How Fantasy Football Ruins Football and Lives (in that order)

This will make sense to no more than five regular readers of this blog. I'll get the rest of you next time. For those of you who do care to read, I have provided a glossary at the bottom of this entry.

Brady Quinn: Back in the day when things were cool
all we needed was bop ba ba ba ba ba du

My New Reality TV Show

Okay, so there's new reality show called Fantasy House...no, there are no women in bikinis, no beer coming out of the faucets, or any of those other erection inducing things that men aged 14 to 95 are want to like...this is about 10 men who have been kicked out of their own houses by the wives and girlfriends sick of hearing about their fantasy football team. For 16 weeks the men live, eat, and surf the internet for football stats, unfettered by Thursday night Dancing with the Stars' hiberdates, Saturday afternoon trips to the mall, Sunday dinners with family: the men are free to spend every waking hour in the fantasy house discussing how crappy their quarterbacks are and how much the other nine men in their house/league "suck ass" - they will lose all perspective, proclaiming that yes, they could coach in the NFL and yes, being 3-2 in the first five weeks is qualification enough to lead the Cleveland Browns (they would be right).

Viewers will tune in to watch the 10 men systematically begin to never enjoy football again. The game of football will lose all meaning, like a computer translating Hamlet into binary code and an audience hearing "To be or not to be" as "1 0 1 0 0 0..."

By the end of season one on Fantasy House, nine of the ten men will swear it's not worth the anguish, that they will never to play a season of fantasy football again; they will return home, without their signed football and $400 cash prize, to the open and forgiving arms of beautiful wives and beautiful girlfriends; they will return home to towels which match the bathmats; to meals with cilantro; they will return home to biweekly intercourse; and then, they will realize what's truly important, who the real 'keepers' are. And for eight months, they will have what the wise call perspective. They will have love (or at least a comfortable arrangement), and all will be right. Fantasy House will go on hiatus until the following August when the league commissioner email reminding you that September 20th is draft day; season two of the show will begin, and the fog will return like it was Devin Hester, all that hard-earned perspective will vanish as though it was Brady Quinn's career: yes, Yeats encapsulated man's loss of perspective best when he wrote those famous words: "1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0."

Glossary

• Brady Quinn - Former mancrush and all-American quarterback who was amazing in college at Notre Dame but sucks in the NFL, leading one to believe that he plays for God, not the Cleveland Browns
• Cleveland Browns - the worst team in football. They wear brown and have Brady Quinn as a quarterback.
• Devin Hester - A guy who runs fast and gets touchdowns sometimes.
• fantasy football - 1. sports gambling masquerading as friendship; 2. the activity that makes Sunday a bad day to make plans with a significant other and places the emphasis on a romantic Saturday.
• keepers - 1. Fantasy Football - n. an actual player who you have from one fantasy football year to the next (see, me: Brady f'ing Quinn); 2. Real Life - n. a romantic partner who you want to have from one actual year to the next.
• league commissioner - the friend who organizes your fantasy football league in much the same the way in which a drug dealer organizes your baggie. (AKA. Johnny Commish)