Fantasy Football: A Woman in a Man’s World

Tension is high. Palms are sweaty. Beer is in the cooler and everyone in the room is armed with printed materials and pens. Weeks of studying, plotting and planning has all been in preparation for this one big moment. A barren banner spread along one wall with 8 empty columns is about to be marked upon over the next 4 hours.

The headers on each column are now filled in with the names Cheeseheads, Rabid, Go Deep, Rebel Dogs, Midgets Punching Clowns, Wide Right, Tahokies and East Coast Connection.

This folks is the beginning of a Fantasy Football Draft.

This folks is the 32nd year I’ve participated in a Fantasy Football league in South Lake Tahoe.

I am trying to channel in the ghosts of my past teams for inspiration and guidance as I anticipate what my first draft choice will be. Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ray Wersching (I still remember his 4 field goals in Super Bowl XVI took me from 4th place to 1st place), Marshall Faulk, Natrone Means, Chuck Muncie and Barry Sanders are all sending me a mixed message. Will my first place finishes with these players bring me back to my glory days? After all, I’m the only female in the room which has been pretty much the case for many years. Some other gals come in for a year or two but they don’t stick around. I have something to prove.

For years I’ve watched the face of others when they found out I was into Fantasy Football (I tried Rotisserie Baseball once, but talk about a life taken over by sports!). People assumed for years that it was something the guys did and that girls didn’t know anything about football. Now many women participate in leagues around the country.

I’ve tried to quit Fantasy Football for years but I've always returned. Once because my football partner had a heart condition and Lupus and I wanted to keep the joy that football brought to her life. Then she passed away so I had to do a year in honor of her. Another time I tried but was bombarded with phone calls and begging to stay in (you see, I don’t say “no” very easily). I actually took a year off last year and enjoyed a year of just watching my San Francisco 49ers and didn’t have to worry about who was scoring during any other game. It was actually a bit of heaven and less stressful. But then, this year, that phone call came again. The commissioner of my old league, Bob Davis, is ending the league after this season and he wanted to bring all of us “oldies” back together.

So here I sit in the room on draft day, waiting for the first draft pick. Beers are in glasses, some tequila shots have been poured, teams with more than one “owner” are in deep conversation. Those that know their fantasy football and are up on all the news know that Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings will be the first pick. But who will be taken 2nd? There's lots of trash talking, fun/rude comments about the team you’re drafting and a few unrepeatable words that are yelled out when you take a team’s favorite player right before their turn. Four hours of this and I’m enjoying every minute of it. Thank goodness for that phone call a few weeks back. How could I have lived without Fantasy Football?

For those of you who have never really looked into Fantasy Football, here is a brief overview. What started in Oakland in 1963 and was called GOPPPL (Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League). These 8 initial members were made up of administrative affiliates of the AFL (American Football League), pro football journalists or someone who had bought or sold 10 season tickets to the Oakland Raiders. My first league had been going strong when I moved to South Lake Tahoe and it was comprised of Harrah’s employees that had moved over to the old Park Tahoe in 1978. Today, an estimated 32 million people engage in Fantasy Football.

We all started before the internet, before Yahoo Sports, back when we had to get the morning newspaper and check out box scores. This meant getting up early and running down to the store in anticipation on a Monday morning to grab a newspaper! The “sport” has evolved a lot since those early days, but here we are, the 8 teams gathered in South Lake Tahoe on a Tuesday night, oblivious to what is going on in the outside world and all tuned into football.

Each Fantasy Football League can be made up differently, however the group wants. In our league each team will draft a team consisting of 2 quarterbacks, 4 running backs, 6 wide receivers and/or tight ends, 2 kickers and 2 defense/kick return teams. Each player can only be drafted once and we go in a special draft order, the same one we’ve used forever. Once each team is full, the draft is over. 128 players have been chosen. Weeks (or maybe just days for some) of preparedness is over.

The pro football season has begun. My team, the Tahokies, is led by Colin Kaepernick and Trent Richardson.

Sundays don’t belong to me anymore, they’ve been taken over by football games. Life as I knew it is over for 17 weeks.

Call me in January.

Paula Peterson is the news and features editor for South Tahoe Now. She can be reached at tahoepaula@sbcglobal.net.