Over 25 million Americans play Fantasy Football. It is the ultimate reality game where you can play against family, friends, and strangers by selecting professional players like you were the General Manager / Owner of a real team. It’s your wits against your opponents and your undeniable belief your selection process is better than theirs. With 3 teams on 3 different websites I AM HOOKED!

It is estimated the average age of a Fantasy Football participant is 33 years old and 20% are Female.   I don’t quite fit this demographic.  In America, your team’s performance becomes the water cooler conversation every Monday morning at work.  Favorite teams have almost (or maybe already have) been replaced by the individual performances of your players and there’s nothing like a good brag about how ‘your’ Antonio Brown went off on Sunday.

Oh, when you’re putting your team together there’s a Drafting strategy but you need a lot of luck your guy is still available.  You want to select always the highest ranked veteran players with successful track records, the best rookies, and your estimated “Sleeper.”    The Sleeper is always an interesting assessment.  This is the athlete who everyone thinks will be good only if the moon and stars align.  Usually, this is a second stringer who is lower ranked than the top players and you ‘steal’ him away from the teams drafting ahead of you.  When the starter goes down, you look like a genius!

Some of the leagues I play in are for money and some just for bragging rights.  The bottom line is, I take it seriously and my compulsion to win is greater than ever.  I’m constantly tweaking my lineup.  I drop players after bad performances and constantly look for replacement players because you never know when an injury will shatter not only your favorite player’s knee but also your chances to win.  Football is a rough game but so is Fantasy.  You don’t ever want to finish last.

For my non-American or non-Football fan friends, the game is really quite simple.  You are awarded points for individual and Team Defensive performances.  You score points for Touchdowns, Field Goals, Yards gained, etc.  There’s no less than 25 scoring categories.  You compete against another team in your league each week by selecting a starting lineup and the highest number of points wins.  Usually the top 4 teams make the playoffs and winner takes all.  The websites from the likes of CBS Sports, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo, and NFL.com all offer games free of charge and they do all of the calculations for you in real time.  You can check for up to the minute results on your mobile device, tablet, or PC.  When I’m walking the dog, going to the grocery store, or even leave town, I’m not far away from seeing how my team is doing.

The brilliance of this strategy for the NFL, television networks, and advertisers is this – I now watch more games than just the one for my favorite team, the San Francisco 49ers.  My “man cave” has DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket where I can flip to any game my player is playing in and can even set the Fantasy Football Tracker channel to proactively notify me when my player has scored.  Oh, man, this is so fun.

I’ve played other fantasy sports like baseball and golf but nothing compares to football.  I think because there are so few games and the outcomes so unpredictable.  Not that baseball and golf are all that predictable, it’s all just a big fat guess really.  No one really knows who on any given Sunday is going to do well.  But, there are websites and television programs dedicated to providing you with all of the statistics you need to make the best educated decision.

Or you can simply come to the guru of the “Portland Gamers” and I’ll give you my rankings like I’m Matthew Berry, who has made a living of such a thing.  A Fantasy Pro.  Now, that is what I call a dream job.