the friday five: just a fantasy

Short and sweet this morning as I stayed up late last night—it was my annual fantasy football league draft (“Draftmas,” as it’s referred to in fantasy football circles). It’s a magical time, one of my favorite nights of the year as I get together with my eight of my good friend and Senior Smoke, immerse ourselves in football and eat a lot of food.

And even though we’ve been doing this more than a dozen years, I still am learning things, such as these

Five Things I Learned at My Fantasy Football League Draft

1. We’re all going blind. Okay, I’ve been fortunate to have 20/20 vision my entire life, but now that I’m 107, it’s been getting tough for me to make out small type in low-light situations. Apparently, I’m not the only one as both my buddy Bob and Senior Smoke both had reading glasses last night. Even sadder, when I tried their glasses on, I pretty much realized that I might benefit from having a pair of my own. Ugh.

2. We’re getting old. Yes, we’re all going blind, getting thicker around the middle and grayer on top, but just listening to some of the banter and jokes around the table, I realize that a lot of it is based in 1970s & ’80s pop culture, which according to those damned pesky, clearly lying calendars I keep around, were somehow more than two decades ago. I felt bad for the whippersnapper in the league, Easy E, who was born when most of us were in high school, I think—he had to have no idea what the hell all these old fat guys were laughing about most of the night: “Why in the name of Bieber H. Christ do they keep singing ‘It’s the final countdown,’ every time someone says, ‘you’re up’?”

3. Still, boys will still be boys. I don’t care how old we all are, there were still plenty of gross comments, bad jokes, foul language and farts—and we liked it!

4. My buddy Pisci—our gracious host of the evening (thanks again!)—is a terrific cook. All right, I already know this, but it’s always great to be reminded. In case we weren’t manly enough with all the football, random grunting and raunchy humor, Pisci grilled bacon cheeseburgers and whipped up some of his awesome chili, which is so damned good that Channel 8 actually had to have him in to the studio to make it. To paraphrase “Talk Soup:” Sooooo meaty!

5. The New York Jets may be the worst offensive team in the NFL this year. As you no doubt know by now, I’m about as big a Jets fan as there is out there, and even I couldn’t convince myself to take any Jets offensive player. I even purposely left them off my draft lists just so I wouldn’t be accidentally tempted to take any of them. I mean, I hope I’m wrong, but after they went through the entire preseason—four games—and scored only 1 touchdown (which came last night with their backups against the Eagles’ backups), let’s just say I’m not expecting to see a lot of Tebowing on the field this year.

I did, however, take the Jets defense as my fantasy team defense because I think that unit will be among the best in the NFL. Not that it will matter.

As always, after the draft was over, I hated the team I assembled, but that’s how it goes—there’s always the team you want to draft, the team you do actually draft and then the team you wished you had drafted. I only hope the team I actually drafted provides me as much entertainment as hanging out with my buddies, although I don’t it’s possible.