Fantasy Gone Wrong

I've done a lot of regrettable things in my day.

When I was in first grade, I accidentally peed my pants while my teacher was correcting my math assignment.

In junior high, there was the day I decided it would be a good idea to jump off a moving school bus (this ended in a vicious fall and extended mockery from the bus driver and an older student, who leaned out the window and yelled out "dumbass" as the bus drove away).

More recently, I broke a bone in my hand attempting to hurdle a pile of garbage in the East Village.

And this is only a light smattering of the things I can share (this is, after all, a family site).

But as poor as all those choices and mishaps were, they really have no footing whatsoever against the most current source of regret in The OCC's universe: my choice to enter four fantasy football leagues this year.

In many ways, I knew that this was a bad decision from the start -- too many players to manage and too many conflicts of interest. Add in the fact that I would be conducting three of my four drafts via telephone in Japan without doing nearly enough research, and we already had the makings of a disappointing season.

But it's been far worse than I ever could have imagined.

Entering Week 7, my four teams are a combined 6-18. The one I care most about is 0-6, and the one I expected the least of, at 3-3, has the best record of the shit-stained bunch.

Each week I renew my hope for a full slate of wins, and each week I end up lying face down in a pool of my own blood, drool and vomit (I mean this figuratively, at least thus far).

Like many sports fans, I sometimes wish that I had the sports almanac from Back to the Future II so that I could successfully predict (and make untold fortunes gambling on) the outcomes of sporting events. These days, I wish I had that sports almanac because maybe -- just maybe -- it would have told me not to play fantasy football this year because all my teams would be shit.

At the very least, it would have been able to warn me of the perils of drafting Marc Bulger.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to run -- the waiver claims for one of my leagues (the one with a 1-5 record) are due at midnight.

Sometimes caring hurts.