"Hey, Dad .... good game."

That's what I woke up to this morning.  Nathan standing bedside, congratulating me on the outcome of our fantasy football league championship game.

I started the night with a slim 1 point lead.  I had Minnesota's kicker Ryan Longwell going for me and some random guy named Adrian Peterson playing for Nathan.  (If you read my last post it seems Nathan had a change of heart and did go with AP over Ahmad Bradshaw ... bad news for me.)

If you watched the game, AP was SHUT DOWN the entire first half.  Things were going well, although I'd hoped the Vikings would have gotten close enough for a few field goal attempts.  The second half was a different story ... AP All Day scored three touchdowns and Longwell missed a few chip shots.  I didn't even look at the final score.  I'm guessing he had me by 20 points or more.

Now ... for the rest of the story.  Nathan went to bed with what he thought was a slim lead.  The game was headed to overtime and I had him convinced that if Longwell kicked a "game winning" field goal it would be worth more points and enough to give me the win.  This of course was not the case, and the outcome of our game had already been determined.

I'm assuming he woke up first thing to turn on SportsCenter and see the Bears win, then log onto his Yahoo! account to get the final tally.  Rather than jumping up and down, screaming in his yet to deepen 10-year old voice and shouting "winner, winner chicken dinner!" (which he's heard me do all to often), I got an extended hand and "hey Dad .... good game." :)

What a way to start the day!  I googled an old St. Louis Post-Dispatch column about "there's a way to win, a way to lose, and character to be extracted from both."  I couldn't find it, but did stumble upon the Pursuing Victory with Honor sportsmanship campaign.  A noble cause built around the adage of "it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game".

I'm not sure how we got so far away from that, but the "Smack Talk" section of the Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football page clearly indicates we're there.  I also distinctly recall Optimist Park in good ol' Rock Falls, IL and being pulled from a T-Ball game by my mom so we could walk home after a few parents got a bit too unruly for her taste.  On a more positive note, I'm sure she'd have been proud of her grandson this morning.

Congratulations on winning the league Nate ... and thanks for doing it with the class, integrity and character that I certainly didn't have as a 10-year old boy.  Some might argue whether I have it as a 35-year old. ;)  Well done old boy, well done.