This NFL season, I've made my first foray into fantasy sports by joining the OGU's fantasy fooball league. My team, the Dapper Dandies, are currently holding steady at 3-3 with the Monday Night game to go, but I have a bad feeling. Why do I have a bad feeling?

Mainly, it's because I didn't play a QB this week. Vince Young is my primary quarterback, and I already goofed once by leaving him in the line up during the Titans' bye week. This time, however, there was a lot of waffling as to whether or not he would be healed enough to play after suffering an injury last week. I didn't exactly have any great choices in replacing him, and he hadn't been announced as definitely being out, so I left him in.

So I get up on Sunday morning and log on to ESPN.com to see an article stating that Young was out for the game.

Thanks for telling me ahead of time, guys. Seriously.

Now, maybe my other players will be able to pick up enough slack to pick up the win. When young went down last week, his contribution to my fantasy league score was actually negative, but I still managed to pull it out. Compared to that, his inevitable score of 0.00 will be an improvement. Still, given my experience in fantasy football so far, it's amazing to think that there are people who take it with dead seriousness.

Don't get me wrong. It's fun to try and put together a winning combination of players that will earn more points than my opponent. However, this isn't like Madden; I don't have direct control over what happens on the field, and once the games start, my line up is locked in no matter what happens. While performances can be predicted based on past experience, it's still a crap shoot. A good player on a good team won't necessarily have a good week, and all of the prepared data in the world is useless if someone goes down with an injury.

I guess what I've learned so far can be condensed down to two points:

1. Don't bother trying to overanalyze. I always thought that those fantasy draft and stat guides were a waste of money, and I haven't seen anything that would change my mind in that regard.

2. Never draft the most recent Madden cover athelete. The curse will haunt your fantasy league performance.