Fantasy Finale

Week 16 starts in just two days, and for many intelligent/lucky fantasy football players, this means the fantasy finals. The many Americans with a team still alive will spend the next two Sundays with their eyes glued to their computer screens (more than usual), begging their players to put up points. For some devoted fantasy team managers, they've been out for awhile, missing out on the postseason entirely, like most of my teams did. But I've still got one of my five teams in the finals of an ESPN league, but since it's a free one, as much as I'd like to win, I'll be paying much more attention to the real matchups. You know, the ones that count towards something, the NFL.

Saturday is the day when sweating fantasy managers also sit in front of their computers, spending a ridiculous amount of time deciding who to start. My only controversy, a good one to have, is whether to start Mike Vick vs. the Vikings or Philip Rivers facing Cincy. (Yes, I got to Vick first off waivers.) Even though the Vikes D has been better, I have to go with Vick because I can't see anyone stopping him. For many others it's much harder.

There's also the issue of guys that might not play due to injury. The guy I'm going to face has Arian Foster, who's questionable. He has to stay up to date til the very last second to know whether to keep him in, or face the consequences. My friend lost this past week because he elected to take the chance and keep AP in the lineup, even though he was questionable on the Monday night game. He was down four points before the game, and the other guy had Matt Forte. Sure enough, AP sat out, and since it was the Monday night game, he had no one else to put in, so he ended up getting eliminated.

The fantasy world is, for all passionate players, a mind-grueling one. And then you know what happens? The mom who picked all the players by their looks always ends up winning in the end.