How to Host a Football Party for Grown Men

Ahh, football season.  My absolute favorite time of the year.  With the starting of the season also comes a very important day for some…

Fantasy Football Draft Day!

I know that it may seem silly, but grown men (and a few women) will spend months working on their potential lineup, agonizing over whether a certain player will perform up to their expectations.  They’ll come up with a draft strategy and have a list of hopeful players that they will carry around and keep guarded so their opponents can’t try to snag a player that they are coveting.

And I figure that if they are going to put so much effort in on their end, the least that I can do is throw them a little party to celebrate the big day.

I mean after all, it only comes once a year!

My husband and his buddies have a league that they participate in every year.  This will be the first year that most of them are all around and able to have a live draft.  Normally it is just done online to accommodate the out of towers.  With some supplies on hand and a couple of quick crafts I was able to throw together this tablescape to set out some yummy food on.

I think that the first, and most important, step to throwing a fantasy football party is the food.  It needs to be portable so that everyone can grab what they need and head back to their laptop, tablet or cell phone to make their all important picks.  I served pulled pork sandwiches, buffalo chicken dip and chips, football shaped brownies, cheese stuffed beer pretzels and the all around favorite beer candied bacon.  The bacon was served in mason jars for easy portability and there were plates and utensils if anyone wanted to sit down long enough to eat.

They didn’t.

The second step for my group is to make sure that the beer is freely flowing.  Because I am a total glutton for punishment love making things pretty I designed a logo for the team and used my Silhouette to cut out the design in vinyl so that I could etch each person their own beer mug.

This took hours!

While I really love the logo, if you choose to do this, I implore you to find something that is a bit less intricate.  Seriously, take my word on this.  The good news it that I was able to find these great beer mugs at the dollar store.  Score!

The small details always seem to make the biggest impact, so I used an astro turf rug that I had picked up at Lowes last year.  They usually sell this be the foot on the big rolls in the back, so if you can’t find a rug, try checking that out.  I also made some super easy field goal posts with dowels.  I used (three) 5/16th dowels and cut eight pieces down to 12 inch sections.  Then I just hot glued them together and spray painted them yellow.  To hold them up on the table, I filled a mason jar with dry pinto beans and stuck them right in.

The party was a big success and they guys are already trying to plan to be in town so we can repeat it next year.  Do you participate in a fantasy football league?  Do you have any game day recipes that you love to prepare?  I’d love to hear from you!

And make sure to check back soon as I will have the pulled pork, cheese stuffed beer pretzels and the beer candied bacon recipes all on the blog in the next few weeks.  You don’t want to miss them!