I’m hooked on fantasy football. This past season I named my team “Smack Attack” because even if I’m not the best at fantasy football, I can be great at smack talk. I play in a league with church friends, and our smack talk chat is not disparaging but generally consists of hyperbole, playful intimidation, and a lot of humor. Everyone just wants to beat the league commissioner, who is pretty proficient at smack talk himself. Maybe one season he’ll actually win. Nah, probably not.

I haven’t won the championship yet, but I have made it to the playoff finals. I can rattle off the first and last names, positions, and teams of many NFL players. I can carry on a conversation about who is injured, traded, or benched. I watch football games with interest and cheer for specific players, even if they’re playing against my favorite team. It’s all very complicated and yet surprisingly simple.

Since the fantasy football season is sixteen weeks long, here is a list of sixteen observations I have made about the game:

• There is a limit to how many Bitmojis I can send to my league’s group chat in one day without being annoying.
• I get a little mopey when I lose. You can ask my husband. Or anyone else who is with me on a losing weekend.
• The experts are wrong half of the time. Usually that’s the half when I take their advice.
• I can try something new and become pretty darn good at it even if I didn’t know anything about it before I started.
• I really like the other people in my fantasy football league. Especially when I beat them.
• When my first round pick doesn’t play well, I have a reason to be salty.
• When the leading scorer on my team gets kicked out of the NFL, I have a reason to be saltier.
• The waiver wire is my friend. Unless somebody else adds the player I want.
• I drafted Patrick Mahomes for a reason.
• No one cares if my bench players outscore my starting lineup except me.
• I should feel sympathy for the actual injured player instead of just being upset that he’s not scoring points for me.
• All the research I can do on rankings, projections, stats, injuries, and opponents are worthless without luck.
• If a quarterback can’t throw, the wide receivers probably can’t catch. And they don’t. Especially if they’re on my roster.
• NFL teams care more about winning games than scoring fantasy points.
• Fantasy football is the most unpredictable, frustrating, agonizing, exasperating, and consuming game I’ve ever played.
• I’ll do it all again next season.

Thank you…fantasy football draft, for letting me know that even in my fantasies, I am bad at sports.

Jimmy Fallon