I remember my first time like it was yesterday. It all happened on Sunday, Jan. 28, 2001. The Baltimore Ravens killed the New York Giants 34-7 for Super Bowl XXXV .
From that moment on, I looked forward to the new football season. I’m from Bolivia, a small country in the heart of South America. As you may know, American football is not as big as our kind of futbol, but I enjoy watching football just the same.
When I got to UW-Eau Claire in August 2005, I went to my first football game during Homecoming week. I really enjoyed hearing the helmets crash together and watching the players get tackled.
I thought football was just football, and that there was nothing more to it, until someone mentioned Fantasy Football to me.
My firsts thoughts on Fantasy Football were that you simply go online, you have a team and you play other people’s teams. It seemed as if you were playing it on a Playstation or a Nintendo, only online. I was wrong.
This year, I decided to look into the fantasy world. I thought that I could not graduate without playing fantasy football, which so many people seem to go crazy for – especially men.
For those like me, who are virgins to the game, I’ll explain what Fantasy Football is really about. This game starts with participants joining and forming a league online.
The three major fantasy football providers are CBS, ESPN and Yahoo. I joined a Yahoo league, so I first had to create an e-mail account and make a profile for my team, which is called “Fantasy Virgin.”
On a specific date and time, the participants will go online and the computer will choose at random who gets to draft first.
I was the last one to draft on the first round; however, I was the first one to draft on the second, so I got to draft two players one after the other. I had to wait a while to draft, but it really helped me get a better team.
I thought that drafting the players would be easy and quick, but it wasn’t.
Although each player gets one minute and 30 seconds to choose a player, it took 45 minutes to get it done.
In the beginning, when it was my turn to draft, a loud beep scared me and the “draft” button turned yellow.
By this time I didn’t know who to choose, so I just went with the next best player that was left. I used this technique for the rest of the positions.
When I chose my last player, a pop up box said that I was done drafting and that I should come back to check my points and change my players in the future.
I was quite happy with my team.
For those of you who are missing out on fantasy football, don’t worry – you can play with me. You don’t have to get a Yahoo account or wait over half an hour to get your team – I’ll be posting the names of our players and the points each of them get, so from now on, it’s our team.
So, if you no longer want to be a virgin, be sure to keep an eye out for the news on our team in every issue.