Some of my fantasies involve football

If you'd been sitting beside me on my couch during the NFL Monday nighter between the San Diego Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs, you'd have a perfect understanding of why fantasy football rules.
First, a bit of background. I'm involved in a 14-team fantasy keeper league. It's pretty hardcore - the buy-in is $100 per year, and you get to keep three players from your roster the year before. You play head-to-head with one other team each week, and whoever gets the most points gets the W. Top eight teams make the playoffs, and the post-season champ takes home the bulk of the prize pool. I won the whole enchilada in 2008. It gets kind of intense, but in all the right ways.
Which brings us back to the Monday nighter. Heading into the San Diego-Kansas City game, I held a 10-point lead over my opponent - last year's champ, incidentally. We both had two players involved: I had Chargers TE Antonio Gates and Chiefs RB Thomas Jones, and he had Chargers QB Philip Rivers (pictured above) and the San Diego defence.
It wasn't a promising match-up for me, despite my lead. Our point system is kind of screwed up - quarterbacks are by far the biggest points-generators. So with Rivers going up against the KC defence, I had reason to worry.
But as the game wore on, my optimism grew. The underdog Chiefs built a 21-7 halftime lead, severely denting the fantasy value of my opponent's San Diego D. Rivers did throw one touchdown pass, but it was to Gates - my tight end. Sweeeeeet.
Rivers got things going in the second half, though. I groaned aloud when he threw a 59-yard TD pass to a wide open Legedu Nanee. And I was chewing my fingernails as he drove the Chargers inside KC's 10 yard line with less than a minute remaining.
I should mention that at this point, I held a 55-51 lead. TD throws are worth four points, so if Rivers completed a pass into the end zone, we'd be tied, with a strong possibility of Rivers racking up even more points in OT.
But the Chiefs defence stood firm, and when Rivers's fourth-down pass fell harmlessly to the turf, I was a little more excited than I should have been.
You just gotta love fantasy football. The NFL, more than any other sport, is well-suited to sports-pool gambling - the fact that most games occur on the same day of the week makes it ideal for head-to-head pools, and you only have to set your roster once a week. And NFL football in HD is like watching a good movie. Even my wife enjoys it.