Ahh it's finally that time of year.....

December has snuck up on us and another year has almost passed us bye. It is truly my favorite time of year. The weather has officially changed (for those of us that live in a 4 season region) and it's dark by the time you get off work so you can see all the festive houses lit up on your drive home.
Now if you were expecting me to continue waxing poetically about our family tradition of the youngest child putting the final touches on the tree with the star we searched the world over for (Disney World that is) or hanging the stockings by the chimney with care you will be sorely disappointed and possibly quite angry with me. :-)
You see to me December means Fantasy Football Playoffs. Yep you heard that right and it is for that reason alone I think that my wife extremely dislikes football. I have been playing fantasy football since before it became mainstream and the focus of countless websites, magazines, radio programs, radio stations-sirrius/xm has a fantasy sports station, ESPN shows and now a sitcom. Long enough ago that we actually had to rely on the newspaper to get all our player stats and manually figure out our scores. Eventually we upgraded to some software we got at one of the 1st fantasy football conventions (they are huge and currently held  in Vegas) but nowadays everything is done exclusively on the internet. OK guess I better back up here and fill some of you in on what exactly fantasy football is. Here is a definition that sheds some light "Fantasy football is an interactive, virtual competition in which people manage professional football players versus one another. Fantasy football allows people to act as general managers of a pseudo-football team...generally given a quirky funny name. The different actions people are able to make are: drafting, trading, adding/dropping players, and changing rosters with games taking place each week vs opposing manager's teams with the outcome determined by how the players on their fantasy team do statistically in their real life games".
Some of us have been getting together each fall for the past 17 years to eat, drink and make fun of each other for an afternoon to kick off the season. The Draft which other than the actual Super Bowl maybe the biggest sporting event of the year for a lot of football fans. My kids have joined the fun now too...from assisting Grandpa draft his team and helping lead him out of the perpetual losing that leads to the Toilet Bowl (this is bad don't want to win this trophy) to owning their own teams in a league with their friends from school. I could continue on and on and on about every little detail but I only have 1 male follower and he's already in the know so I'll try and sum up a few things. Fantasy Football is not relegated to just men. Women are more than welcome to play and have owned teams in our league in the past. Rumor has it 2 women who shared a team actually won the league I am currently the commissioner of but that was before I was allowed in. Supposedly they drafted players by how good their butt looked in their uniform but this could have been a ruse so the guys didn't think they knew anything about football. In the Central Iowa Fantasy Football League i.e. CIFFL we play for pride and glory that comes in the form of Championship bragging rights and a trophy to remind everyone of your dominance or more accurately your luck of making it to and through the playoffs to be the last one standing...oh and a little cash. My goal is always to make the playoffs though I should raise my standards considering I've played in our Super Bowl 8 out of the last 16 seasons.
So if your spouse, dad, brother, mom or some other relative is a little too preoccupied to open their gifts this Christmas season chances are they are in the playoffs of their fantasy football league and are obsessing over every possession in every NFL game. And if they refuse to watch any football the Holiday weekend then chances are they didn't make the playoffs or have already been eliminated. Because even though the Cowboys vs Cardinals game on Christmas Day is an atrocious match up; every game is now made relevant because of Fantasy Football.