Amy Kabatt was once stoic when it came to professional football. Sundays and Monday nights held no holiday status on her calendar. Then she found fantasy football.  Now she tracks running backs with a middle linebacker's enthusiasm, and one of her husband's greatest victories was just getting her to watch the game in the first place. "Now that she's into this, this is beautiful," said her husband, Dan, who participates in three fantasy football leagues.  But the league that brought them to the Atlantic City Convention Center on Saturday is the Big One.  The Glenmore, Pa., couple plunked down $3,600 in hopes of winning the $60,000 grand prize through Payday Sports, a Delaware-based company running the high-stakes fantasy football tournament. Saturday was draft day, when three leagues of 12 teams each chose the players that will either drive them to victory or fumble them into defeat. Throughout the National Football Le! ague season, teams play head-to-head each week. The athletes they select acquire points based on performance, and the team with the most points wins.  Payday Sports President Dave Cella called it one of the largest high-stakes games on the East Coast. "A little like the `American Idol' of fantasy football." Before the morning's first-round drafts - perhaps the easiest of the 20-round, all-day process - Gus Ruelas stretched his calves and eyed the competitors from the back of the room.  He spots an opponent wearing a Donovan McNabb jersey and smells weakness. Maybe.  Ruelas and teammate Chris Anderson flew from California for the draft, and they're hoping team loyalties will cause the locals to act with their hearts and not their heads.  "We're not being silly about it. These guys dropped down some serious cash," Anderson said.  "But we're hoping somewhere along the line these guys make a mistake based on an affiliation," Ruelas added.  What's their weakness? Someone else will have to find it. The Los Angeles men have no local team since the Raiders went back to Oakland. "We have an affiliation to our entry fee," Ruelas said.  The two men even designed their own jerseys, with their names on the back and "AC" on the front.  Are they paying homage to Atlantic City?  Actually, no. Their real team name is unprintable in this newspaper.  Across the table was 700 Level, a father and son team whose name is an ode to the infamous nosebleed section of the former Veterans Stadium. Mike Fecht Jr., is the brains; his father, Mike Sr., the self-proclaimed "investor." In fact, the father has never played fantasy football before.  Now the two can do something together on weekends.  "We might be beating each other up after the games start. We'll see," the father said.  As their team name suggests, both are staunch Philadelphia Eagles fans, but this league is business as much as pastime.  "Of course I hate the Cowboys, of course I ha! te the Giants, but when there's this much money involved you got to take the best players there," Fecht Jr. said.  Ruelas logs a few hours each day checking on updates on players and injuries. He has been researching for three months. Or, as Mike Jr., put it: "Probably, I spent more time studying for this than six years of college."

To e-mail Brian Ianieri at The Press: BIanieri@pressofac.com