[quote]By Lucas Rhamy
Sports Writer
Photo courtesy of Deadline[/quote]

The essence of competition and gambling between tens of millions of classmates, coworkers, and neighborhood dads has finally made its return. Days and weeks of studying and strategizing spent in hopes to win the pride and bragging rights that come with the sought after title of fantasy football league champion.

For those who may not know, fantasy football is when about 10 people (aka owners) get together around the beginning of the NFL season and hold a draft to set a foundation of each team and the league as a whole. Here is where you choose the most point-productive skill position players from round one to round 16. Based on their performance each week, players will earn points for your fantasy team depending on certain statistics such as yardage gained, touchdowns scored, fumbles lost, etc., but this is only the beginning. As the season progresses, players get injured, trades are made, and you have to manage your team accordingly in order to gain more points than your matchup for that week. Who knows, by the end of the season you may only end up with one player that you initially drafted.

When it comes to preparing for a fantasy football season, there are four types of owners. Firstly, there are the so-called “investors,” who spend actual money on subscriptions to one or more different fantasy holding websites and magazines in order to receive a deeper analysis of each player.

Although production can be somewhat predictable, injuries cannot. So these subscriptions may give an owner a step up on the rest of their competition, it’s nothing more than a business strategy to take money from the trophy-hungry investors.

Next comes the most popular type of owner: “the explorer,”. These players will take anywhere from a couple weeks to a day traveling from website to website looking for power rankings, sleepers/busts, basic analyses, etc. in order to form their draft strategy. While avoiding spending money, these owners can still find successful information simply without the title of “insider info”.

After this class of owners comes the small class of “the oblivious,”. These are the owners that completely forget about the draft up until the very last minute or possibly even after the first few rounds. In serious situations, these people will receive the heart-stopping reminder from the league including “Draft completed. Look at your team now!”

Owners like these have little hope right out of the gates, and they have to pray that instinct will carry them to at least a few victories.

The last group is the group that comes with severely mixed emotions. These owners are called “the bachelorettes,”. Usually girls, these people are the ones that were added to the league last minute to add another team and therefore another entry fee, and they will solely pick their players based on how attractive they are.

In most cases, this is great for the serious players because this type of drafting has absolutely no strategy to it. However, there is always the rare bachelorette that drafts a team that is simply unstoppable, and to all groups alike, it is the most aggravating and seemingly unfair event to unfold during the long and grueling fantasy football season.

While everyone sits around choosing players with uniforms that match their homecoming dress, or wasting their money on a weekly magazine, I’ll stick to my instincts and my unlimited access to free ESPN articles.