Ah, fall!  The time of year when the MEN OF FALL (some people may note a warping of a song reference there, if you don't see it, check out Kenny Chesney's latest single, the video for it is great and the song is a definite winner) take to the field and attempt to battle over small patches of (primarily) green real estate.

I'm actually somewhat interested this season, as compared to the last few seasons where I knew that my favored professional organization was being run by a group that I might call clowns if I wasn't fearful of insulting the clown profession, as it appears that my favored professional organization might actually be somewhat on the right track.  I say somewhat because they still don't have a running game that I would label as competent, and they've got a quarterback that is probably as fragile as he is talented.  Not to mention that they still have a receiver corps that is suspect.  Uh, yeah, why am I even considering being optimistic about them again?  Ah, lets not get down on the team yet.  The season starts tonite and they might actually be a professional calibre team again.  Might.  Let me try to remain optimistic.

Meanwhile it's also Fantasy Football Season and this year I'm actually somewhat enthusiastic about playing in a league again.  I've played over the last few years but last year I had basically turned my team over to my son.  This year he didn't have the time to prepare for the draft, not that I had much time either, but I did set aside some time and did prepare and was ready when drafting players last night.  It remains a league that I would normally discourage anyone from thinking of joining because of the scoring rules (touchdowns, field goals and extra points only. No points at all for any performance/production otherwise) and because it remains one where there is too much apathy amongst some of the players/owners in the league.  They can't/won't pass any league votes because they can't get the required quorum together on any votes, and even when/if they do get a quorum there are people that just don't want to change anything about the league.  I still stand by my promise to retire from the league if I lose all of my investment or if I were to win the league or finish highly enough to make money from it.  (Not that I would ever admit to "gambling" on fantasy football )  Basically if given a good reason to walk away from this league I would do so.

I'm not sure I'd ever go through the trouble of starting/running my own league again, but I must admit to having had fun back when I did do that.  I had rules that made it fairly easy on the guy running the league (me), and overwhelmingly fair for all that played in the league and I'd love to have enough people interested in playing to do it all again, but over time many of the people that I was playing with have gotten busy with other things in their lives and they've had to move on from "such childish games."  Or, they've moved on to playing in leagues with co-workers in their current jobs while I've moved on to other employment myself, etc.  Understandable really, but basically that's the reason I don't run my own league any more, well that and the whole time element and the idea that I can never find enough of it for all of what I wind up doing in my daily life.

Time to run for now, but I wish everyone the best in their own leagues and for their own preferred teams.  Hopefully we can all enjoy the NFL this year before they go and ruin things with a lockout or some other labor problem next season