What's your fantasy?

So what IS the deal with fantasy football, or any fantasy sports, for that matter? What's the fascination? After giving the question a bit of thought for the purposes of this post, I've determined that, as with many things, it really just boils down to ego.

The organizer and detail-loving part of me loves the statistical analysis involved with fantasy sports. The fellowship with friends I rarely connect with anymore is nice, too. But truly.... somewhere, at some time, two men were arguing about who really knew more about the NFL. And one of them said, "Prove It". And I believe that is where fantasy football was born.

I'm not trying to be sexist. A lot of women play fantasy sports. There are now 20 million invididuals in the USA who participate in some sort of fantasy sports league, and a lot of them are women. But if we can be honest with ourselves and admit that watching sports is primarily the domain of males, it's not hard to figure out how a hobby that pits them one against another for the title of Smartest Fan would have evolved.

Even in my league, the winners are celebrated and given respect. We get a small trophy to keep after each season that we emerge the sole victor, and there is also a master trophy that has the names of our league champions dating back 14 years now, I believe. And it's worth pointing out that we had a 2-time champion who also happened to be a woman.

This Saturday the tradition will begin again. It's Draft Day, and most of our 12 league owners will be there in person to participate, and if they can't, they'll send someone in their stead. Last year's champion will drink the beverage of his choice from our trophy's cup, and then for 3 hours the true value of, say, Carson Palmer will be debated and determined, followed by five months of evaluation.

It's just good fun, and I'm more than happy to participate in a diversion that has become less of a lunatic's activity, and more of a national pastime. This report from researchers in Chicago says that U.S. employers will lose $9.2 billion dollars' worth of productivity from their workers because of fantasy football. I look forward this year to contributing to that malaise.