Can you believe it, this Saturday kicks off the official start of our 2020 fantasy football season. This year will be unlike any other, not just because of Covid, but because this is the first year that our league will be having a Jubilee drawing, which has the potentially to completely flip our league on its head.
But let’s put that aside for a second…
Keepers are selected this week and next week is our draft but of those are huge moments in the fantasy football season because you have a choice, you can keep player x or y. You can draft player A or B and if Y out preforms X or if B has a better year than A, it creates a very tangible ways to track your teams progress and to track your progress as a manager. Now, don’t put too much pressure on yourself, we all have swings and misses. Think about last year, Lamar Jackson was drafted at the end of the 6th round, literally every team had a shot to get him and we all passed. Marquise Brown, AJ Brown, Terry McLaurin, Dj Chark, the list goes on and on.
We all had a chance, but we said “no, for the 2019 season I’d rather have Ito Smith on my team than any of those guys”– Mitchell August 24th 2019. WE ALL DID THAT. Or something like that.
Any of those guys on my team last year (outside of Chark who I had but traded) could have put my team over the top and given me a chance to win it all. Now, I am left to look at my team, my draft, my 2019 and wonder “If only I could go back and draft play Y over player X.”
Now’s also a time of the year I get flooded with social media memories of previous years drafts, lotteries and even our famous scavenger hunt. All things that I look at and go “Oh wow, that was a great year”. “Oh do you remember how great that draft party was?” Do you remember when this guy was in the league?” No matter how you slice it, life is largely made up of one question, “will you enjoy what you have around you now? Or wait to enjoy it as a memory?” Because there’s no doubt, those times were great and all, but they weren’t as good as we remember them to be and right now, in this moment, things are way better than we give them credit for, we just aren’t taking the time to appreciate what we have in front of us.
Typically, every year I have a grateful post, a post where I tell everyone how much this league means to me and thank you all for being a part of it before we all end up going for each other’s throats, but this year I feel like I am a little more grateful than others because when I take a step back and look at this league, it’s ridiculous. It’s way too time consuming. Everything we do is so far over the top and it’s so constant. Think, for the past year I highly doubt a single day has gone by without someone posting in the chat. How many times have you looked at your phone, seen 30-35-40-60-100 GroupMe notifications and thought “gezzee take it easy in there”.
This league is different. This league is special. This league is everything we hoped it would be when we started it.
For me personally this league is very meaningful. It’s basically almost everyone I love and care about in one place. My wife. My father. My best friends. Everyone, together. If we want to be real extreme, this league has probably saved a ton of my friendships. Think about this, I moved away from Lake Wales almost 5 years ago. Since then, I’ve seen Jarro (one of my closest friends) probably a totally of 15-20 times at most. Now granted, I am a terrible friend but still, how the hell have we been able to stay close? This stupid ass league. It helps me stay close with all of you, because we always have something to talk about. We always have something going on. We always have something keeping us connected.
I am trying to resolve to be a person who is more willing take make an awkward moment and let someone know I apricate their friendship, don’t take the “now” for granted and just sit back and think about how good the “good old days” were.
So, I wrote all of this for two reasons.
1st Like I said earlier, before the blood bath begins, before I make fun of someone’s team and/or intelligence and make them made at me, I want to say thanks for being here and let each of you know this league wouldn’t be fun without you. Thank you.
2nd I wanted to remind everyone, we are living smack dab in the middle of the “good ole days” and this year is going to be one hell of a ride.
The MFL 