Narrative Rough Draft

2013 Fantasy Football Draft

            I woke up in a dark and empty hotel room and thought I must have only had slept an hour or two at the most. I felt around for my phone for a while and when I found it, I wasn’t surprised that it was only 5:30 am. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep any more, this was the day I had been preparing for all summer long, doing endless research, taking tons of notes, and checking Rotoworld nonstop, this was draft day.

So, knowing that I would be able to sleep, after a couple hours I decided to call one of the other owners because I knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep either. When Dave answered his phone he said “what’s up, you can’t sleep either? Let’s go have breakfast and a bloody.” I answered him with a little hesitation because I knew it was going to be a long day “ok, but we need to pace ourselves. We have a long day ahead of us.” So we headed out to breakfast and had our meal with a few bloody’s and a shot or two. That is not what I had in mind when I told him we had to pace ourselves. We talked a little about the upcoming draft later that day, not giving up too much information of course. Then we went home to get ready for the day.

After showering and cleaning my golf clubs I jumped in my truck and headed out. It was about noon when I arrived at Princeton Valley Golf Course which is the location of our draft. There were already four other owners there when I arrived and they seemed just as excited as I was. There was plenty to be excited for. First we would golf, but not just golf this would be an opportunity to gauge the other owners on who they want and possibly get some trades done. Golf was very important for another reason, it would determine the order of the draft but not how you think. Next we would watch the games that were on while playing poker and then on to the draft.

After about twenty minutes of hitting balls and chatting the rest of the owners arrived and Corey who is our commissioner decided to call a meeting and go over our itinerary for the day. And then we were off, hole one and the other team already wanted to make it a little more interesting. Pukrop says to me “You boys want to put a little money on this.” To this I answered “you bet your ass I do.” We were playing a two man best ball game so I had to talk it over with my partner and we decided that one hundred dollars would be enough but not too much and the other team agreed. After the first hole we were up two strokes and were feeling pretty confident. No change after holes two or three, but then there is hole four. The tee box of hole four is right next to the clubhouse and my partner Dylan asked me if we should grab some beers and of course my answer to that was yes. Before teeing off we cracked our first beer of the day and we lost a stroke on that hole. Now we are hole fives tee box and still up one stroke, when we decided to shotgun a beer, this was not as good of an idea as it sounded. Even with the shot gunning of beer we managed to pick up two strokes on hole five. Over the next few holes we drank more and ended up on hole nine with a good buzz and a one stroke lead. The other team teed off first and hit both of their shots in the middle of the fairway. I hit my shot in the water and Dylan hit his in the next fairway over so we decided to play his. It was apparent that the wheels had fallen off. We ended up losing by two strokes and realized that betting while drinking a lot was not such a good idea. We were the first team done so we sat on the ninth green and heckled the next few groups that finished their rounds.

After golf we headed down to the banquet room below the clubhouse where we had pizza and more beer waiting for us along with a 60” TV for us to watch the games on. Once we got in the room our commissioner Corey had a little surprise for us, yet another game that would determine the draft order. The game was called “Kaepernick” and basically you could not drink with your dominant hand and it you did someone could call Kaepernick and trade picks with you, it got a little interesting. We still had about four hours till the actual draft started and it is a bit of a tradition for us to play a game or two of Texas Holdem Poker. I was the second one out and decided to try to get everyone to my level and I decided to buy 24 shots of Fleishman’s Gin, it was delicious and piney. I didn’t just want to get the other owners drunk, I wanted to steal their picks, I had the 12^th pick and I knew that was as bad as it could get so I figured I’d be able to move up in the draft because who does a shot with their non-dominant hand. I did it, I moved from 12^th all the way up to 2^nd and I couldn’t have been any happier. About an hour before the draft was going to start we were informed that the golf course was going to be closing early, we tried to convince them otherwise for a while but realized that we would have to change the venue. So, we scrambled and ended up moving the draft to Bridgewater Pub, a place where we had done it in the past and it is attached to the hotel I was staying at. Little did we know that the air conditioning at Bridgewater was broken and it was very hot that day.

Even with the heat inside the new bar, we didn’t have a choice but to do the draft. I ended up having two first and two second round picks along with a few later round picks that didn’t really matter to me. A couple of picks into the draft it was going just how I had planned, my first pick was coming up and he guy I wanted was still there. I got him, Deandre Hopkins, I had talked about him so negatively that the other owners passed on him. Same with my next few picks, I got everyone that I was targeting and could not have been any happier. I was a little surprised because I had a few more drinks than I should have. After the draft wrapped up we sat around and talked about the day, had a few more drinks and headed off to my hotel room. The next day I woke up in a dark and empty hotel room, this time I couldn’t sleep because of an alarm beeping loudly. I had to drive two hours to get to my first Monday class of the semester. I can’t wait till next year’s draft.