Note: This article appears in the Sept. 13 issue of The Paper.
The NFL season began last weekend and to me that only meant one thing: the start of Fantasy Football.

For those of you that don’t know what fantasy football is let me tell you about it. But first, let’s talk about what fantasy football is not.

Regardless of the fact that fantasy football has the word “fantasy” in it, it does not mean that I sit at home and fantasize about being a professional football player. Sure, getting paychecks and supermodels/actresses like Tom Brady would be nice, but that’s not what fantasy football is all about.

Fantasy football is all about guys like me doing something that we have no right, yet still believe we have all the actual capabilities of doing, running our own football team.

We spend an entire Saturday drafting our teams with the best players from each NFL team, somehow thinking that we have more knowledge than anyone else in our league about how well those players are going to perform this year. (Of course, we all watched the same ESPN fantasy special and we all read the same fantasy magazines prior to draft day, but that’s neither here or there).

After our team is set we trash talk worse than Chad Johnson spitting defamatory remarks at opposing defensive backs. There is no love lost when it comes to fantasy football.

My obsession with fantasy football has me believing that I have become more of a fantasy football fan than an actual reality football fan.

Yeah, I love my New England Patriots and love it when they win, but that brings me no personal gratification. But when Laveranues Coles scores two touchdowns against those Patriots I cheer inside, and that’s not right.

Last year I shelled out a whopping $250 to DirecTV in order to watch every football game on Sunday. Did I pay that money to watch all of the out of market games like the catchy commercials advertise? No. I spent that money because through the Sunday Ticket (DirecTV’s name for their NFL package) I was able to track my fantasy players and when they scored, I was the first to know.

Besides tracking said players, I was able to watch the games that I would never be able to see without the football package. Did that mean watching great team matchups like the Indianapolis Colts against the Cincinnati Bengals? No. That meant watching a game like the Arizona Cardinals against the Buffalo Bills because I had some of their players on my team, and how those players performed could have determined whether or not I won my fantasy matchup that week.

Fantasy football is an obsession. There are magazines, web sites, TV shows and I am sure somewhere in this country there is are FFA (Fantasy Football Anoynomous) meetings being held every Tuesday night.

Some can argue that in a way playing fantasy football makes us actually become better football fans instead of worse. Sure, our love for our own teams gets pushed to the waste side, but we follow the game more intricately.

Ask a fantasy football owner how Randy Moss did last weekend, and he (or she) could tell you the number of catches, yards and touchdowns faster than they could recite their phone number. (He had nine catches, 183 yards and a touchdown in case you were wondering).

We scan the waiver wires of our leagues to replace injured players or players who aren’t performing up to our high expectations with a guy, who out of nowhere ran for 187 yards last week. And when we get them before anyone else in our league can we feel like geniuses. (Of course, two weeks after we get that guy he ends up breaking his leg, making us feel like morons and subjecting ourselves to ridicule from everyone).

Thus is one of the pains of playing fantasy football. But that pain, along with several others is miniscule when compared to the joy of winning your league. A joy that is even greater than if your favorite “reality” team were to win it all.

If the Patriots win the Super Bowl this year I will be happy, but if my fantasy team wins the championship I will be ecstatic.

The Patriots winning will give me a month or two of gratification, but my fantasy team winning it all? That’s a whole year of rubbing it in my friends’ faces and making them acknowledge the fact that I am smarter than they are.

And that alone makes my entire obsession with fantasy football all the more worth it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go scan the waiver wires for a replacement running back.

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