Shout Out: XGCFFL

XGCFFL = ex-Goshen College Fantasy Football League

19 years ago, my husband (though we were only dating then) and many of the guys on his dorm floor started a fantasy football league which continues to this day, though the members are spread from Oregon to North Carolina.  It began with them all drafting in a cramped dorm room.  These days, several centrally located owners gather in the War Room where they use projectors, multiple computers, google spread sheets and set up both on-line chats and skype to connect with owners elsewhere in the country.  How else to ridicule  each other effectively in real time when so far apart?

Were I to repeat the choice bits of banter from the draft or the flurry of emails that criss-cross the country each week, I would surely have this site shut down and blocked from a good many browsers.  Just their team names would be enough.  (And now they get to name each other's teams! Which has made things wonderfully worse.  This may be my one true contribution to the league.  None of them seem too keen on my typical role:  rearing my feminist head and correcting others' grammar/spelling.)

The XGCFFL owners were the ones who provided me with favorite movie quotes for the play and I've even borrowed heavily from some of their stories... i.e.  one of them actually picked up a girl with Elliot's pick-up line.  And guys, I even worked in "Don't worry about it" but in a totally different context.  In fact, this league's chronic story telling (a thorn in many of their wives' sides) is far more extreme than the characters on stage.  Don't get any of them started.

For your remembering enjoyment.  The Morning After: Yes, that is the hash brown casserole box in the foreground of this photo.

There are even several accountants in the league, who, at any given moment will call up the historic stats, apply some new algorithm and spit out statistical analysis.  This year we learned how many champions came from which position in the draft order.  Other seasons have provided us with graphs of the Luck-O-Meter which determined each teams average against their opponents average to find out if your total win-loss record over the course of the season meant you were lucky or unlucky in your match-ups...  Impressive use of one's education, right?

So, thanks to my old classmates, the XGCFFL, for leaving me on the group list to get all of your mindless, perverse banter for the last 16 years.*  You've taught me a lot about football and how men can be friends for a lifetime.


* Because there are statistical nitpickers in the group, I have to add the caveat that while the league has been together 19 years I wouldn't have been included in the emails until I officially married into the group 16 years ago.