Next time your friends, co-workers or wife tell you your wasting your time with fantasy football, you tell them they better think again.

A Few weeks ago on the Bruno Boys Forum we had a new member who is taking fantasy football into a new realm. Paul Waelchliis is a librarian and he thinks there are many critical skills that you develop as a fantasy football player (In fact he went so far as to declare fantasy sports the national sport for librarians).

According to him fantasy football players requires the follow qualities;
* Strong research skills
* Excellent use of information literacy
* Critical thinking abilities
* Social communication
* No physical qualifications

I also found more scholarly information backing him up. Here’s an article by Jenny Price titled “Researchers Studying Fantasy Baseball and ‘Competitive Fandom.’ She talks about a few professors over at the University of Wisconsin who study fantasy leagues.

Heck, I was just playing fantasy football to have another excuse to watch more NFL, lay around on Sunday and win a few bucks. Now you and I know it is much, much more than that.

Next time someone messes with you for playing fantasy football just tell them that you are tuning up your research skills, improving your information literacy and developing your critical thinking skills. There, your guilty pleasure just got a little less guilty.