Computer on, television turned up, and Sunday homework sessions postponed. Fantasy football has started and my grades are already plummeting. I wake up Sunday mornings without reading my communication articles or studying for my music quizzes. I find myself engrossed in something that’s not even real.

In all honesty, I hate the NFL. I’ve always been a college football fan, and a big one at that. If you don’t believe me, direct your eyes northward and look at my picture; no sign of the NFL anywhere right? Right. I feel the NFL pays too much, has too many drama queens (calling Terrell Owens) and the passion and tradition of the NFL doesn’t match the college game.

Fantasy football gives me something to do on Sundays during football season. It allows me to be the coach, the general manager and the angry drunk fan in the stands all at once. I never cheer for a team to win; I never get disappointed when a team loses. I get irate, though, if a team’s star player is on my team and doesn’t perform well.

My first example comes from week one, where the Indianapolis Colts and the Houston Texans opened their season with a divisional game in Houston.

The Texans had beaten Peyton Manning and the Colts just once in their history and Houston’s strategy was to run the ball as many times as they could to keep the Colts’ offense off the field and off the scoreboard. That’s great, especially if you want the Texans to win, but for me, I have Texans’ quarterback Matt Schaub on my team and I want him to fling it down the field 60 times and throw for 400 yards and five touchdowns. Is that really too much to ask?

“So what did he do today when you started him?” you ask.

I’ll tell you, but first let me throw up.

He threw just 17 passes, only completing nine, for just 107 yards and one score. I would have been better off just not playing anyone at that spot.

Any fantasy owner and enthusiast will tell you the worst thing about fantasy football is benching someone that plays great. That feeling a fantasy owner gets when he sees his bench score more than his starters is putrid. For guys, the pain is similar to getting kicked in the crotch with a golf shoe, spikes and all. For you women out there, do I dare say as bad as child birth?

This past weekend, I benched Matt Forte, the Chicago Bears starting running back. All he did was lead the Bears to a 19-14 win over the lowly Detroit Lions by compiling over 200 yards of offense and scoring two touchdowns, which totaled over 30 fantasy points. Just my luck, my starting running back only gained 94 total yards, fumbled twice, totaling 11 points. Murphy’s Law strikes again.

So the question that has to be answered is this: Do we live in a fantasy world? No, or else I would be a millionaire living in Florida next to Dwight Schar and leading my league right now. But during the NFL season, we do, and it’s fantastic.