How the VAIO Saved My Draft

So last night was the 12th annual SKNFL draft. For those not fortunate enough to know, the SKNFL is the fantasy football league that I've been in since . . . wait for it . . . high school. Although the league has evolved a bit over the years, adding and subtracting various participants, the core group has stayed fairly consistent. In addition to being a great way to up the excitement of football season, fantasy football has also been a great way to stay connected to good friends who are spread out across the country.

Every season of fantasy football begins with the draft, where the 12 teams of the SKNFL divvy up the 150+ position players of the NFL among themselves. 6ish years ago, this ritual took place in my basement, with lots of frozen pizza, chips, brownies, and IBC Root Beer. We drafted by writing a draft order on the chalkboard wall, marking off names on a master list, and generally ridiculing one another for completely absurd picks (e.g., the perennial drafter of Mike Vanderjagt four rounds too early). Now that we've "grown up" and scattered, the draft takes place courtesy of ESPN and Skype, which actually makes things much more efficient, except for the inability to steal someone else's chips. Net, the computer keeps track of who I've drafted and who's still available, but I have to pay for my own food.

(Three computers may seem a bit much, but I had a lot to keep track of.)

But I digress. This year, we switched it up a bit. Rather than choosing players via a draft (i.e., with his second pick, Aaron selects Tom Brady, everyone boos because no one stopped being a Colts fan), we opted for an auction. In the auction format, everyone starts with the same amount of "money"---more real than Schrute bucks, but not quite Disney dollars---with which to bid on various players. The upside of an auction? Everyone has a shot at every player. The downside? Everyone has a shot at every player. The result was actually fairly entertaining, if one can live with the guilt of spending nearly two-thirds of one's budget on a declining running back who plays for a team that already runs by committee 90% of the time. Curse you DeAngelo Williams.

This year, however, I nearly did not have the pleasure of making my annual SKNFL running back mistake (2009- Larry Johnson, 2008- Darren McFadden, 2007- Travis Henry, etc.). Three minutes before the auction went live, I lost the internet on my desktop computer. This has happened before, and the only cure is a rather time consuming regimen of unplugging and restarting things. Not conducive to bidding on NFL superstars. Fortunately, I had the trusty Gateway laptop at my right hand. Unfortunately, I turned it on only to find that it had actually been waiting to install 8 Windows updates before shutting down from the previous time I used it---thanks Bill. I restarted, but given its ripe old age, the laptop takes ~6 minutes to go from cold to up and running. Too long. Fortunately, our friend Robin just moved in and not 10 minutes before had jokingly offered to set up her Sony VAIO to help complete the picture of nerd-dom that I was painting. Not one to be concerned about being over prepared, I had accepted.

When the LAN connection went down, the wireless stayed on. Robin's laptop, which was to serve only as the host for the Skype portion of the auction, was drafted into service. 2.5 hours later, I had successfully assembled a near-perfect 14 man roster. The only hiccup? When I briefly lost wireless connectivity, the "autodraft" function outbid my friend Steve and purchased a second kicker. One barely needs a single kicker, let alone two. Oh well. Two kickers is better than paying list price for Brett Favre.

And that's how the VAIO saved my draft.