GEEKOLOGY 101: Well, it’s that time again. Fantasy football is in session!

Yep, I am one of THOSE guys. You know them, you see them, you pretend to not be friends with them. That’s right I am a fantasy football Geek as well.

Like most fantasy football geeks, I have been playing the game for several years. Actually I am well past a decade in my participation in this yearly vigil.

Let’s just put it this way, I was playing fantasy football before you could play it online. WHAT?

Yep, that is right, before ESPN & Yahoo made the process easier for all of us, we used to do the game entirely offline.

My brother Tony, bless his heart, would keep track of the entire season through an Excel spreadsheet and the box scores from the newspaper. He would spend HOURS compiling all this data to let us know, via phone, if we won or not.

Sometimes it could be a day or two before we would hear the final tally. It was a bit maddening at times but fun nonetheless.

Luckily, though, the process was streamlined and taken to the internet and gave my brother his life back.

Now you just have to log on to any sports website and you will likely see a Fantasy Football sign up link somewhere on their page.

I mean, it is big business and everyone is trying to get a piece of that pie.

For me, it has gone from a friendly game, to obsession, and back to a friendly game.

I mean, there were times in the past where I was running five to six teams a year. That is way too much for one person to follow.

Luckily, since the birth of my kids, I have scaled back quite a bit to only four.

Now most of you are probably shocked at that number but, for the most part, these are very laid back leagues. No trophy, no money involved, just pure “bragging rights” only.

So I don’t spend half the amount of time pouring over statlines or scouring the team reports for the next great steal.

This year, I haven’t even started to delve into my draft strategy. I just don’t really care. Well I do care, but I am finding that I was losing enjoyment of the game by putting way to much time into it.

For me this is about having fun with friends now, not about winning it all.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still will be on top of my game once the season begins.

I have to be.

Most times during a season I will get phone call after phone call from friends and family looking for advice from their “guru”. (Their words not mine).

With that amount of pressure I will, eventually, get back to pouring over team reports and reading about the “next big pickup”.

Plus my keeper league draft is this weekend and I really need to be ready for that one. Can’t let my youth pastor get the best of me this year, since he won it all last year.

So, I guess I will dust off my fantasy football hat, break out my overpriced fantasy magazine, jump online and review the fantasy rankings for each offensive position and get ready for another great fantasy football season.

Maybe this year I will get a few more Philadelphia Eagles or Kansas City Chiefs on my teams this year.

It would be nice to have some players from the teams I actually follow contribute to my fantasy expectations this year for once.

Gary Darling is the geekiest employee at the Maryville Daily Forum. His online blog address is:     

justanewdad.blogspot.com & his email is: gdarling@maryvilledailyforum.com.

Drop him a line sometime!