How to Lose a Fantasy Football Championship

Second-guess yourself.  Start your first round pick even though he’s listed as doubtful with an ankle injury.

Take down the championship banner hanging from your front porch.  Cancel the parade.  Call the newspaper and ask to remove the obituary for your opponent’s team from tomorrow’s edition.

Get terrible match-ups.  Have too many of your players be on teams that have already clinched playoff spots, and therefore only play in the first half.  Call the league commissioner and lobby for the season to be shortened.  Say weird things, angry things, that make your commissioner second-guess inviting you back next season.

Forget to start a kicker.

Talk a lot of trash on the message board beforehand.  Make remarks about your opponent’s fiance’s noticeable birth defect.  Screen calls from your opponent.  Call your opponent after the game and apologize, explaining that yes, you’d still like to go to his wedding.

Pick up a defense that has been mediocre all season, just because they have a favorable match-up.  Pick up a back-up wide receiver, just because an advice column said he was a “strong buy.”  Write an angry email to Brad Evans.  Use poor grammar.

Over analyze the players you could have started instead.  Look back over the draft, wishing you’d chosen Ray Rice.  Complain about the scoring system.  Claim that two point conversions aren’t worth nearly enough.  Lament the advent of the forward pass.  Arbitrarily place blame on Matt Millen.

Change your team name to something grumpy.  NotInTheMood.  ThisIsBS.  IHateYouMattMillen.

Passive aggressively suggest the possibility of a Zionist conspiracy against your team.

Don’t shower or shave for days following the loss.  Show up late to work.  Reply “whatever” to any question that doesn’t broach the topic of why your fantasy football team got screwed.  Type “ALL YARDS AND NO TOUCHDOWNS MAKES JACK A DULL BOY,” over and over again, obsessively, like there’s something wrong with you. 

Get kicked out of an AA meeting for suggesting everyone "get toasted" and participate in a mock draft.  Get banned from the holocaust memorial for trying to organize a survivor pick em’.

Regain consciousness weeks later, sometime in the late afternoon, on the fifty-yard line of your old high school’s football field.  Check if you peed yourself.  Swear you’ll never care this much about a fictional representation of sports statistics.  Tell yourself things are going to get better.  Remind yourself that there’s always next year.