Refresh-ments

And it has come down to this.  Most people here in Pittsburgh are probably getting ready to call it a night, brush their teeth, put on some pjs and climb into bed.  Not me though, not yet.  Thus is the life of a fantasy football team owner.

I entered tonight trailing in my fantasy game by less than 11pts, but my opponent has seen all of his players play, whereas I still had Andrew Luck, the quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts on my team and the Colts are playing tonight against the San Diego Chargers.  11pts from a quarterback usually isn't that big of an obstacle to overcome, in fact based on what Yahoo sports projected my score would be, I should end up winning tonight rather easily.

Funny thing about projections though, they are not reality, if reality can exist in a fantasy sports game. So as I am typing to you right now, Andrew Luck has contributed 5 points to my team and the game has entered the second half of play, and the Colts are trailing 13-6.  So I am scoreboard watching, or at least statistical board watching, hoping that somehow Luck (and right now I may need a little Luck) can come up with 6 points in the next 30 minutes of football, without making any drastic mistakes. 

As I type, the margin has shrunk ever so slightly, I now only trail 89.38-85.16, but I am down to 20 minutes of game time left.  I have lost two games already this year, one by less than two points, and a third loss may be the difference at the end of the year between being in the top four and qualifying for the playoffs and spending another year wondering "What if?"    Check that, I now have 85.76 points, the lead is less than 4 points for my opponent but the Colts have punted the ball away.

For all of the talk about how fantasy sports aren't real and it is just a game, I think this is why I like them so much.  A simple game, being played thousands of miles away, and the home team (Pittsburgh Steelers) not playing, and yet here I am on the edge of my seat because this game now has meaning to me specifically.  And I am sure there are people out there to whom tonight this same type of story is being played out.  Okay, so maybe they don't have my exact roster, but tonight maybe they have Andrew Luck in their league, or perhaps it is Ty Hilton, or Philip Rivers, or Antonio Gates; but for them and their fantasy team a potential win or loss may hang in the balance on one play that was made, or a played that was missed.  A pass was caught, or a pass was overthrown.  A fumble occurred.  A penalty had a potential scoring play called back.  Any of a number of things can happen in any given week, in any particular game and that one play, or two plays make make the difference between a win and a loss.  Not that every game comes down to one or two plays, like any game, sometimes you lose and it wasn't all that close, or you started someone who got hurt early on and you spent the rest of the weekend playing short handed, but it is moments like this, where a game hangs in the balance, the difference between a win and a loss hanging on the next 15 minutes of football, that are the call of this game for me.  It adds excitement in a place where there wouldn't normally be any. 

So excuse me if I don't write anything significant tonight, I think I will be hitting the refresh button on my league website every few minutes or so for the next 30 minutes, just to see if I can pull out a win, or suffer a gut wrenching loss.