Fantasy Football 2007

Each year on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, we have our annual fantasy football draft for the upcoming season of the 45th Parallel League. It's a date marked down in our calendars. Something we do not miss. Ever! My brother-in-law is the league commissioner and there are ten teams: Salem Fluff, The Underdog Pound, Ratdogs, DeathBlo, Chico's Bail Bonds, Air Biscuits, Haskells' Havoc, The Exterminators, The Oafs and Jason's Juggernauts. Half the teams are coached/co-coached by women.

The draft is nothing but a bunch of smack-talk, yummy snacks and exhibition games playing in the background. Some memorable moments of past drafts include a former coach drafting Keith Jackson (who didn't play, but was a ABC sports commentator, though there was a tight end named Keith Jackson, too, but he no longer played when this happened), someone drafting a player who'd been killed in the off-season and another drafting a player who was sitting in jail. In case you haven't figured it out, half the coaches don't follow football closely and do it mainly for the fun draft party and the other half live and breathe the game.

Yesterday we had a bit of a controversy because one player purposely tanked her line-up for the last two games of the season so she could get the first pick in the draft this year. That's against the rule so we voted and changed those two losses to wins meaning she got the fifth pick, not the first! Serious stuff, I'm telling you.

Since this was the first real television I've watched all summer, I got to see a few funny commercials. Sports related, of course. I also discovered a series of Fantasy Football Rule Ads put out the last two years, that I wanted to share with you just in case you are unfamiliar with the ins and outs of fantasy football.

Fantasy Rule #8



Fantasy Rule #17



Fantasy Rule #19



Fantasy Rule #32



I spent most of the draft revising a scene in my proposal. I stopped long enough to snack and help hubby decide who are next draft pick would be. This is the team we (the Ratdogs) came up with:

QB Carson Palmer
QB Rex Grossman
QB JP Losman
QB Chad Pennington
RB LaDainian Tomlinson
RB Maurice Jones-Drew
RB Tatum Bell
RB TJ Duckett
RB Vernand Morency
RB Jason Snelling
WR Anquan Boldin
WR Lee Evans
WR Laveraunues Coles
WR Braylon Edwards
WR Isaac Bruce
WR Dwayne Jarrett
TE LJ Smith
TE Owen Daniels
PK Shayne Graham
PK Stephen Gostkowski
DT NY Giants
DT NY Jets

After the draft, people sat around and helped me brainstorm names for my hero. They couldn't understand why I didn't want to name him Jerry (Jerry Porter is a football player.) Needless to say, the brainstorming got out of hand pretty fast. Right before I left this commercial came on. I thought it was funny and wanted to share.



We had the number one pick in the draft this year which means we came in dead last. This after an undefeated start the first few weeks. The only good thing is we can't finish worse than we did last year!!!! Go Ratdogs!

Hope you enjoy Labor Day!