Fantasy Football draft!

Yes,its that time of year where once a week (guaranteed) you will see one post of unimaginable boredom here- fantasy football season.  I hope you will forgive any typing miscues- my keyboard has been wanting to eat random letters lately.  Anyhow, let's take a look at 1) what I'm talking about, and 2) this year's draft. 

Long ago in a galaxy far away, I was first introduced to fantasy football (FF).  I played 4 or five years in a league with a friend of mine.  Most of the guys were people he knew, so when he drifted away, the league went belly up, and I just didn't know anyone else who enjoyed this type of madness.  Except my kids, so we put together our own league.  That was 16 years ago.

This year, the NHFFL is in its 16th season.  Laurie, KC, and I each own 4 teams.  One of mine, the B2s, captured last years title with a 53-21 win over KC's Sunset Rangers, who had broke an amazing streak of 9 playoff appearances without a win just a week before.  Each of us has a flagship team and three others.  Mine are the two-time champion KCA's, which was also my team in my first league- therefore, they are celebrating their 20th (I think) year on existance.  Laurie has the Super Bowl XI champion Elks (a play on her initials, LKE), and KC's team is (and remember, he was 7 when he came up with the name) the Clock BBQs.  Laurie also owns Scrappy's team, the Fiery Beagles (which began life as the Fiery Dragons).

My other three teams are:  the Aguascalientes (Aguas for short), the aforementioned B2s (which were my hanmster's team, but I no longer have hamsters, so it's a hamster memorial team, I guess), and the State Ducks (named because I had a shirt that said "State Dock Marina" and KC misread it- accidentally on purpose- as "State Duck").  KC also runs the previously named Rangers, as well as the Buzz Lightyears and the Flying Porkchops (Named after his cat, who does not fly).  And Laurie's other two teams are the Angels (actually Arden's Angels, but with us no longer being employed by Arden, the name will likely be shortened) and the Greenwoods (who won the very first championship, folded during the Great Shake Up when we drew Laurie into our web, and ressurected a couple years ago).

Among the names who did NOT get picked this year were the incredibly fragile Michael Vick, the incredible weenie Mark Sanchez and his understudy, Tim Tebow, all but one of the New Orleans four-headed running back group (Darren Sproules), the at-the-time holdout Maurice Jones-Drew, and anybody on the Colts whose names weren't Luck or Vinitieri.

KC had the unfortunate fortune of having both the turn-around picks.  We draft last season's last-to-first, and turn around first to last for the next, and so on.  So, KC had both last year's worst record (Clock BBQs) and best (Rangers), and got both turn arounds as well as the #1 pick.  The top pick caused a lot of debate.  We all agreed that Cam Newton and Aaron Rodgers would go in some variation of 1-2.  KC would have his pick ( and being a Vikings fan, had no intention of taking Rodgers), but his Buzz Lightyears team picked fourth, and he wanted to make sure of getting Matt Stafford with either the first or the fourth.  So he tried to swap picks to get to third;  Laurie had the second pick for the Beagles, and told him she'd take the one of Cam or Rodgers he didn't take.  My KCAs were third, and I told him I wasn't sure who I'd take after Cam and Rodgers were gone.  So he gave up, took Cam, Laurie took Rogers, and much to KCs delight I took Ray Rice #3 (Because I have this thing about taking the big dog backs first).  KC then took Stafford fourth, I took Eli Manning fifth for the Ducks, Laurie grabbed Drew Brees 6th for the Angels, KC took the Year's Big Chance and drafted Peyton Manning 7th for the Porkchops,  Laurie took every woman's pick Tom Brady 8th, the B2s took the indestructable Ben Rothlesburger 9th and my Aguas grabbed Arian Foster 10th.  Laurie made Phillip Rivers the Greenwoods pick at 11, and the Rangers took Matt Forte to round out the first round.

New England had the most drafted with 8; Green Bay had seven, as did Pittsburgh and Chicago; Carolina, Minnesota, San Diego, Denver, Washington, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, and the Giants all had 6; the 49ers, Dallas, Oakland, New Orleans, K.C., Buffalo, and Seattle all chipped in 5; the Titans, Tampa Bay, Baltimore, Detroit, and the Cardinals had 4; Miami, the Jets, and St. Louis had 3; 2 from the Colts; and Jacksonville and Cleveland put in one each.

The rookies were well represented.  The KCAs took both Robert Griffin III and Doug Martin;  Justin Blackmon went to Buzz; The Ducks took another Redskin rookie, RB Alfred Morris; Porkchops, who took Peyton for starting QB, ironically took Andrew Luck for the backup, as well as Cleveland rookie Trent Richardson and Bears wideout Alshon Jeffery; and the Rangers grabbed Seattle's Russell Wilson.

The 12-game season opens this week, with Beagles-Rangers, KCAs-Greenwoods, Angels-Aguas, Clock BBQs-B2s, Buzz-Elks, and Ducks-Porkchops.  GO KCAS!