the novice secretary, you’ll have her protectors coming out of the office woodwork to chastise you.

I once accepted a trade with a guy, and unhappy with the trade later, he didn’t talk to me for years. Sons can be like that some times.

Fantasy football – it keeps its players off the streets and at home, in front of their computer terminals, where they belong.