A Woman's Guide to Coping with Fantasy Football Addicts

I was sitting at a local watering hole when the gentleman beside me started going on and on about his fantasy football team. Like I had nothing else better to do than listen to him discuss how he drafted the Redskins defense in the 7th round.

For those of you still unfamiliar with Fantasy Football... welcome to planet earth. Sports fans, mostly men who think they are capable of running a professional sports franchise, gather once a year to draft football players at each position and field their own team. Normally wings, beer and bad jokes are served, while guys who are too short, too slow and too uncoordinated to play the game, draft players they think will garner them enough yards, receptions and touchdowns to crown them Fantasy Football king.

Now, if this guy annoyed me, a football fan, after only a few brief minutes of hearing him talk about his third string wide receiver, it got me thinking how the wives, women and girlfriends of millions of men around the country cope with these very same conversations.

So, for those girlfriends out there who have had enough of their man's childhood fixation with running his own rotisserie team, we've come up with some valuable advice to help you make it through the season with a smile.

Go Shopping: If your man zones out on Sundays, take his credit card and run to the mall for your own fantasy spree. If he's in a league where he gets paid out for success, tell him you were so confident in his ability to draft a winning team, that you were just celebrating his impending victory by buying yourself something nice.

Curb the Talk: The last thing your man wants to hear is who was on Oprah this week. Similarly, the last thing you want to hear is how many points Adrian Peterson earned him in Week Five. Make sure he understands there's a time and a place for such talk, and that's away from you and with his friends.