Ode to the FFL

Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, I got nostalgic.

No, I wasn’t dreaming of going ‘over the river and through to woods to grandmother’s house…’ I actually got to sit down and watch a little Thanksgiving football and that prompted me to think about something else that used to happen this time of year.

Fantasy Football playoffs.

Some years ago, I got together with some guys to start up our own version of the craze that was sweeping the country then – fantasy sports. You know the drill – I pick a bunch of real  players; you pick a bunch of real players. I make a list; you make a list. Then we compare our stats and see who did better. There is usually some sort of formula that converts real sports stats into point totals for scoring purposes in this ‘game.’

Well, the FFL (Facenda Football League, as we called it) went a bit further. We set up a league with a bit of history and tradition as a part of the league identity. The league was built around the infamous ‘Ice Bowl’ game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers (you know the one…played “On the Frozen Tundra of Lambeau Field…”).  We actually called our league newsletter the ‘Frozen Tundra’ and we had two divisions – a Landry and a Lombardi (named for the two coaches from that infamous game).

Facenda, as in the name of the league, was the voice of the infamous NFL films documentaries (including the ones that mention that venerable field).

At any rate, the first collection of owners included guys I had worked with, played softball with and just some general friends. We had our first draft and from that point forward, we had a really good league. Sometimes, we’d get together to watch some Sunday games.

My team was called ‘The Gippers’ (after Ronald Reagan’s famous speech about ‘winning one for the Gipper’ from the movie, “The Knute Rockne Story”). We had other teams with interesting names: Red Dogs, Moonshiners, Greyhounds, Squirrels and so forth.

It was a really good league.

I was fortunate enough during the league’s third year to win the coveted ‘Champions Trophy,’ thanks to the performance of some players from the offense-minded 49ers.

Sadly, I was unable to repeat as champ. My teams were perennial runners up (call me the Atlanta Braves of the FFL!). The problem with fantasy sports, as a good friend of mine once said, is that it is ‘a game about a game.’ So, you really have little control over the outcome.

You can do your best homework. You can make a great trade. You can make a great decision to start Mr. Jones instead of Mr. Smith. And then, at the end of the day, some fluke could cost you.

I was once on my way to winning the championship game, but the coach of the NFL team featuring two of my players, decided to pull all of his key players out of the game early to mitigate any risk of injury before THEY were heading into the NFL playoffs.

Smart move by him as the coach of HIS team; bummer for me as the coach of MY team. I lost by 5 points. FIVE!

I’m not bitter about it or anything! Anyway, that was one of the maddening (and yet at the same time endearing) facets of the game – trying to win in spite of those sorts of elements (injuries, weather, coaching decisions, etc.).

After a couple years, we had our first wave of comings and goings of personalities. Actually, we were able to replace a couple ‘owners’ who had lost interest with some guys who were really into it.

But by the time we had the third wave of comings and goings (a couple years ago), we wound up with some guys who just weren’t as fun. With a couple exceptions, those guys were friends of friends and no one else really knew them. They didn’t have the same sort of positive, competitive spirit that we all enjoyed when the league was developing.

So, at that point, the FFL folded.

Still, this time of year – which was about when the playoffs would begin – always struck me as being fun. Which FFL teams would meet in the first round? Which teams would overachieve? Underachieve? Who would ultimately hoist the champions trophy? We did the league for enough years that there was some real head-to-head records and some nice league history.

A lot of times, Thanksgiving Day would mark the beginning of the playoffs. Or, if the calendar fell differently, it would mark the beginning of Week 13, the final week of our regular season (and we’d now be looking toward the first round of the playoffs).

In any case, you knew that on or around December 1 was the beginning of the playoffs and the beginning of the final push to crown that season’s champ.

Anyway…those were just a few nostalgic musings from the weekend. I’m not doing fantasy sports as a hobby any more but I know that somewhere, some guys are. They’re about to taste, as the old saying goes, “The Thrill of Victory or the Agony of Defeat.”

JG  

Originally posted 11/30/2011