It’s been more than two months since I’ve last written on this blog. A lot has happened. I’ve moved, twice. I’ve aged (by which I mean I celebrated my birthday). I’ve taught an 8-week composition course for incoming Freshman athletes (11 football players and 3 hockey players). And tonight, in about 30 minutes, I’m about to participate in my first ever fantasy football draft. My friend and old college roommate Dave invited me to join a small league with his dad and brothers and I told him yes, so as of tonight I will officially be [drum roll…] a fantasy football owner. I’ve avoided fantasy sports for years, not because I have any philosophical opposition to them, but because they seem like precisely the kind of thing that I would really love, so much so that I could see myself throwing away tons of time on roster management, scouring the waiver wires, proposing trades, etc. That feeling increased when I saw the very interesting ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Silly Little Game, which explained the historical origin of today’s fantasy sports empire and offered a pretty good oral history of the invention of Rotisserie League Baseball (the brainchild of Dan Okrent, a historian and prominent news/magazine editor). I haven’t done anything to prepare for this year’s draft, I’m not entirely sure how the league is structured, and I’m not even clear on how points are awarded, so I feel like I’ve done a good job of avoiding the fantasy disease, but I hope I can maintain such relative sanity and balance once football season starts and players start recording statistics. Here’s my draft strategy–I feel duty bound to acquire at least one representative of the Steelers (my favorite team–largely because of my name) and Packers (since I’m a resident of Wisconsin), and I’m going to avoid players that I actively dislike, even if they’d be great for fantasy purposes. I’ll try to also take haircuts (including facial hair), colleges, and awesome names into consideration. Anything else I should know to prepare for a fantasy football season?