I know the question on everyone’s mind is, “Where can you pretend that you are the billionaire owner of a sports franchise, gain bragging rights among your friends and have an excuse to engage in a geek-sport that you can still claim is not, in fact, a geek-sport?” Here is an unexpected answer that will fill that gaping hole that currently exists in your life: join a fantasy football league!

For those of you not familiar with what is certain to become America’s 21st-century pastime, here is a brief outline of what exactly fantasy football is.

You get together eight to 12 people to be team owners, and then crate a draft order. The owners draft National Football League players based on how they think the players will perform in the upcoming season. Owners are allowed to play a certain number of players each week at each position, and are awarded points based on each player’s performance in their NFL game that weekend. You can either compete head-to-head against another team in your league each week, or have cumulative point totals for the season.

For those of you who still don’t understand, join a public league and figure it out on your own before you make an ass out of yourself in a league with friends.

For those select few of you not currently participating in a league (or three, or seven, depending on how cool you are), here is what you stand to gain by playing.

Each weekend, instead of sitting alone in your room wondering about the amazing things you’d do if you had friends, fantasy football provides the renewable pleasure of a weekend of unpredictable excitement. If you happen to have friends, you can sit around and think of how much better you are than them since you engage in an intellectual pursuit such as fantasy football. Each week presents a new opportunity for fantasy glory!

Every weekend you arrange your roster, agonizing over each critical player; who to bench, who to play, who to drop, who to pick up. When your roster is finally set, and you are confident that your team (in my case “ArnoldsHouseOf Moss”) is capable of beating this week’s opponent (my friend Neil’s “Van Buren Boys”), you then have the opportunity to engage in perhaps the best part of fantasy football: making fun of everyone else in the league.

As the sport is usually played through an online intermediary such as Yahoo (game available at http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com), there is a feature in most leagues that allows message-board style communications among members of the league.

As my league is composed of myself and seven high school friends, insults come from a variety of angles. For your viewing pleasure, here are a number of recent posts from our league:

“Matt, you don’t take showers regularly,” “Tom, you still suck and you dated a fetal pig for two years” (Tom is first place so we all hate him), “Your ass is grass,” “Do me,” “Neil, it’s called trash talk…that’s all…sorry if you took it too seriously and tried to make it a debate as you called it…but in case you didn’t realize it, debate is just another word for ‘not getting laid.’”

So it continues until a brilliant suggestion is posted by Kyle, in an effort to quell what had been weeks of insults, personal attacks, familial attacks (“I’ll shit on your family”), the aforementioned former girlfriend attack and occasionally some attacks actually based on the performance of our fantasy football teams. Kyle’s suggestion went as follows:

“I think we could turn this into a sitcom. An unusually diverse group of suburban kids all go to college and hilarity ensues when the Indian, the Jew, the Korean, the Stoner, the Douche-bag with a big head, the Shaggy kid who never cuts his hair, the Golfer and Dan all try and co-exist peacefully in a fantasy football chartroom. There could be little snippets of all of our lives in between posts...I'm telling you I'm taking this right to ABC.”

Now, under normal circumstances, you would assume that such a seemingly brilliant and humorous suggestion could be universally accepted as funny, and Kyle would be commended by all. However, that is not what happens on the fantasy football digital gridiron.

The banter continues.

“Dude, what the fuck is a ‘snippet?’”

“First Episode: A pointless fight breaks out between the Korean and the Indian regarding the number of times per week the Korean showers.”

“Second Episode: The Absent-minded Stoner forgets to check his team every week, while the Jew gets into a funny situation when he has to explain to all of his new friends at school what his silly little hat is, and why he can’t eat pork.”

Aside from silly kids, even actual NFL players have started getting into fantasy football. In a number of interviews, both Keyshawn Johnson and Randy Moss have mentioned their positions among fantasy players. Unfortunately, Johnson never scores (I picked him last year…horrible), though Moss is a fantasy God (my second round pick this year).

So, with all of this in mind, next year when the summer is coming to a close and you can’t think of anything to do with yourself, remember that crappy article you read in The Mac Weekly suggesting you spend your time playing fantasy football.

With all of the potential beer, pizza and wings involved in watching the real football games, the potential for bragging rights among your friends and the guaranteed frequent angry, ignorant, insulting and always hilarious posts within the league (“Tim, do you have any pictures of your mom naked?”), what more could you possibly want in life than fantasy football?