Today is a huge day for football.  It also marks the end of the Momspective Fantasy Football Training for this year.  I think as the years progress, we’ll see more people joining up, since I’ll be making a few exciting changes.

Of course, my point in creating this league is to help women strengthen their relationships with their husbands/boyfriends by learning more about the NFL.  Some of the players this year knew and loved football, but wanted to get to know what the big deal is behind their spouses love for fantasy football while others who knew nothing about the sport used this as a tool to learn about the sport and show that they want to make an effort to understand the season that takes our men from us for two, sometimes three days a week.

This season, I had three training leagues and I’m so impressed with those who stuck it through to the end.  I’ve heard wonderful things about what it’s done for both the individual playing as well as their relationships.

In the first league, I actually made it to the playoffs but lost to “Steelers Girl”.  She absolutely beat my ass with a final score of 105 to 58.   Not humiliating.  Nope.  Not at all *sniff*.  Momspective II didn’t have me anywhere near the playoffs.  The two teams competing for the win was “Team Madmom” vs. “Boston Babe The Bumbles” and that Babe took that league win 130 to 52.  The Bumbles truly loved this Fantasy Football season.  She wrote about it more than I did. (It gets better. Click to continue reading…)

Have you ever felt your heart racing in excited anticipation, just waiting for the object of your desire to be yours, truly all yours, once and for all? Perhaps while shopping at a favorite store, waiting for that lady to stop fingering the fabric of a perfect dress just your size and walking away for you to snatch it up victoriously off the rack. Or watching the timer decline ever so slowly on EBAY while you wait with bated breath praying that your fellow bidders have run out of money so that you win the Wii console for below market value. Or with fingers and toes crossed as you peek through one open eye to see if your child’s kick, shot or pass was good with time expiring on the clock for the victory. Well that is how I was feeling late Monday night as the game clock ran out on the Patriots/Saints game.

You see, I had a slim lead on my competition in the Ladies League. All of my fantasy team’s players were done. I had no one playing in the late game. And here came Julie – that scrappy, smart, Momspective League founder nipping at my heels. She had two big spots left to play for her – the Patriots’ Running Back and the Patriots’ Defense. Well that put me in quite a pickle. Because of course I am a Patriots fan . It probably put Julie in a pickle too because she is not shy about sharing the fact that she hates Tom Brady and the Pats in general. She’s a Carolina Panthers fan, so I cut her some slack because they are just awful this year, and the Pats have defeated them in the Super Bowl before – she’s allowed to be bitter. So each of us was put in the odd position of rooting against our hearts. Because our pride and bragging rights were at stake. (It gets better. Click to continue reading…)

Oh.  My. Gawd.

AAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHAT THE FUCK!?

What is WRONG with me!?!?!

SHIT!

*breathe*

Okay.  I feel better.

NO I EFFING DON’T.

Yes I do.

That is how I’ve been starting out most of my Monday and/or Tuesday mornings for the past ten weeks.  As commissioner of the various Momspective Fantasy Football Training leagues and as a player in my neighborhood (all male, except for me) league, I have a wide variety of feelings I need to work through each week.  Fantasy Football makes you FEEL.  It might be one of the only things on God’s great earth that cause men to have any emotion of any kind.  Football can make a man slap another man’s ass or punch that man in the face, all in the same hour.

The league I pay most attention to is my Spicewood neighborhood league, simply because I had to pay to get in it and there’s a good amount of cash to split up for the winners.   What bothers me about this league is that I was in Chicago when the live auction draft took place, so I trusted my husband to handle my draft.  That’s really unfair to us both, because he had to pick his own team and try to make a balanced team for me lest I think he drafted my shit team on purpose and set himself up for a quickie divorce. (It gets better. Click to continue reading…)

Because we’re about 2/3 of the way through the Fantasy Football season (1/2 way through if you count the playoffs), I’m going to take the time to remind everyone why we’ve gotten into this in the first place and recap what we’ve talked about so far.

My goal in creating this training course is to strengthen relationships.  Years ago, before I met my husband, I loathed football.  I hated Sunday’s for taking my men away from me.  When I watched the Super Bowl, I chose the team I liked based on hot guys and jersey colors.

One day, a few months into my relationship with my husband, he explained how much football means to him.  He has always been great about being supportive of what I’d like and he’d never asked me for anything.  Ryan is a software engineer and there is nothing that man can program, including his wife. (It gets better. Click to continue reading…)

Okay, folks.  We’re in the thick of the Fantasy Football season.

Some of you might be diligent in your team planning.  By now, you should have gotten the jist of the game and are hopefully checking your players to see how they’re doing each week and making the appropriate adjustments.

Some of you might have forgotten about Fantasy Football completely.  You had every intention of playing and learning, but life just got in the way and you guiltily tell yourself you’ll check it when you can.  Trust me, it happens to the best of us.

At this point in the season, NFL teams are taking their bye weeks.  Each NFL team plays 16 games out of 17 weeks in the NFL schedule. The game that they don’t play is called their bye week, or “Open Date”. It is important in fantasy football to make sure that your starters and backups do not have the same bye week since one of the primary reasons for drafting backup players to have coverage during the bye week of your starter.

I went over how to use the Waiver Wire a few weeks ago, so if you need help adding and dropping players, you should get what you need from there.  I also put a YouTube video up of how to put players on the trading block, if any of you are switching players around.

As you might have noticed, this game is completely unpredictable.  One week, you have a healthy player bring you 20 fantasy points and the following week, that same player is pulled from the lineup because of an injury.

If you’re really into this, you’ll probably check your team every few days.  If you’re my husband, you’ll check YOUR fantasy team every day, twice a day and then gloat when you kick your WIFE’S ass the week of our match up.  Dink.

At the very least, be sure to check your team each week by Thursday afternoons.  I say this because as the year continues, we’ll start seeing games on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, so you’ll want to be sure you have your starters all set.

That said, if you have any questions on the game, please leave them in the comments on this post so I can address them in the coming weeks.  We’re about halfway through the season and I love the enthusiasm I’m seeing with league players.  I’m already planning for next year and we’ve decided to have two separate training leagues – one all female basic training league and another couple league, where you’ll be able to compete against your significant other every week!  Ryan, I am gonna beat your ass!  WOO!!!