Memoir Of A Fantasy Football Rookie

In 2007, my life changed more than the respect factor of the Spy gate Patriots. I had just graduated from college, moved in with my parents, got a job, and played fantasy football for the first time.

What started as fantasy shortly became a true reality. This was the first time, I owned an actual fantasy football team. Here's how it changed my life.

Each week I found myself watching all the games on my dish to see how my players were doing rather than caring about the score of the games they were playing. I sometimes stopped caring about my Washington Redskins! Don't act like you weren't doing the same thing!

Just like any team coach, my mood would be affected by how well or how poorly my team had performed. Seriously, stop acting like you don't do the same!

I had the itch so bad that it got to a point where I found myself foregoing events just to see who popped up on waiver wire.

As a rookie, I was always changing and bringing back players on my team as much as I could. Since I play a lot of Madden (Xbox gamer tag I Am Legend 4 and PS3 tag xX-The-Cool-Xx) I based my personnel evaluations off of the ratings on the game.

First, was the draft and I ended up drafting Bengals running back Rudi Johnson and Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson, yea stop hating. I had Tony Romo as my ace QB, my wide receivers were the Rams Torry Holt, the Cardinals Larry Fitzgerald, the Lions Roy Williams, and Colts rookie Anthony Gonzales.

Early in the season, I started making moves. I picked up Green Bay running back Ryan Grant and I dropped Roy Williams because of his lack of performance for running back LenDale White. Then I dropped Rudi Johnson to pick up Denver running back Andre Hall and wide receiver Brandon Marshall. Let me stop there. Did you follow that? Yeah . . . that's what I did all season.

There were times when I would stay up or get up before work just to see if my waiver claims came through. I would always hope no one was putting in more time as me to get the waivers, but the good ones rarely came through so I wasn't the only one up at night.

RBs and WRs became my food and water. NFL Sunday and Monday Night Football were my means of entertainment. The weekdays, as I like to call during the season " Slow days," were for my waiver-wire moves.

This whole Fantasy football thing became a standard habit of daily life for me, I was no different from the the other millions of football fans that play this stuff as well. The main reason for all of this comes down to being that it is fun. It's like playing Madden on Fantasy Draft mode or being a GM.

I have always looked at fantasy football as something that people who were fans of bad teams would play to create their own team and feel some sort of glory out of what they created.

But now I see what I was missing. This is a new hobby for some people and a way of life for others. I could sit here all day and breakdown week after week of my rookie year, just so you know I won my NFL.com league, I had Randy Moss and Wes Welker, and came in second on ESPN FFL.

So get your popcorn ready because I'm ready for the 2008 fantasy draft and I think my first pick this year will be Adrian Peterson or Brian Westbrook and I'll start from there.