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From today's W.S.J:It’s that time of year. The time when total strangers buttonhole you in line at the supermarket, look you straight in the eye, and ask, without the slightest trace of irony:

Do you want to know who I’m thinking of taking at running back?

That’s right. It’s fantasy football draft season. A period in which millions of otherwise reasonable people consume themselves with the task of building a roster of NFL players who will invariably give them more excitement, joy and frustration—but mostly frustration—than any other human beings in their lives.

If you have spent the past month and a half researching “value picks” for tight end; if you pray to the Cathedral of Matthew Berry; if you have taunted, via group text, another adult for taking a quarterback early; if you’ve given your team an atrociously corny pun name; if you would happily shave a year off your life for the chance to draft Christian McCaffrey, you get it. Fantasy football is a frantic, loopy, mostly meaningless, time-sucking ritual—but also incredibly popular, a modern American tradition, to the point it’s become, if we’re being honest, our new national pastime. No longer is FF the exclusive domain of geeks. There was once a time when the most exhausting experience on earth was finding yourself in an extended conversation with someone about their fantasy team. Now everyone talks about their fantasy team, without shame or even an invitation. It’s perfectly acceptable polite conversation. (Now, the worst experience on earth is finding yourself in an extended conversation with someone about NFTs.) Fantasy advice? I’ve got none. Don’t listen to an idiot like me—listen to the zillions of self-styled fantasy experts who extol the virtues of keeper leagues and auction drafts and using the waiver wire to make a major midseason improvement. It seems there are now at least as many authorities paying attention to fantasy football as actual football, to the point that NFL games can feel secondary to what’s happening to fantasy lineups. (If you’ve ever sat with someone during a dull Monday Night Football contest, and, after a worthless touchdown in the fourth quarter, heard them exclaim “YES! COME TO PAPA! THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED!” and dance around the room, you know what I mean.)

An entire mega-industry has blossomed. Fantasy is bigger than U.S. Steel. This column is maybe the only thing on the planet that is not sponsored by Draft Kings or Fan Duel. his column is maybe the only thing on the planet that is not sponsored by Draft Kings or Fan Duel.

There are six basic stages to any fantasy football season:

1. Optimism.
2. Despair.

3. Despair.

4. Illusory optimism.

5. Despair.

6. Despair

Of course, someone actually does win the whole thing, earning the envy of peers and colleagues and maybe even a stash of liquor or money. The important thing, however, is not to be the worst player in the league and to subject yourself to cruel loser’s rituals—like someone who was forced to sit in Waffle House for 24 hours (eating waffles to shave hours off the sentence), or get a tattoo of Rob or Rex Ryan’s face on their back, or have to stand on a traffic island with a sandwich board reading HONK IF YOU PICKED THE LIONS DEFENSE LIKE I DID.

Sound good? I know it does.

If you’re playing for the first time, enjoy these next few days, until the season begins and the adorable misery commences. Soon you’ll be in the thick of it, panicking over head-to-head matchups and roster deadlines and whether or not DeAndre Hopkins is definitely going to start on Sunday. Fantasy football is pleasure and punishment, wrapped into a shared, exhilarating and grueling bonding experience.

Sort of like…the rest of life.

GO VIKES!