From the Commissioner

I received this in the form of a comment from Janelle's husband, who leads the league my husband plays in.

From Heath: Husband of a Blogger and Player of Fantasy Football

Preface:
Amanda, I loved your story. Janelle directed me to read your post…she definitely feels your pain.

After reading the other comments of the “football widows”, I thought maybe I would respond not just to your story, but to perhaps share some insight from the biggest fantasy football nerd to ever play the game, to those wives and mothers who can’t understand their “boy’s” consuming need for sport. Since I’m not part of the “blogging world”, I hope I’m following all the right etiquette for posting.

My Thoughts:
As Commissioner of The Armchair Fantasy Football League, in which your husband "Ghostrider" is the defending champ, it makes me proud to see the mangers of my league taking such pride in their pre-draft preparations.

It is no doubt that Curtis was able to bring home last year's title because of the understanding and support he got at home last season, just as I did the year before (insert sarcasm).

We (men) may not spend endless hours detailing the nuances of our day to have strangers to tell us what they feel about our stories (you bloggers are a special breed; my wife especially).

Fantasy football gives us (men) a fleeting chance each year to satisfy our need for competition and strategy, our need to fight and conquer, and our need to win and just be men in the company of other men, whether in person or across town, without our man spirit demoralized by pink fluffy stuff (I love my Ella, but I feel like I live in a cotton-candy land).

We get to go head-to-head each week against our friends and take every opportunity to make disparaging remarks concerning their matriarchal lineage and their inabilities to defeat you, and no one gets their feelings hurt. We test ourselves to see if we are smarter than the “experts” at Yahoo, Sports Illustrated, and ESPN, buy benching a starter in favor of a waiver-wire-wanna-be, just to because he is playing Cleveland. We test our, albeit trivial, knowledge to see if the wide receiver we took in the 11th round will have a break-out season, and you are the only one who predicted it (Vincent Jackson WR-SD). And to see if this is the year Julius Jones (RB-DAL) finally becomes the featured back he showed flashes of his rookie year, now that Bill Parcels is gone.

We connect in a world, call it fantasy if you will, where we can talk for hours to each other about a subject that the mere mention of in front of our wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, or female friends and cousins, is sure to grant a deep sigh followed by a prolonged rolling of the eyes. Probably much the same as my reaction to the click, click, clicking, I hear whilst I'm trying to watch a movie with my wife and she’s posting a comment on MommyBloggersUnite...I digress.

Ultimately, while watching football, basketball, baseball, (and golf when desperate), we men can sit in a room and hurl insults and sarcasm at each other all day. But thru the course of a game in those moments of victory or defeat, whether in the same room or across the world we can share a myriad of common feelings and thoughts that bond us without even saying a word. Just knowing that every Thanksgiving, my father, whom we seldom see on holidays, is watching the Cowboys just as I am, and without even talking, we are sharing the same experience miles away. And that ladies is real.