Fantasy football. For years, I had no idea what this was. I assumed this was like those fantasy-themed card games in which people had imaginary football teams consisting of dwarf running backs, tight end mages, wide receiving warriors and quarterback archers.

Participants could trade their players for other players and based on how they did in the game you could earn points. Well, other than me assuming the games took place at the Shire or in Mordor, I was almost right about Fantasy Football. However, fantasy football involves the NFL.

Who knew?

At the urging of my friends and even some family members this year, I joined a league and have actually participated to a surprising degree in fantasy football. My family shunned me because of my lack of interest in football and my friends thought I was weird because I hadn’t picked football as a backup religion.

As it stands I am at one win and three losses, but I got lucky in the drafting and put together a good team. I have Anquan Boldin at wide receiver, Kurt Warner as my starting quarterback, and Adrian Peterson, who is apparently a pretty decent running back. I can honestly say I am enjoying myself, but it is still incomprehensible to me that anyone would want to be involved in any more than one of these things at a time.

There are some people who take fantasy football very seriously, and for those there are sites like fftoday.com, which provides up-to-date stats and advice on fantasy players and teams. Me? I pick players based on how ugly the team’s cheerleaders are or if they have a cool-sounding name, like Kansas City running back Jamaal Charles.

Sure Charles only had a total of eight yards during his last game, but I bet if he were on a team with Merry, Pippin and some Orcs, he would totally dominate. For the record, I still hate “The Lord of the Rings” and I now tolerate the NFL much more than I ever thought possible. You see, I’m more into popular sports like putt-putt and the Extreme Ironing World Championships.

http://www.fftoday.com/

Yes, that’s right: the Extreme Ironing World Championships. I didn’t make up something again in StatonFacts like I usually do for the sake of a laugh. Extreme Ironing is a sport that requires the “athlete” to take their iron and their board to an extreme place (lake, river, cliff face, your mom’s house) and iron their clothes.

The organizers say the object of extreme ironing is to “take ironing to the edge by demonstrating a spectacular or creative ironing style, whilst taking the creases out of your clothes.” I believe this opens the door for several other related sports like extreme dishwashing and extreme dry cleaner drop off.

This sport is for real and has its own bureau and wikipedia page. I have no idea how it is scored, but I assume the extreme nature of the ironing venue is scored along with the quality of the ironed shirt. If you divide these scores into one another, take their average, and then carry the two, you are left with your final score of … stupid sport.

http://www.natives.co.uk/news/2002/0502/08iron.htm

URBAN DICTIONARY WORD OF THE DAY

Ironing (n.) – Much like voting Republican in California, a complete and utter waste of time.