In the full swing

Here we are in the full swing of Fall. We know it because Brenda has been in school for two weeks and more importantly (to me) Nebraska has had its first football game. As many of you know, this is the start of the Bo Pelini era. Yesterday's ticket was supposedly one of the hardest tickets to get in many years. Tailgating started yesterday morning at 9:00 though kickoff wasn't until 6:00 PM (I am sure some started their tailgating Friday evening). NAI FMA had their annual tailgate party in the office. Brenda and I made our way downtown early so that Brenda could get a new Husker shirt. at 2:00, we had to go up 3/4 of the way in the parking garage, wade through mobs of husker fans just to spend our money on a new top! Afterwards we went to the company party so that we could run home to watch the game on pay per view. Its a beautiful thing when we can teach our college students economics - supply and demand!

The other sign of fall is fantasy football. Where those who really don't know much about football (but listen most of the day long to sports radio) draft teams so that we can have bragging rights over knowing something that no one else in the world knows. This can consist of things like knowing that this player isn't going to play well all year long, though he makes millions of dollars, or that another player is going to tear is ACL in the first game of the year and be out of commission (who in there right mind would have wanted him).

We start the season with the annual "draft". This is when ten men get together with $200 of imaginery money in their pockets and auction off all the NFL talent to get the best team ever assembled on paper! I was fortunate to spend $72 of my money on the very first player - Tom Brady. Now all I have to do is buy 17 more players with the rest of my money. Once you have spent all of your money you can only pickup players for free. This is another good lesson on economics.... or maybe just accounting - don't spend all of your money on a couple of players and have nothing for the rest of your team.
The other important management rule is to watch out for "bye weeks". These are when the players you have drafted don't play a game. This is important when drafting because it doesn't help if you get one of the best players in the league if he has a "bye week" the same time your other best player in the league does. I do believe this happened once or twice during our draft. Finally we are now ready for the league play to begin. I believe next week is when it all kicks off. I get to play against Andy the first week. Last year his team didn't do too well but it was always interesting to see what his team's name was. He has the tendency to change it quite frequently.
I will make sure to keep you up to date on all of the fall sports in our lives - I didn't even get started on the Red Sox!
Later, Mike