As week 17 in the NFL season approaches many of us are gearing up to watch many truely meaningless games with great interest.  Well NFL you can thank fantasy football.  Sure there are some playoff spots still on the line and positioning, but thanks to fantasy sports every game is extremely important to those of us, me included, who are fighting it out in their respective league championship games. 

     The best part about fantasy sports is it adds some meaning to nearly every play.  How many of us have groaned this year over players not fighting for that extra yard on monday night because that yard (although probally meaningless in the context of the game) could mean the difference between a fantasy win or loss.  In fact even this past week as I sat in Sun Devil Stadium wearing my Eagles jersey (and I wasn't the only one by a long shot) I was secretly routing for Josh McNown to have a big game, as well as Fitzgerald and Boldin.  Why?  Because their sucess meant my fantasy teams success. 

     Sometimes fantasy sports does make it hard to be a fan of your team, you want your players to do well, but you also want your Favorite team to win.  Even that can get complicated if the fantasy team you're playing against has players from your team on it. 

     Only fantasy sports can make nearly every game of a 162 game schedule important.  More people follow the game closer than ever before.  It used to be that winning and losing were all that mattered, but for a great many of us who's pro team isn't winning can still have take some pride in our fantasy teams success and the success of other teams that we normally wouldn't have any interest in.  Fantasy sports has given us something us a stake in nearly every game played, and that's something that even TV couldn't do.