People love to say “Fantasy football is Dungeons & Dragons for jocks.”
Cute. But wrong.

If we’re being honest? Fantasy football is more like Build-A-Bear meets Call of Duty.

You start with a soft, squishy roster you assemble from scratch.
Give it accessories.
Patch the holes.
Name it something that makes you laugh.
Then — every Sunday — you send your fuzzy little Franken-Bear straight into live combat against another squad that’s equally patched, stitched, and duct-taped together.

It’s strategy. It’s chaos.
It’s spreadsheets and superstition.
It’s hope disguised as math.

And for me?
It started fifteen years ago — in a moment where I needed a new ritual to fill the Sunday void.

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2009 — The Starting Line

Scotty G approached me one innocuous day at Costco Travel, right in the middle of a transitional season in my life. Newly divorced, I was dismantling old systems — replacing the rhythms and rituals that no longer fit.

So when he asked, “Hey, have you heard of fantasy football?”
I answered casually, “I’ve heard about it… always wanted to know more.”

Because in my Married Era, Sundays were NASCAR days. Charlene and I never missed a single Winston Cup / Nextel / Sprint Cup / whatever the hell the sponsor is nowadays race. But once that chapter closed, another truth rose to the surface:

Even when the Seahawks were terrible — and they absolutely were for most of the late ’90s until Holmgren slapped some dignity back into the franchise — I still loved football. I still watched the Hawks get stomped.

I still showed up.

So fantasy football felt like the right puzzle piece at the right moment — a new Sunday identity.

Then Scotty hit me with the real invitation:

“I have three paid fantasy teams and two free ones. As a test, can you take over my ESPN free team? One game into the season, you’re already 0–1. I’ll show you the basics… let’s see what you can do. Cool?”

“COOL!” I answered like a kid being handed the keys to a go-kart.

And just like that:

A friend.
A transition.
A fresh ritual.

To be honest, I think I ended that season 6–7 — my First Attempt In Learning (F.A.I.L.), the kind of “six… seven…” wobbling energy where you can picture me holding my arms out, teetering up and down like a human balance scale trying to decide whether I was decent or disastrous.

But that little wobble of a season? It became the spark that lit a 15-year run of chaos, camaraderie, and deeply questionable decision-making.

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2010 — My Rookie Year

My true rookie season.
Or maybe… a redshirt freshman who took the playbook way too seriously.

Either way, 2010 was the year I walked into fantasy football like a man who believed — genuinely believed — he was about to outsmart the entire internet.

I bought the magazines — plural.
Stacks of them. Enough that the guy at the checkout probably assumed I was opening a scouting agency.

They all said:
“Draft a quarterback high.”
So I did what any overconfident newcomer would do:

– Aaron Rodgers in the 2nd round of one league.
– Tom Brady in the 2nd round of the other.

Was it sound strategy?
Debatable.
Was it bold, dramatic, and dripping with rookie energy?
Absolutely.

I studied mock drafts like they were SAT prep.
I tore through cheat sheets, ADP charts, sleeper lists, bust alerts, injury reports, and preseason hype videos.
I was inhaling fantasy football content like oxygen.

And somehow… it worked.

I didn’t just hold my own — I won both Costco Travel leagues I was in.
TWO.
CHAMPIONSHIPS.

I pocketed $1,100 — which felt like winning the lottery, but better, because it came with bragging rights.
For a moment, I thought I had cracked the code.
Like I’d stumbled onto the sacred algorithm.
Like I had unlocked The Fantasy Football Hack™.

Spoiler Alert:
I had not.
The universe would correct me later — repeatedly — with a decade of humble pie.

But that year?
Man… that year felt electric.

2010 was the season that whispered,
“Hey kid… you might be good at this.”

Before the long Museum Corridor of Mediocrity…
Before Dead Money United…
Before I started chasing comeback narratives just to stay sane…

There was this rookie season.
Bright.
Bold.
Chaotic.
Triumphant.

The perfect beginning to a perfectly messy 15-year journey.

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Dead Money United | 2011-2022

From 2011 through 2022, my friends and co-league members never said it to my face — they didn’t need to … My placements spoke louder than a stadium PA system turned up to max volume:

I was dead money.
A walking contribution.
The fantasy football equivalent of the guy who brings snacks to the poker table because he sure as hell isn’t winning any hands.

Every league has that kid on the playground who gets picked last for two-hand touch.
And in most of my leagues during this era?
That kid… was me.

Not because I didn’t try.
Not because I didn’t study, strategize, read magazines, stalk waiver reports, or check Yahoo projections like they were lottery numbers.
But because my teams kept collapsing like a dollar-store lawn chair at a Mississippi barbecue.

