Of course there is other very exciting sports news filling the airwaves right now (Pedro Martinez season debut with the Mets and striking out his 3002 batter (only the 15th player to do so and certainly a boost to the Mets as they eye the post season) for example, but for me it’s all about fantasy football right now.

For those that are unfamiliar with fantasy football, the beauty of the game is that you pretend you are an NFL coach and you draft your own team of players (from all 32 teams in the League). The draft takes place before the start of the season (which is Thursday, September 6th this year).

My draft is Tuesday, September 4th. Our League will gather in a conference room in New York where the winning team from last year (unfortunately not us) will provide pizza and drinks and we’ll spend the better part of 3 hours drafting what each of us thinks will be the winning combination of players. According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, 15 million Americans play fantasy sports and 90 percent play fantasy football. Most of these players will have spent the last few months sifting through magazines, newspapers and sports web sites attempting to have a leg up on who might be the “sleeper” of the season. Of course this is a great strategy, but just to play devils’ advocate, the best year our team ever had, we went into the draft completely unprepared. With the first pick of the draft we spent over half of our money on a superstar running back and then picked up our remaining team with whatever money we had left. We won the League that year. I’d love to say we played brilliantly, but in all honesty, we simply got lucky, didn’t have any significant injuries and had great matchups. So with that said, maybe we’ll wing it again this year and see what happens. In any case, we are guaranteed to be brilliant for at least a few days (until Thursday night at least when the NFL season officially begins).

And speaking of Thursday night, the New Orleans Saints vs. last years’ Super Bowl champs, the Indianapolis Colts. What a way to start the season….stay tuned for our preview and how to talk the talk Thursday night.

Watercooler Discussion: If you play fantasy football or would like to, whom would you draft with your first pick?

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