"Joining a fantasy league is like starting a new relationship. It takes up most of your time and you have to check in at least two times a day."
I wrote that last spring, with baseball in mind, but really that philosophy applies to all fantasy sports, especially football.
With the first NFL game less than two weeks away, it's time for that yearly tradition when groups of friends, co-workers and in some cases family members get together and hold a fantasy football draft.
If you have no clue or even a sniff of what I'm talking about when I say fantasy football or fantasy draft, keep reading and I'll try to break it down for you so you feel like you're in the know.
The best way to describe what fantasy football is about is simply, each year we all try to prove that we are the next Bill Walsh – as in most intelligent football mind around.
By either getting together in person or over the Internet, the point is to draft the pro players that will score as much as Matt Leinart when he is partying up in Scottsdale.
I had my first fantasy football experience last year. I tried it mainly because our commissioner (the guy who arranges the league) said he would give me $10 if I beat him.
Sure enough, I won the league but never received my Hamilton.
Regardless of the money issue, I came away from the experience with a new hobby.
It's not as time consuming as you might think, and you can pre-set your draft rankings and let the computer do everything — the entire draft process takes less time than Nicole Richie's 82-minute jail sentence.
If you choose the route of getting together as a league and painstakingly picking each player, you will most likely find yourself in the fifth round saying, "My next pick is T.J. who's your mama. Lock it up. Championship," just like the commercial.
Once the draft is done, the players that were not picked are available to be added to the roster as backups.
After scanning my roommate's ESPN fantasy league to throw in my two-cents on what players he should have picked, I was shocked to find a laundry list of players, who are either suspended, out of the league or even retired.
Most notable is Michael Vick, who threw away millions of dollars over dog fighting.
Ookie (Vick's alias according to the Federal Indictment filed against him) will not be in the league for quite some time, so why not take him out of fantasy football?
It's harsh to say, but what Vick did to his career was a dog-gone shame.
On the same list of available players, you can find tree-burning Ricky Williams, and the greatest player to have ever played the game, Jerry Rice, who retired a few years ago.
While I would advise against picking those guys up, I do have two general suggestions to improve the overall fantasy football experience.
The first one to remember is to not draft players you can't stand.
There's nothing worse than ending up having to root for a player that beat your favorite team in the playoffs almost every year, refuses to retire and is named Brett Favre.
I'm not saying to go out and draft someone just because they are on your favorite team, but remember that there are still some players that you ultimately want to fail.
The last and most important no-no of all is playing in more than one fantasy football league.
If you are in a couple of leagues there is a great chance that your quarterback in one league will be playing against the quarterback from the other league.
To me that's as big of a mistake as meeting your wife at a bar (like the cop in Superbad said).
As long as you keep my simple reminders handy and you don't draft a kicker or anyone from the Falcons, Browns or Vikings, a championship trophy will be all yours.
Offer Taylor trades at: edward.price@asu.edu.
