Got Any Good Fantasy Draft Stories?

Even in the internet age of fantasy sports, I still think many players only partake in the games against groups of friends. Many of these leagues have live drafts in person, and the stories that come from these drafts are always great -- especially when alcohol is prominently involved. In fact, if you play fantasy sports and you don't have at least one of these a year, you are really missing out.

Anyway, we here at FanHouse -- being the house of true sports fans, after all -- decided to give fantasy sports fans an avenue to tell their favorite draft day stories. It can involve mocking a friend, someone making a fool of him or herself, or just a really bad pick. Here are a few to get the chain started.

Matt Snyder, Story #1: Remember when Keyshawn Johnson retired in the summer months a few years ago? Well, one owner in my oldest fantasy football league certainly does. He had already drafted Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, and Chad Johnson. He was calling it his "diva receiving corps." So we get down to the last round, and he went to grab the draft board sticker from the wide receiver pile. He proclaimed, "well, might as well add another to the diva corps." All eleven other owners knew exactly what was going on, because we started making eye contact with each other, trying to keep straight faces. You see, our rule is that you can't change a pick once it's stuck to the draft board. So, we wait ... he approaches ... he announces, "Keyshawn Johnson" ... we wait ... about 10 seconds pass (and it felt like about 10 minutes) ... and finally, an explosion of laughter emanates from the Snyder household. The best part was that he still had no idea why were laughing.

The joke was on us went Moss went on to obliterate the competition at receiver that year, though.

Snyder, Story #2: When I first started playing fantasy sports -- as it says in my bio -- I was a college student. I was also a real baseball player for said school. Well, as long as "player" means "wearing the uniform and sitting on the bench." Anyway, in those days, my friends and I had a league where the owners all lived quite far apart, so we couldn't do the live thing. Therefore, we drafted via email and phone over the course of two to three weeks. On a certain day during our first drafting week, we had a game. It happened to be against my brother's team (he's only a year younger than I, and played for Valparaiso). We ended up stuck on my brother's pick right before game time. Knowing we wouldn't get his pick until about four hours after the game ended, my roommate (one of our starting pitchers) and I knew what we had to do.

As we're stretching, Valpo shows up and begins to warm up along the right field line. My roommate, under the guise of getting his conditioning in (pitchers who weren't scheduled that day had a certain amount of required running to do), decided to run by them. As he took one lap, he yelled out about five players' names to the huddle of our opposition. It likely bewildered most of the other players, and certainly the coaches. My brother knew, though, that he was hearing the names of the players who had been picked since he departed Valparaiso. On my roommate's next lap, my brother yells out "Miguel Tejada." I mean, if these were curse words, people would have thought those two had Tourettes.

My favorite part of the story is that my Dad and another one of my friends -- who were both in the league -- were sitting in the crowd. As I ran back towards our dugout, I yelled to them, "Snee picks Tejada." Snee was my bro's nickname. They got it. And they kept the ball rolling during the game via cell phone.

Will Brinson: We did a Brahsome fantasy league on AOL a few years ago and one of the guys we got to join hadn't ever used our software. With the first pick in the third round of a 10 team league, he selects Steve Smith, WR ... for the New York Giants.

He, of course, flips out and we spend the next two months making fun of him. Then he started winning. And kept winning. And eventually won the freaking league! The point of it's not so much that this guy didn't know what he's doing, as, like Snyder alluded to with his Keyshawn-Moss story, it is that fantasy football can be a fickle, fickle mistress sometimes.

Tom Herrera: My stepfather, Frank, took part in a fantasy baseball draft the day after Opening Day in 1994. You might recall a gentleman by the name of Tuffy Rhodes, who clubbed three home runs for the Cubs that first game of the season. Someone in Frank's league was obviously impressed, because he selected Tuffy in the first round. He was rewarded with only five more home runs for the entire season, not to mention that dreadful .234/.318/.387 line of rate stats.

Tom Mantzouranis: This is when conviction goes bad. In 2004, I watched the Vikings survive the last four-plus games without Randy Moss thanks the surprising emergence of Nate Burleson. That offseason, when the Vikes shipped Moss to the Raiders, I became certain that Daunte Culpepper (who was coming off one of the best seasons by a quarterback ever) and Burleson were the next unstoppable force in fantasy football. I was so convinced, sadly, that I drafted Culpepper with my third-overall pick and grabbed Burleson on the snake-around in the second. I had to have them before anyone else got them.

Culpepper promptly blew out his knee (not before throwing six touchdowns against 12 interceptions, though!) and Burleson barely cracked 300 yards on the season. Luckily, I had Drew Brees (circa San Diego) as a backup to stem the bleeding, but it was hardly enough to save my season or my ego, which went out on a limb in an attempt to look brilliant only to have the limb snap and my ego forever paralyzed by the event.

Brinson: I just read the first two lines above and started cringing and convulsing. I hate Burleson so much to this very day -- took him in the third that year.

Snyder: I had just told Mantz via gchat that I took Burleson in the third that year, too. We all suck.

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So there you have it. An incomprehensible list of some of our favorite draft day stories.

C'mon, fantasy players, you know you have one. Post your favorite fantasy draft story in the comments section. Let's see whatcha got!