Steve and I are in a fantasy football showdown

Well, not yet. A mutual friend of ours, commenter Panthers_24, threw together a league and invited both of us. Sure, it's his league and his friends, but let's face it, it's going to come down to Steve and I in the end. Would you like to see our teams? Of course you would.
First, Steve's, the Dayton Triangles. (click images to enlarge)

Steve appears to be very solid at the quarterback and tight end. Tight end is one of the most important positions in fantasy football. Totally. Especially run blocking tight ends.Were I he, I wouldn't be all the jazzed about my RB/WR combos. Frank Gore is getting run into the ground this year, mark my words.
Now let's take a look at the eventual champions of the league, the Charging Rynos.
Now that's a team, huh? Young running backs, I was able to put Ronnie Brown in the W/R slot. Anthony Gonzalez was rated lower, but as the second receiver in the Peyton Manning offense, he will be a break out player. I think I'm the team to beat this year, without quetion.
Of course, Steve does have me beat in the tight end department.

The Fantasy Football Superfecta

For anyone who is having a bad start to their fantasy football season, I assure you, it can't even compare to mine. I started the draft, nabbing a quarterback, the best available in one Tom Brady. We all know what happened to him. Thanks Bernard Pollard!
This league was a 14 team league, so there wasn't a whole lot available by the time we were drafting our second quarterbacks of the draft. I got in there and nabbed Vince Young as my back up. He's usually good for one or two games a year where he just lights up the opposition. If you time it right, he can really pay off. I've learned that in previous seasons. Of course, this only works if he ever plays football again.
Like I said, this was a 14 team league, which left me with few options. I picked up Joe Flacco and Jamarcus Russell, opting against Kyle Orton and Chad Pennington, because Kyle Orton pretty much ruined college for me, and I have a stronger arm than Pennington. I still wanted a QB that was a little bit more high scoring than that, so I put it out there that I needed a QB, any QB that played professional football regularly. The only person to bite was the guy with Tarvaris Jackson.
Against the Texans, I opted to start Joe Flacco, particularly since the trade hadn't quite gone through yet. Then this happened. That's right, I couldn't start my quarterback because of a freaking hurricane. And it was my third quarterback, no less. I swapped in Russell Saturday night, and went off to the Colts-Vikings game.
At the game, I caught an atrocious performance from T-Jack, all while Anthony Gonzalez, third receiver for the Colts, tore up the Vikings D. I came home to find that the trade had gone through on Sunday morning, and I hadn't in fact, played Russell, but had instead left the QB spot empty. Worse still, I had traded Gonzalez along with Russell in the trade that brought Jackson to my team.
And just today, we all found out that Jackson has been benched. For the season.
And in case you were wondering, my running backs are Larry Johnson and Ronnie Brown, so it doesn't get any better there either.

Yahoo! Auto-draft sucks. I think.

I'm part of a fantasy football league through Yahoo! Sports. I'm sure you all remember my compelling football articles throughout the past year, with all my football knowledge, so you know I'm going to absolutely kill my fellow fantasy football players... Or not. On a good day, I could probably name ten professional football teams. My biggest accomplishment last year was winning one week, but it was a bit of a fluke. I have no idea how points are calculated. I know nothing.

The league was an auto-draft league. Sure, I could set draft preferences, but I don't know that I could name ten football players, and if I could, they certainly wouldn't be any good, since I live in Minnesota, and that means the players I overhear mentioned are probably Vikings. So, I let Yahoo! take care of drafting my team.

My Offense, according to trends, is actually pretty good. The trend is what percentage of fantasy teams have picked up a guy. I've got Peyton Manning as my quarterback, and needless to say, he's owned at 100%. He's one of the two Manning Brothers. The lowest percetage owned on my offense starting line-up is 95% owned (some guy named Hines Ward who plays for the Pittsburgh...Penguins*). On the bench, 68% is the lowest number in the percentage owned category (some guy named Ted Ginn, Jr., of the Miami Dolphins--whom I shall henceforth call Tony Gwynn, Jr.). On my bench the lowest percentage owned is 68%, and there five guys on the offense bench. It should be noted, that I'm only guessing that "WR" is "wide receiver" and "RB" is "running back." I have no idea what "W/T" is--"weight-lifter/tap-dancer"? I know the QB--quarterback--position.

My kicker, Rob Bironas (of the Tennessee Somethings--Titans, perhaps), is 91% owned. His back-up is less popular at 57% owned, but how often are kickers used in the game? No, seriously, how often are they? Is having a good kicker vital to fantasy football? I have no idea! I'm pretending they don't.

But here's where Yahoo sports failed me. My one "D" position is filled by a guy who's 97% owned--hey! I've heard the name Jared Allen before! Oh, he plays for the Vikings, that's why. The next highest percentage is 61%--Terrenece Newman of the Dallas Cheerleaders--who is a "DB" (Defenesive Back, I presume). My two DL (Disabled List? Defensive Linemen?) guys are 11% and 14% owned. I have on guy on my bench, but he's at 0% owned. The only good point about my Defense is that I've got a guy named "Chike Okeafor", of the Arizona Something (Cardinals, I think. If I recall, they moved from St. Louis and weren't creative enough to come up with their own name).

The disparity between the popularity of my offense and defense makes me think that perhaps Yahoo auto-draft isn't set up well. It seems that rather than filling each position, and then coming back and filling the bench, they simply filled the offense, the bench for the offense, and then the kicker, and by the time they got to the defense, there was no one left. My guess is the other fantasy football owners in my league probably set up their draft to get all the positions filled with good guys, before letting auto-draft fill in the cracks.

