It wasn’t until I went to college that my affinity for the Philadelphia Eagles was cemented. I went to college outside of Baltimore, a college where the Ravens used to hold their training camp, and I could not stand the infiltration of our campus with fans and players. I understood obnoxious football fans, but this was a different level. It should have been the dislike of the Redskins fans, what with my healthy hatred of all other NFC East teams, but having classes with, living with, dealing with, and even dating Baltimore fans was draining. I won’t get into my level of dislike here, owing to the number of friends I still have who support the team – also I don’t want to get stabbed or knocked out in an elevator. Too soon?
My point is that being in a sea of purple made me cling to my hometown team even harder, going to sports bars to catch out of market games, hiding alone in my room watching the online play-by-play while my roommates yelled in the family room, wearing my Eagles attire to work on ‘purple Fridays.’ What started out as a side-note became a huge part of my life.
Football will never replace baseball in my life as my favorite sport, nor will I ever understand it the way I understand baseball, but spending Sunday afternoons in the city with my dad is part of our routine. I don’t wear a pink jersey, or carry a purse into the stadium; we drink beer in the parking lot, and complain about bad calls on the ride home. It’s the best type of father-daughter bonding, but my dad is also more of a baseball guy. He plays in a very intense fantasy league, so when I wanted to try fantasy football, I never had solid place to start.
The idea started a few years back; play a season of fantasy football, and document what it was like for a first timer, but I didn’t want to join a league of seasoned players, and could never drum up enough interest to start my own. I tossed it around at the start of every season, but it wasn’t until my friend’s family invited me into a league that I had a chance to get involved. I was thrilled! And then promptly forgot that I was supposed to join and create and team and prep for the draft. Oops.
I’m a very anxious person by nature; I over-plan and over-prepare and I do not like surprises. So two hours before I was supposed to participate in a fantasy draft, I had done nothing to ready myself for the night. I immediately began stressing out, reading online articles about how a fantasy draft worked, texting my friend who is in three leagues, played, and coaches for advice. He started going on and on about draft positions and snake-drafts and different options for different scenarios. He gave me some tips using terminology I didn’t understand at first, and some seemingly logical pointers that I honestly wouldn’t have considered on my own (make sure your computer can run the system! Watch for Bye weeks!). My dad then offered some advice, but I went into it completely blind. I didn’t know how the draft would even work, and when I tried to log-in, my computer decided to freeze and restart. LOVELY.
I finally got into our league (‘The Loozahs,’ due to the large amount of Pat’s fans I’m playing with), and the clock started running. My anxiety kicked into full swing; I was hitting the wrong buttons and queuing players by accident, and my first pick was an accidental one (it was Demariyus Thomas, so I guess it could have been worse). As I was simultaneously trying to figure out how to even work the damn website, I was getting texts from my football friend asking what was going on – poor guy, I sent him an ALL CAPS TEXT telling him to stop asking questions while I panicked. I was trying to read the ESPN top 200 fantasy draft list on my tablet, looking at the names I’d jotted down per conversations with those more intelligent about this fake sport, and trying to figure out Yahoo – side note, I hate you, Yahoo, and I will not give you the exclamation point because you do not deserve one – and I was getting really twitchy, until I realized I wasn’t trying to win this thing.
That’s right; crazy
and competitive Leah isn’t trying to win.
I won’t pretend like that wouldn’t be awesome, but I was
barely keeping up with the clock last night, and I still don’t really understand
how all of this works. It’s a learning
process, and I’m here to admit I have no idea what I’m doing. Instead, I’m hoping this will help me
appreciate football for more than just my
team – although, I did not draft any non-Eagles NFC East players. Rivalries run deep.
No comments:
Post a Comment