Finding Closure (In a lyrical kind of way)

Well, here it is. That final week true fantasy diehards dread each and every year. For most of you, the issue of league championship has already been settled. Sure, there are a few scattered leagues using Week 17 to crown the ultimate victor, but for the rest, the dust is settling, the prizes are being disbursed and the league Web site will soon be deleted from "My Favorites." Even league champions can fall to this malaise, although they do have a nice shiny trophy to polish when things get real tough.

For everyone else: What now, Oh, Abandoned Souls?

At KFFL, we are attuned to your needs. Indeed, we too suffer this cursed fantasy post-partum affliction, and we would like to do something about it.

WINNER TAKES IT ALL...

Special thanks to Sammy Hagar for inspiring the theme of this report with his classic song "Winner Takes It All." This is serious business here - handling champions who need to fill the void left by crushing the competition. You know who you are, masters of the universe. You drafted San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson and fell into San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore in Round 8. Or, you grabbed some unknown rookie named Marques Colston in Week 2 on a hunch.

Well, revel in your trophy, for one week from now, you will be in the same place as everyone who fell before your march to the crown. Here are a few tips to help ease the pain.

A) Invent your own victory anthem. Don't be unoriginal and use Queen's "We Are The Champions." Anyone can do that. Instead, try warping lesser known tunes such as "Bang, Bang" by the redundantly named group Danger Danger or Walter Egan's atmospheric "Magnet and Steel." Record it onto CD (it helps to sing like your favorite cartoon animal, as long as it's Scooby-Doo) and mail to the rest of your league.

B) Make MySpace.com all about your space. If you haven't joined yet, you are the last person on Earth, apparently. Search out fantasy football forums. There are only 43,900 of them as of this writing, so that subject obviously needs some more input. Share your new victory anthem. Swap pics of trophies and tales of glory. Make fun of losers who don't have a trophy or thought the "fantasy" part of the search term meant something else.

C) Create a reunion tour. Hey, The Rolling Stones and KISS have been doing this for years - getting away with it, too. Why can't you do the same? Create fictitious song titles related to each one of your wins on the way to league champion. Then send the full tour schedule via email to your fellow owners. Don't forget to repeat the invitation on a weekly basis until someone complains. Set the over/under bet on how many mailings it takes with a couple of your non-league buddies.

...LOSER TAKES A FALL

Face it, there are going to be more people in this category than the winner's bracket. It's the nature of the game. If it's any consolation, everyone is now equal. In a few short weeks, no one will even remember who won it all - at least until you all start getting these weird reunion tour invitations.

So, in order to assist with the gnawing emptiness at the loss of a weekly compulsion, we humbly present to you some coping strategies designed to make you feel better about the end of the season (and trust us, they are more than exercises in run-on sentences like this one.)

A) Create a "To-Do" list. These should consist of actions you must take to represent yourself better next season. Things like:

1) Let go of your belief that the Clevelan Browns are ready to take the next step. They aren't.

2) Read KFFL, even in mid-May when those articles seem to have absolutely no relevance.

3) Begin listing out your ideal fantasy team on the mirror in your bathroom, but don't use lipstick. That's just creepy. Use an erasable marker instead.

B) Enter the 6-Scratch withdrawal program. Some readers may want to call this a 12-Step Program, but it's not. It's better because it only has half the steps, which means you can do it faster. List out six things you did that directly led to a loss, and scratch them from your repertoire. They could be strategic errors like forgetting to set your lineup before going out of town, which resulted in you starting three Bye week players. It could be a judgment error like burning up your first-round draft choice on Arizona Cardinals running back Edgerrin James even though you were worried about that offensive line being, well, offensive. Or, perhaps, it was pure hubris, like claiming to understand the Julius Jones/Marion Barber III touch ratio, when in reality you just flipped a coin each week until it bit you back.

C) Compile your own playlist. This is similar to the champion song list suggestion above but with a different slant. Your songs must all come from ballads and address each defeat during the season, no matter how crushing. Award yourself points for anything created from 1980s hair metal bands, Anya or a Wisconsin-based group. Double points if it rhymes. Triple if it can be set to polka.

D) Pillage and burn mechanisms. Apparently this is a big hit with scorned lovers when dealing with losing their better half - so hey, maybe it has some legs. Gather up pictures of those players who let you down. Perhaps you started the aforementioned Marion Barber III during your first playoff game. That turned out to be the week he rushed for negative-one yards and earned you exactly ZERO points, after posting two scores the week prior. Or, perhaps, your opponent started New Orleans quarterback Drew Brees during that same game, where he somehow managed to rack up five - FIVE! - touchdowns and eat up your margin of victory like a lumberjack devours waffles. Once you've collected all the necessary pictures, hold a burning ceremony to purge them from your life. Using only elementary school-approved precautions, set the heap of pictures on fire and chant: "Begone, ye betrayers of the pigskin. Back to the depths of minicamps and free agency where ye came from. Oh, ye shall not vex me this offseason." If you can work in one of your ballads, even better.

Well, there you have it. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Outside of creating a playoff league, you have little left of this fantasy season - best to make use of the time you have from now until training camps pick up in the summer. We here at KFFL thank you for the support and patronage in 2006. We must now retreat to our dark rooms and try to think of lyrics that rhyme with waiver wire.