I thought about calling a press conference today, but that seemed a bit overkill. A simple press release posted on this site should suffice. In the interest of preventing tons of interview requests from ESPN, CNN and other Media blogs, I am granting full reprint rights of this release.
Today I am announcing my retirement from Fantasy Football.
This decision has been a couple of months in the making. I was thinking about goals I have for the coming year and how much time it would take to realize them. Specifically, I’d really like to get down on paper the story of a guy who wins money on a gameshow and adopts an amazing little girl before said little girl gets too old and all of the memories fade to unreliability.
But endeavors such as that take a good clip of time, and time is not something my life has an abundance of right now. To excel in a new arena requires I give something up, and that “something” is fantasy sports. There’s even a good chance I might have to give up one or two more “somethings” along the way.
The final decision to hang up my clipboard came this week as I started to get the itch to begin my draft board. This is the time of year that I start draft prep, so I poked around a couple of websites to get the draft juices flowing. But this year things just didn’t seem right. They always say that any time a competitor starts to loose that fire, you should just hang it up.
So this football season will be very different. I probably won’t know who the third string running back is on each team. I won’t be tempted to sit down and watch two last-place teams slog out a brutal game announced by the last-choice pair of announcers. There will be no compulsion to root against the Chiefs so that my fantasy team can rack up a few extra points. Shoot, as much as the Manny and I enjoy watching soccer, it will likely get more screen time than the NFL does this year.
There will undoubtedly be moments of temptation over the next six weeks. Lucrative offers to get back in the game. But I will remain resolute in my stance.
Granted, I always reserve the right to go all Jordan45 on cats come 2010 and beyond. I’m just sayin’. Sometimes a dude gets the itch.
Renew and Restore
