You are sitting at home on a Sunday afternoon in the fall, wondering out loud to yourself, “If I live in Oklahoma during NFL season, what gives my puny life meaning on Sundays, especially Sundays after a game-day?” Fear not, existentialist weenie, I am here to provide the answer in two alliterative words: fantasy football. 

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more important for your week-to-week life than the success of your fantasy football team. Not only does fantasy football help guide you through long, meaningless Sundays, it also helps guide you through your equally long and meaningless week. Fantasy football, perhaps more than anything else, gives your life meaning. 

 A typical week of fantasy football life, is as follows.

Tuesday, check the results of your weekend games. If you won, spend the next 72 hours gloating over the handful of grown men who have no idea you even exist, and did well enough in their actual football games to score you some points in your virtual one. If you lost, reevaluate your life and maybe decide to study and become a doctor.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday spend the entire allotment of your class time checking to make sure your roster is set and ready to go. Your schoolwork can wait. With the NFL’s rotating bye schedule, and Roger Goodell giving out suspensions like Oprah gives out vacations, you never know which one of your players is taking some time off, or serving in the state pen this week. Nothing makes you look like a bigger fantasy football nitwit than playing six players currently on bye weeks, or six players currently getting three squares and shower tokens in an upstate New York facility. 

As you head into the weekend, stock up on supplies to help your gloating, or to help eat yourself to the point of not being able to be disappointed in LeSean McCoy anymore. For those of you who don’t know, that is a lot.

Saturday, burn some incense and pray to whatever deity you choose that none of your players tripped over their dog last night and got injured, no one was arrested for anything, and by the grace of Vince Lombardi’s ghost, your player is motivated enough by his $60 million contract to go out and score a touchdown, or two, tomorrow.

Sunday and Monday, sit by the television and watch as your players mess up your entire week or make you prouder than a mom at a Christmas concert. Repeat, until late January, when you have given up on all things football and on life, in general.

If there is more to life than this weekly cycle of hate and love affairs with the NFL, do not show me for I do not wish to know. If you play fantasy football -- good for you, keep it going. I believe in you. If you don’t play fantasy football, I encourage you to start. The weight and meaning of your entire week depends on it. If you are a girl, I have heard that Gossip Girl is on Netflix.