A girl's survival guide to live fantasy football drafts

Here we have another wonderful post by our newest blogger, Elissa Glucksman!  This represents the start of a series of posts featuring a female perspective on the manly world of sports.  Enjoy :-)
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I have always been a sports fan. When I was a little girl I watched Mets and Jets games with my dad, and growing up I always loved talking/debating sports with boyfriends. (Yes, I was that girl.) But there is one aspect of sports that I have never truly experienced until this past year, and that is the world of fantasy sports. I know that this is going to sound absurd to most fantasy sports fans, but in my mind, fantasy anything involved groups of dungeons and dragons players hitting each other with oversized Styrofoam sticks behind the right field fence of our softball field. As far as I was concerned, I wanted nothing to do with fantasy [insert sport here].

Someone got the wear-a-jersey-to-the-draft memo!

That said, I’m not one to miss out on a new sports trend, especially one as popular as fantasy sports. So last year I managed my first fantasy football team. It was an all-girls league with an auto-draft. (I’ve come to learn that auto-drafts are the equivalent of Rosie Ruiz hopping on the subway to finish the New York City Marathon – a cheap way of achieving an end that most other people work for.) For me, it was the perfect entrée into fantasy sports. There was very little pressure (this may come as a surprise, but happiness for most girls does not depend on how their fantasy team performed on any given Sunday) and I didn’t have to do any homework before beginning this extracurricular activity. Which brings me to last week’s draft.

This year, my boyfriend Jay convinced me to enlist in a fantasy football league with him and 10 other people. I figured this would be no problem, as I have a solid year’s experience as a fantasy team manager. But, oh wait…the league is holding a LIVE draft. Ladies and gentlemen, it is at this point that I said no. I enjoy watching football and I know the game fairly well, but I do not know which wide receiver will get my team the most points or which sleeper will come through for me in a big bye week. I used to dream of playing shortstop for the Mets or midfield for US Soccer, but at no point did I ever fancy myself the Talented Mrs. Roto.

For those of you who have read Jay’s posts, he’s a lawyer in every sense of the word and can argue circles around most people until they are exhausted and/or simply give in. That is how I ended up participating in the fantasy draft this past Friday night. (That’s right ladies, my boyfriend takes me out on a Friday night to a stranger's house in Plantsville, Connecticut to pick fake teams for a fake league – you know you’re jealous!) I walked away from the live draft with a pretty decent team featuring some pretty amazing running backs -- who knew they were so important? -- a full stomach, and a girl’s guide to how to survive your first live fantasy football draft:

1.  Bring a large notebook/clipboard full of notes (the subject of the notes does not matter).

Although I don’t really care about fantasy sports (yet), I am competitive, and I don’t like losing. If I am going to be in this league, I want to at least hold my own. A friend helped me put together what is the equivalent of “An Idiot’s Guide to Fantasy Football” (it turned out to be very helpful and he should market it in the future). I didn’t realize that a fantasy football draft involved such intensive homework. There are magazines with more statistics than I could ever hope to cram into my head and theories on which positions to take and when. I just studied for two bar exams. The last thing I want to do is “study” for a fantasy draft. I was apparently the only one at the draft with this mindset. Everyone else had folders full of players and their stats, magazines full of notes, and clipboards with strategies written all over them. These guys weren’t messing around.

Next year, my plan is to bring one of my old law school notebooks to the draft. I probably won’t have the urge to study and prepare for the draft for hours and hours next year either. If I bring a big binder full of my law notes I will at least look intimidating with my very large notebook presumably packed with “important fantasy notes.” Behind the notebook I’ll keep my friend’s 2011 version of “The Idiot’s Guide to Fantasy Football.”

2.  Do not wear a dress to a fantasy draft – apparently football jerseys and jeans are the required uniform.

Even though there were no games on TV and the season hasn’t even started yet, everyone showed up wearing the jersey of someone on their favorite team. I clearly missed the wear-a-jersey memo and showed up in a green dress. What a horrible fashion faux pas!

Our draft featured a laptop spreadsheet connected to a HDTV.  No whiteboards!

While sitting and watching the other guys at this draft, I came up with a theory about why everyone at the fantasy draft wore their football jerseys. (Of course I was watching everyone else at the draft -- who was I kidding? I was the only player not analyzing my draft strategy and scouring a magazine during the draft. I had my Idiots Guide to Fantasy Football and I was sticking to that.) Everyone I’ve spoken to about fantasy football assures me that the game -- and it is simply a game -- has nothing to do with the football season. When drafting players, there is no such thing as allegiance to your favorite team. You pick the best guy available at the position you want. So why wear a jersey of your favorite real-life team??

My theory: It’s like kissing a Cross or a Star of David before doing something stupid. You hope that because you acknowledged G-d first he won’t be quite as angry at you for the stupid thing you did. Maybe the football gods won’t smite my Jets if I continue to support them by wearing a Mark Sanchez jersey while drafting Tom Brady in the third round.

3.  It’s important to pace yourself at a live fantasy draft.

Everyone at the draft consumed half their body weight in buffalo wings, sausages, and cheese. Because I don’t care so much about fantasy football (at least not yet) and because I didn’t have 500 pages of statistics to review between rounds, my primary purpose at the draft was to eat as much delicious, clog-your-arteries-within-minutes food as I could. I think next year I have to approach the live draft like a competitive eater would – eat very little the day of the draft so that I can maximize my capacity for brownies, chips, and wings. Despite my “success” at not embarrassing myself at my first live fantasy draft, I still have a long way to go before I reach Rex Ryan status. And I’m not just talking about his knack for scouting talent. After seeing the amount of food available at a fantasy draft, I can understand how Rexy developed his infamous physique!