The Modern Man and Fantasy Football

The Modern Man has been on a long hiatus, but he is back. For those of you who don't know what 'hiatus' means , I've provided three examples of its use in every day language using a common teaching practice:

1) I drafted John Kitna for my fantasy team, and realized that the Lions have been on a hiatus from football since 1954.

2) I was running down the first baseline when I suddenly pulled my hiatus. (I was quickly arrested and charged with lewd conduct right afterwards.)

3) The nuclear (*pronounced "nuke you ler") leak created a huge, genetic freak out of our dog Hi, and unfortunately, Hiatus.

This type of teaching come from the ancient Romans and is highly effective in working with middle school students. The technique is called, vocabularus desperatus, meaning, "We ain't gonna learn it if the word has more than one syllable, and you're pulling our haituses is you think we care."

So I've been talked into playing fantasy football. When you put fantasy and football together, I envisioned me being tackled by eleven scantily clad Victoria's Secret models. However, much to my disappointment, this is not the case.

To start off, if gambling were legal, I would have had to plunk down $30 to join a fantasy league with a group of nice church going people who seem to feel that gambling is okay, but swearing and drinking is not. This is too bad, because quite honestly, I'd rather swear and drink. I mean, for @#$# sakes, I can brew 5 gallons of beer for $30 and I can @#@ing swear for free.

But, I digress.

Fantasy football. It's hugely popular. It brings millions of dollars to websites across the country. Manly men with enormous HD televisions, large cable bills, officially licensed NFL paraphernalia (not to be confused with the single and lonely phernalia), and WAAAAAAAAY to much time on their hands play this game weekly, spending hours setting up their teams and worrying about their player's production.

For this game, we were to be given $100 dollars in pretend money (which is a pretty good return on investment, if gambling were legal) and we were to bid on our players in auction format and these players would be imported into a team which will score points against other pretend teams. Now, I thought the trafficking in humans for profit was made illegal in this country after the Civil War, but I guess I'm wrong. I bid on many players and I am now an official fantasy owner, or as I would rather be called, an official fantasy pimp.

Why pimp? Well, I can play my best people and "cut" the ones I'm unhappy with. Hey, it isn't fair, but that's life on the fantasy street.

The unfortunate thing was that I actually had to do research on my players to find out who I should draft. I probably spent over an hour finding information on who I should take. I was glued to the computer screen, leaky pen in hand, going over data no one really understands. I crunched the numbers, came up with a plan, then did more research. Do you know what that makes me? I'll get to that in a moment.

When I entered the basement of a neighbors house to make my draft picks, I was surrounded by affable gentlemen (and one lady) who all joked, had fun, and bid on illegal human traffic. I looked at those around me. They all gripped their fantasy magazines (not a naked picture in any of them), checked their fantasy lists, and eyed their newly acquired players with a fondness only a fantasy pimp can have. But as I joined in, a quote from a bygone era came quickly into my head. The quote, from the Alpha-Betas still resonates today as it did years ago as it was shouted to the Lambda Lambda Lambdas by the various members of the fraternity.

"NERDS!" they shouted. Yep, it seemed to me that every one of these people was a nerd, but didn't know it.

You can be the toughest man in the world, but if you're taking more than 5 minutes a week thinking about fantasy football, the fact is, you're a nerd.

You're not even a fantasy nerd, just a nerd.

For years I've been trying to rehabilitate my nerdy nature, but it's come back to haunt me.

You know what they say, when you point, three fingers are pointing back at you. At least that is what teachers say, so that's what I'm sticking to at this point. As I pointed at the 'big board' with my current fantasy picks, and pointed towards the nerds around me, those three fingers were pointing right back at me and the cold hard truth sunk in.

My God, I'm a nerd, too.

But, I'll be a successful FANTASY nerd if I win my league. However, my quarterback is John Kitna.

Looks like I'll be taking it up the hiatus this year.