The Buffalo Bills will kick off their 2008 NFL season in the OP vs Seattle on Sunday September 7th. Today is Wednesday June 11th. That’s like a lot of days from now. But today that wait got a little bit shorter. Yahoo! Fantasy Football leagues opened for registration yesterday. I never check my special fantasy football email address much between January and June but this morning the voices in my head kept telling me to log in and check my emails. Sure enough, the fantasy football gods had blessed me again with the sweetest email of the offseason. Registration has begun.

There are plenty of free fantasy football services nowdays but Yahoo! was one of the originals and IMO simply the best. It’s much simpler to use than ESPN, Fox, NFL.com or CBS. I’ve tried them all. Every year they add a new feature or two and it keeps getting better. This year they finally allowed for keeper leagues and have an enhanced “smack board” on the weekly matchup page for head to head leagues. If what I just said doesn’t make any sense to you then please stop reading. It’s gonna get geekier.

My team is called “Italiano Heat”, our league is called “B-Town MMVIII”, and I am your two time, two time (2004 & 2006) Champion and holder of the league’s prestigous championship trophy “The B-Town Cup”. It’s a head to head, redraft, non divisional, 4 team playoff, Week 16 championship, fractional point, IDP league. Now that I’ve filled you in on the essentials here are the other details. I play with 9 friends from the college days in Brockport. Back in 2000 when the league was started everyone was living there. I joined in 2002 and when the commissioner resigned his title in 2003 I unfortunately volunteered for that gig. Today only 3 members actually still live in B-Town. I’m putting the O.G. back in Ogden and one dude is in Greece, but then there’s a guy in Tampa, Florida, two dudes are in NYC, one fella’s in Oregon, and our final league member resides in Osaka, Japan. Oh, the beauty of the internets.

Last year was my worst year since the first time I ever played. The game is a great combination of in depth football knowledge, mixed with specific strategy based upon your individual league rules and a whole lotta luck. I’ll get more into specific strategies in the future. Injuries killed me last season and I went 5-9 and came in a shameful 6th place. There are 2 people in my league who don’t even watch football and want to prove they can win based on just reading the Yahoo news scroll and following statistical trends. It almost happened last year when Harvey went 11-3 in the regular season only to be upset in round 1 of the playoffs. Whew. We can’t ever let Harvey or Mos-Rad win or the world will implode and B-Town will be to blame. Maybe that’s what the Mayans were talking about. 12/21/12 could be the date of the B-Town Bowl in 4 years. Let’s hope I’m wrong about all this.

Yup, I love me some fantasy football. It’s a great way to follow the NFL closer and stay in touch with and talk crap to old friends. Did I mention that The Heat are the two time, two time B-Town Cup champs?

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