By Tara Weiss

updated 5:38 p.m. ET Sept. 25, 2006

Each season, Jamey Codding rearranges his entire life around fantasy football. That includes his office. When Codding, 29, was a writer at Futures magazine, he rearranged his office so he could manage his teams without getting caught. "I did it in a way so my monitor was facing away from the door," he says. "That gave me an extra five to ten seconds to close a window out real quick without my boss seeing."

There’s bound to be a lot of screen turning in the next few months. While the average football aficionado may be content to relegate their devotion to Sunday afternoons and Monday nights, fantasy football fanatics are consumed 24/7. There are 36.8 million fantasy football players in the U.S., many of whom are playing when they should be working. The price of all that lost productivity: $1.1 billion, according to recent study by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

So how do you stay in the game without getting fired? To keep employees focused, some companies are already blocking access to popular sports sites like Yahoo and ESPN, where fantasy footballers manage their teams. For those who haven't been shut down by their IT departments, good hearing and a few technical tricks help.

"The minimize button is your biggest friend," says Brian Daly, an admissions officer at the online university Keiser College in South Florida, who is on four fantasy teams this year. Daly works in an office with cubicles, so managers can see what's going on. His trick to not getting caught? "I can hear my boss walking down the aisle," he says. "I can hear him talking and saying hi to people."

Daly is living on the edge. He recently started an office league with co-workers who have never played. Getting that off the ground took two days. Daly had a "neutral" colleague pick names out of a hat to determine the draft order. Then the ten players dispersed to their desks and fired off group e-mails each time they made a pick. "Talk about lack of productivity," he says. "It was pretty bad. The rookies took forever, acting like it was a chess game. There were 20 rounds." He suspects part of the long draft time was a result of people toggling between work and football.

Bill Soucy's colleagues weren't so luck. Soucy, an IT technician in Mechanicsville, N.Y., also conducted a draft during a workday. The group planned to do it on a Sunday evening, but the fantasy football site they were using experienced technical difficulties. The draft took place that Monday, and participants were scattered throughout the office building. Soucy was secure since he was in his own office, but one of his colleagues got caught and was reprimanded. "Disciplinary action was taken against him," he says.

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That was at his old job. At his new job he doesn't have his own office. But the Apple computer he uses has a keyboard shortcut that makes hiding his fantasy football window easy. "The biggest advent to secrecy is Firefox and using its tabs," Soucy says. "It's a web browser that has boxes with tabs. Each one is a different Web site and you can click from tab to tab to hide it. If have enough tabs the type is so small that no one can even see what you're looking at."

For those who don't have a Mac or have bad hearing, there is another way to keep your secret. For $29.95, the company MindGems Inc. sells the Anti Boss Key. It's software that allows users to press a predetermined key that automatically hides the "illegal" website if the boss strolls by unexpectedly. If you've got a really nosy boss, no worries--the Anti Boss Key also hides the site in the computer's task bar.

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Soucy's job is so busy he doesn't get much time to manage his fantasy football team from the office. Work has been an impediment to fantasy football. He's about to lose even more time to his new son or daughter, due to be born any day now. Because of that he cut down on the number of teams he's on from eight to one. So far there isn't an Anti Baby Key for your computer.

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