Across twelve years, I lived in the space between
“Maybe this is the year?”
and
“Oh hell… not again.”

Some seasons teased promise — a 3rd place finish here, a respectable 4th there — but most fell squarely into the Museum Corridor of Mediocrity.

A long, dimly lit hallway lined with participation ribbons and waiver-wire regrets.

And yet… I kept showing up. I kept drafting. I kept tweaking that waiver wire like it was a Rubik’s Cube I swore I could eventually solve if I just moved one more piece.

Because under the pile of bad beats, busted sleepers, bye-week disasters, and soul-crushing Monday Night stat corrections… there was still joy in the grind.

And honestly? I’d rather be the guy who keeps digging than the guy who walked away.

That’s why, despite more “dead money” years than I care to count, I stayed.
Because I knew a spark would come eventually — a season where effort, identity, and something resembling luck would finally align.

And that spark arrived in 2023.

2023 — The Ted Lasso Season

This was the year everything changed — not in the standings, but in spirit.

I started the season 0–4, the kind of start that usually sinks a team straight into Dead Money United territory.

But instead of folding, I decided to borrow some belief — Ted Lasso style.

I noticed there were 14 “trick plays” (set pieces, really) across the show’s three seasons.
And we get 14 regular fantasy weeks.

So each week, I renamed my team after one of those plays.
Each name a little mantra.
A reminder to believe, adapt, improvise.

And somehow — through grit, luck, and Lasso energy — I clawed my way back into the playoffs.
A 6th place finish on paper, but one of the proudest seasons I’ve ever played.

Because that year?
My spirit didn’t collapse.
My lawn chair held.

2024 — The Quiet Season

2024 wasn’t about fantasy football.

It was about Jen.

I stepped away from the Arizona warehouse league to protect my energy and focus on the thing that mattered most — building my relationship with her from September through December.

But I didn’t want to lose my long-held seat in Any Given Sunday, so I played quietly, respectfully, intentionally. No chaos. No two-league juggling.

Just one team, one league, one season of balance.

And somehow… that quietness taught me more about fantasy — and about myself — than any dramatic season before. It was another “meh”, “mid“finish; 5th place.

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Last Christmas …

“Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…”
— because that’s exactly what 2025 felt like.

For the first time in years, my work schedule at the big-box-retailer-that-shall-not-be-named aligned perfectly with Jen’s. Monday through Friday for me!

Weekends free. Weekends together.

By late August, I quietly floated an idea:

“Hey love… do you think we could maybe add NFL RedZone through YouTube TV or something…?”

I didn’t even finish the sentence.

Before I could say RedZ— she had already added NFL RedZone to her Xfinity package.

Just like that. Click, click, *bOoM*. A love language expressed in channel upgrades.

And somewhere inside that happiness, September arrived — and with it, my draft for Any Given Sunday.
We were hanging out with her friends Amy and Mike over Labor Day weekend (a moment I’ll mention in my 2025 Year-In-Review), and I carved out the time to build my squad.

Turns out she’s a ginormous Seattle Seahawks fan first, NFL fan second.Our unspoken agreement formed instantly:

Seahawks always preempt RedZone. At Seattle halftime, we flip to RZ. Third quarter starts?
Back to the Hawks. I accepted, joyfully and without negotiation.

This was our rhythm.
Our Sundays.
Our quiet little ritual.

Coach Danny — our commissioner — usually delivers the weekly wrap-up. Sharp, witty, 90% of the jokes pointed directly at Paris.
But around Week 6, I started pestering him.

“Hey Coach, what about the wrap-up?”
“Hey Coach, you dropping the report?”

Eventually I realized:
Why don’t I just do the damn thing myself?

So I wrote Week 6.
Then Week 7.
Then Week 8.
Nobody objected.
The league barely reacted, but that didn’t matter — it kept me writing, kept my creativity moving, kept my pen warm each week.

And here we are now.
Week 14 almost complete.
My record: 7–7
My playoff fate dangling on Points For, fantasy football’s version of a college admissions waitlist.

My fifteenth year of fantasy football ends up being exactly what the previous fourteen have taught me:

It’s about showing up.
It’s about being engaged.
It’s about trying to matter, trying to improve, trying to stay relevant.
It’s about mistakes made and lessons learned.
It’s about the absurd, agonizing joy of a season that lasts 14 to 18 weeks and still manages to define your fall.

Last Christmas… I gave this season my heart.

And fantasy football, true to form, did what fantasy football always does:
It kept me guessing, kept me grinding, kept me coming back for more.