Addicted to Love

I'm sure you've thought about it at least once. On its surface, it seems like it should be fun, and your friends who are already involved have nothing but good things to say. Try it, you'll like it, they say. There's nothing better than fantasy football. And for a moment you think they must be right...

Well, here's a word of advice. Take a drive downtown and score yourself some heroin and a dirty syringe. Wrap your belt around your bicep, pull it tight with your teeth, pick a bulging vein, and ride the horse.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

If your day-to-day life can hold up to the strain of heroin, you just might be ready for fantasy sports. I thought I was. My name is Hank, and I'm an addict. A fantasy sports addict.

Every junkie remembers his first high, and it's no different with me. Kordell Stewart. Ah, sweet Kordell. The Steelers weren't anything special in 1997, but Kordell Stewart was an absolute superstar in the world of fantasy football. A friend of mine had convinced me to join an ESPN league, plying me with all the usual lines: it's a lot of fun, you might win a prize, we just need one more guy... I bit, and Kordell was my reward.

Do you remember that season? If he wasn't throwing touchdown passes, he was running for scores (even better in the fantasy world) as he completely redefined the quarterback position. My Long Beach Lunkhead squad rolled through the regular season, and Kordell carried me into the championship game before Bill Cowher got in the way. I was left at the altar like a jilted lover when Stewart sat out a meaningless game in week sixteen as my Slash-less squad got pummelled in the championship game.

The bitterness of that defeat kept me away for a while, but the sweet memory of the regular season brought me back a few years later, and not just for football. I added baseball and basketball to the plate, and sucked in several of my friends. Now the high never ends -- football melts into basketball which bleeds into baseball which stretches all the way until football season starts again. Paradise.

There are problems, though. First, it completely skews the way you watch a game. The other night I was rooting hard for the Saints as their offense marched down the field, but only until they got into the red zone, at which point I became a huge Atlanta fan. Why such schizophrenia? Simple -- my team's kicker is New Orleans' John Carney, and field goals are much better than extra points.

But wait, it gets worse. Say your running back is Larry Johnson and the Chiefs have the ball on the one-yard line, ready to score. The anticipation is palpable as you get ready to watch LJ vault into the endzone, scoring valuable points for your team. And sure enough, Trent Green takes the snap and turns to Johnson, but what's this? Why is Green sprinting away from the line? A NAKED BOOTLEG??? The crowd is going crazy, the announcers are screaming, but it's the worst news you've had all day.

For the fantasy football addict, every piece of news comes in two layers. On Monday night I popped on the TV and ESPN's bottom line greeted me with this little nugget about my top draft pick: "Shaun Alexander (stress fracture) out indefinitely," followed by an item effecting my quarterback, Kurt Warner: "Arizona Cardinals QB Matt Leinart will start on Sunday." My depression lasted about 24 hours, but not because I gained perspective; Alexander's injury was less serious than previously thought, and the Cardinals decided to switch back to Warner.

When news broke this morning about Terrell Owens's apparent suicide attempt, one in twelve fantasy owners had only one question: will he be in the lineup on Sunday? As for me, my very first thought upon hearing the initial report was not for the Dallas Cowboys (my favorite team in real life) or for Terrell Owens and his family, but for the Wedding Crashers -- the team in my league that drafted Owens with its first pick. Look away, I am hideous.

Recently there's been an idea floated that fantasy sports leagues provide male sports fans with an avenue to bond with one another, to create meaningful connections that transcend the games being played on the field. This is a load of crap.

Last week I spoke to three of my closest friends, three guys that I went to college with and have known for almost twenty years. The first conversation was fairly typical. We talked about our lives and our families, bragging about our children and complaining about difficulties juggling soccer practices and piano lessons and basketball games. My second friend told me about his brand new baby and we dished a bit on Rockstar: Supernova before segueing into a lengthy conversation on the music industry.

And then the next day I called the guy who had been the best man at my wedding, the only one of the three who plays fantasy sports. We didn't speak a word of our wives or children and shared nothing at all of substance about anything in our lives -- except, of course, for fantasy football. I have no idea what his son is up to nowadays, but I do know that my friend was excited about Jeff Wilkins's six field goals in week one. We ended the conversation by telling each other that it was okay to get depressed when your fantasy team has a bad day. Really.

So if you still think you'd like to enter a world in which Monday Night Football means rooting like hell for Alge Crumpler to score two touchdowns while Warrick Dunn rushes for less than sixty yards, if you want to know the shame of dragging your ass out of bed at 11:55 because you've just remembered that you have to move Takashi Saito into the starting lineup and put J.J. Putz on the bench before the midnight deadline, if you want to have to explain to your wife that you need to borrow her cell phone to find out how many steals Smush Parker managed, go right ahead. Just do yourself a favor and remember this simple prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept Jake Plummer's interceptions, the courage to play Bonzi Wells, and the wisdom to know it's all just pretend.