Fantasy football keeps Los Angeles' NFL fans in the game

For a 14th consecutive season, the NFL will not field a team in Los Angeles.

But that's OK, because, for the 14th consecutive season, I will.

My guys reported Wednesday night, ready for next week's season opener, no messy exhibition games, no nasty holdouts.

My guys didn't report on some distant field I can only see with binoculars, but in a bright box a few inches from my nose.

I didn't need to fight traffic to find them. I didn't need to sell a kidney to afford to see them. I only had to walk to the kitchen table and turn on a computer and there they were.

The Mute Points. Those are my guys. That's my team.

It's not the NFL, but they are all NFL players, and they play a full NFL schedule, and I can watch every game on NFL weekends.

I can cheer for them. I can scream at them. I can win with them. And by the end of the year, in a way that is no different than fans in Cleveland slobbering over a 300-pound stranger simply because he wears an orange helmet, I can even bond with them.

It's a billion-dollar industry known as fantasy football.

But for those of us in the biggest city in the country with no team, it's reality football.

Only better.

"Who needs the NFL here?" said Tom Russo, veteran Los Angeles television executive and fantasy player. "Football fans have everything we need without it."

Twenty-five years ago, fantasy sports were geek sports, basement sports, loser sports.

Today, with teams becoming more economically distant from their fan base, it's more fun to root for individual players, making fantasy mainstream.

The players play it -- Washington Redskins tight end Chris Cooley has been in four leagues at once.

The coaches coach it -- former Chicago Bears guru Mike Ditka is launching a new online league.

The personnel folks consult on it -- longtime league executive Mike Lombardi gives his advice on a site.

There are countless television shows devoted to it, and constant television tickers paying homage to it, and endless websites making money from it.

Fantasy football has become so popular, it is one of the reasons, however minor, that Los Angeles has no real team.

The first reason is that television doesn't need a team here, the ratings are just fine without one.