ready, set . . . slow!

for some, the draft can be the highlight of the long fantasy season; so much preparation to dive into and much merriment to be had. the ability to put yourself in the seat of the manager of an NFL team for the night, with all the drama and fast paced decision making of the pros, can be yours for a glorious few hours. for some, this is where it's at. for some, the tradition of bringing their league mates together over a few snacks and a couple beverages might be the whole reason they cling to the increasingly ridiculous ritual of middle aged men playing a fantasy game with more rigor than they muster in their actual professions.

but not us.

no, after a few brief hours of failed planning, the G_DUBBs tossed the whole practice of live drafting on the scrap heap of history. we chose a different path, the far less traveled path. and I am only now (after many weeks) able to speak of the horrors that took place. we chose violence that day, we chose darkness. and we invented the world's first slow draft via shared Google sheet. it was an unspeakable mess, and much like the career arc of a certain NFL quarterback, it went on much much longer than any of us wanted.

oh boy. you can see the scared look in our eyes. you can read the subtext.

"what the hell is going on?"

"wait, this isn't happening on an app?"

"i need to remember to clear my search history after I Google 'how to kill Tad Mackey and get away with it'."

by text 200 (and yes, I manually counted them...all of them), the realization of what we were undertaking was setting in

the familiar refrain of "who's turn is it?" was ringing out every three to four minutes.

not pictured here, the wives were starting to get restless at their hubands now glued to their phones for a seemingly endless duration.

and on a personal note, the Android users, oh boy. maybe I should just leave it at that, but let's just say that if this was "back in the old days when we all paid" for texting, they would have been responsible for a nice bump in Verizon's quarterly revenue.

by 400 one G_DUBB, out of sheer boredom or to improve efficiency, added a pivot table.

what a nerd.

i'm pretty sure it didn't even work properly.

the dad jokes were flying.

not all were as good as this one. in fact, most of us were only laughing to keep from crying.

spirits were still high.

we know now it was only gallows humor.

around text 600 this G_DUBB went radio dark, and of course was presumed dead.

like so many of us wishing for the sweet release, it would not come for him.

at this point his sanity was however in question. just look in his eyes.

alive, yes but also very much dead inside.

we are still waiting on the measurements, but custom league uniforms were issued around text 750.

another step in the commissioner's consolidation of power.

another step towards our indoctrination and re-training.

we are good docile league mates.

yes, we are.

we shared memories from a time when we still knew how to smile.

we looked so much younger, more care free.

none of us knew the agony that lay ahead.

this photo was taken 24 hours before the draft.

it may as well have been 24 years.

and then the unthinkable happened.

JuJu Smith-Schuster slipped a round because he was inadvertently crossed off the list, but was not drafted.

who could have guessed that drafting over 4 days on a Google sheet could end in an error of any kind.

not me.

not me.

that's when Dad yelled at us and told us to keep our fingers out of the cookie batter.

that slowed us down even more.

manual audits ensued.

hanging chads, etc.

someone shouted, "Collusion!"

"my fantasy gods, if they start this over, I'm going to need to hire a divorce attorney," another briefly considered.

but it seemed like JuJu was the only SNAFU

so in the interest of making it all just end already, we trudged onward

1,010 texts

that's how many dispatches came from this battfield.

in the end, at the mere cost of $1 per text (by Shekabe's accounting) we were done with the infernal thing and left with a joyless memory that will no doubt be a dark cloud over the G_DUBBs league for however long it lasts. and if this draft offers any portents into how long that will be, I'm guessing we'll be stuck here, stuck with each other, for a very very long time.

see you on the fake gridiron.

losers.