Fantasy Football

It's football season and women across America not only have to contend with their significant others turning into slack-jawed zombies in front of the TV, but they have to deal with them being glued to the computer as well as the Bill Belichick wannabes pore over their "rosters," making trades and benching players.

Fantasy football has become one of the biggest crazes in football over the last decade, extending the pigskin obsession well beyond Sundays and Monday nights. WalletPop's Aaron Crowe recently posted about how to play without leaving a fantasy football widow.

For those of you unfamiliar with how fantasy football works, you draft whichever players you want and depending on how they perform during the actual game, your fantasy team accumulates points. If you score more points than your opponent(s) that week, you win. If you've never tried playing, you're probably wondering how people become so caught up given some leagues cost as much as $10,000 to join.

Here are some of the top reasons why fantasy football is such a huge craze:

• Bragging rights: Beating your friends at a fantasy sport is just as good as beating them actually playing the sport. Every week you win gives you a whole week to gloat. It also shows how much more knowledgeable you are than them at football.

• Money: Some leagues out there are free but members pool together some money for the winner. The leagues that cost money usually have some pretty big payouts. There are even some companies out there that will insure your team if one of your players get injured. I was shocked when I read this too. You can find it in the Wall Street Journal if you don't believe me. With payouts as high as $1,000,000 it's hard not to get into it.

• Enjoy games for teams you don't like: Fantasy football is probably the only thing that would ever drive me to root for Tom Brady (not the Patriots, just Brady). It gives you an excuse to watch games you normally wouldn't care about because if Tom Brady does well, you do too (assuming he's on your team). If he isn't, you can enjoy hating him even more.

Fantasy football is continuing to grow with as many as 35,000,000 players worldwide. It's too late to join in this season if you haven't already, but there's still next year--or you can try your luck at fantasy basketball, which begins in a little over a month.

For those of you already on a team, good luck.