Fantasy Football: I was duped!

Being Frank, by Frank Ameduri

The news room -- and I use the term in the global sense -- is a place where information and ideas are in constant, electric motion. It is a place where reporters, and when we say reporters we mean real thinking people, come together as one cerebrating machine to process that information in its raw form and turn it into intellectual diamonds. It's easy to understand why intense conversations on weighty subjects are apt to erupt from time to time throughout the day.

This is the time of year when the weightiest of the weighty is a constant source of discourse. No, I'm not speaking of primary election election time. It's not the labor fracas at the school district of which I speak. It is, of course, football season. And, more importantly, fantasy football season. Baseball may indeed be America's pastime. That grand old game has tradition like no other, and many of us include our first big league game in our list of best memories. Football is not a pastime. It is America's passion, and fantasy football puts all the action in a tattered little notebook or folder you can call your own.

I'm the owner of two fantasy franchises this year. Of course these leagues are just gentlemen's leagues. No gambling -- that would be illegal. That's what I mean when I say gentlemen's leagues. Please don't think I'm suggesting that the people in these leagues are all gentlemen. In fact, many of my competitors are something very unlike gentlemen … and one of them is even a lady.

At any rate, four of us work in the same building. One of the other three is the lady. The other two are no gentlemen. One of them is Jeremiah Bartz, our sports editor. If you read his column about how to get a leg up on your opponents during fantasy drafts, you already know what I'm talking about. JB is a win-at-all costs kind of guy. He was a long-snapper, what do you expect? The other guy is Casey Ressler. You've read his columns. He writes about his adorable daughter and his 10-year reunion. He looks so nice in the photo that accompanies his columns. Don't be fooled. Ressler calls his team the Inferno. Is that the kind of name a gentle father and all-around-good-egg would choose? Hardly.

The thing is, these are young guys. They're the new breed of fantasy football owner, and they're chasing legitimate old timers, like yours truly, out of the game. They have quick minds and good memories -- things I used to have -- and they use them to confuse and confound me. Right after the draft for our second league, the trade talks began. Now I've been watching football since the late '60s, but I haven't been able to keep track of all the new players since the mid-'80s. I'll admit, I tried to draft Cliff Branch and Dan Pastorini this year. Anyway, JB picked up a couple of guys in the late rounds, a running back named something like Harpo Gunderson from Far Northeastern New Mexico VoTech and a receiver named John Stallworth Jr., but not that John Stallworth, apparently. This guy's dad, it turns out, was a department store Santa and sometime convict from Toledo.

Anyway, Ressler starts gushing about how he just has to have Gunderson and Stallworth. He'd be willing to give up Kurt Warner, Marshall Faulk and Randy Moss for them. JB stood firm. "You've got nothing I'm willing to take to part with these guys." While he's saying that, he's eyeballing my roster, trying not to look too suspicious.

"What," I ask.

"I was just noticing you've got Peyton Manning and Terrell Owens. I guess there's no way you'd part with those guys, huh?"

"Only if you're willing to part with Stallworth Jr. and Gunderson," I snapped back with extra snappiness.

"Hmm," JB said without even the hint of a smile. "That's tough, but I'd rather you have 'em then Ressler. We might be able to do something."

"No way!" Ressler shouted.

"Done!" I yelled.

By the end of the first week Harpo Gunderson was sidelined for the year after running into his own team's punter and rupturing every internal organ in both of their bodies. John Stallworth Jr. was cut, and he spent his signing bonus to purchase a corndog nugget stand in an Idaho strip mall.

So that's what we talk about in the office these days. We talk about how Frank was duped into making the bonehead deal of the century. But it's all good. I just picked up Gern Manneliscious off wavers. Now those sneaks are gonna pay.

Frank Ameduri is too old for fantasy football