It's a good think I wasn't planning on winning.

Oh, if anyone knows any defensive football players who are probably flying under the radar, I've got two empty bench spots open.

*One of my friends is a huge hockey fan. During baseball season, whenever she sees "PIT" she always thinks of the Penguins, leading to the great text message: "...the Yankees beat the Penguins". And after a few minutes of thought, I remembered that Pittsburgh has the Steelers. Right?

I had a better idea for a post planned for today, but I managed to leave my flash drive at home this morning and I can't remember what it was.

In other news: Today I found out that Rod Barajas and Randy Choate share my birth day. Ryan Spillborghs shares my birthday!

The Saga of the Bricklayers

Originally posted on "Is It Sports?" by Steve. In case you were interested, I ended up finishing 2nd that year in my league, and then morphed into the Buffalo Bills of fantasy basketball, losing in the championship matchup 3 years in a row.

Steve: do you think anyone would care if I wrote a story on fantasy basketball
Ryan: it could be entertaining
Steve: it's an emotional roller coaster
Ryan: haha
Ryan: i think if anyone reads our site, they will read whatever we post
Steve: that's true
Steve: its on then

Disclaimer: I hope our IM conversation warned you enough so if you could care less about fantasy sports, click here to go back

I'm an odd type of fan. I'm not the type that will change alliances to other teams if my team is doing bad, I may just lose interest in the sport itself. That's what happened to me in 1999 with the NBA. Jordan retired, Pippen and Jackson left, and I was left to cheer on Ron Harper and 2 exciting rookies, Elton Brand and Ron Artest (yes that one). What happened? they sucked. What happened in 2000? they sucked, and they kept sucking and sucking until I lost interest in the NBA (now the Bulls are on a remarkable tear, it's really too bad that Satan will own their souls in a few years but that's a whole article).

Last year things changed when my friend AJ asked me to join his fantasy NBA league. I decided it could be fun, especially because some of Bill Simmons's articles on ESPN.com about all the crazy/thug characters in the NBA got me interested in watching the mayhem again. So the Bricklayers were born, named for the ill-fated Rock N Jock Basketball game on MTV, and I thought the name was appropriate for the level I knew they'd suck at. My draft went well, and my team was anchored by a bunch of guys from Chicago and high profile rookies like Kevin Garnett, Antoine Walker, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, my high school classmate Dwyane Wade (no kidding), and Michael Finley. I also had Baron Davis, who was like a living, breathing "lots of pros/cons instead of nicely balanced" video game character last year (ridiculous 3's, tons of assists and steals, but infinite turnovers and 6 for 31 shooting nights).

So what happened? they sucked. I finished dead last but I became an NBA junkie again. This year, the Bricklayers returned with a mission. I reassembled my core in the draft and tried to get a better supporting cast (last year I had 78 year-old Clifford Robinson and the "Stro Show" at center for example) for the real junkies out there, here is the my current team:

Guards: Dwyane Wade, Baron Davis, Larry Hughes, Ricky Davis, Manu Ginobili
Forwards: Kevin Garnett, Corey Maggette, Rashard Lewis, Joe Johnson, Bobby Simmons, Vladimir Radmanovic
Centers: Emeka Okafor, Marcus Camby, Nazr Mohammed

After a 1-8 start riddled with injuries, the Bricklayers tore off a 51-28-2 run and I'm now tied for first place in an amazing Cinderella story. But the events late last week just proved that its midnight. Like I said, emotional roller coaster. Usually 1 big injury can hurt a good NBA team, but how does it effect a fantasy team...well let's see. In a span of about 4 days, Lewis got knee tendonitis, "Flash" suffered 4 separate injuries, Baron sprained his ankle, Hughes broke his thumb, Ginobili hurt his calf, Camby got suspended for trying to protect a 7 foot Brazilian with 1 name in a fight, and my healthy Corey Maggette decided to throw up a 2 for 17 night on Monday and then came over to my apartment to step on my throat and light my furniture on fire (ok maybe that part didn't happen, but I'm still not ruling out that it can't). Needing a healthy Guard, I decided to pick up Ricky Davis, the king of crazy from the Celtics, and I got this nugget of information:

Jan 17 Celtics coach Doc Rivers kicked swingman Ricky Davis out of practice on Sunday when the sixth man complained loudly and "colorfully" about the officiating during a scrimmage. The practice was held in front of a group of New England Baptist-sponsored high school students, and Rivers didn't like Davis' tone and language. "He was yelling at the guys, and I didn't like the tone of his talk," Rivers explained to the Boston Herald. "And there were kids in the gym. When I think a guy is becoming a distraction, I'll throw him out."

I forgot to mention that after the scrimmage, Randy Moss gave Ricky a congratulatory phone call but suggested that the colorful language should have been directed at the high school kids, not the ref. If this was a real NBA team, I think about 57 minutes of SportsCenter would be dedicated to them. Oh wait, I don't have Kobe so when you subtract ESPN-mandate Kobe time I think that leaves me with about 34 minutes. But still, how can something so good become so bad so fast? Oh, and I forgot to mention I'm only playing the team I'm tied with for first. So my time on top is over, but I'll cherish my worst to first turnaround forever. My advice: don't play fantasy, it's more addictive than the facebook (so I'll make sure to have a lot more stuff on this team in the future!) joooooiiiiinnn, you can't resist. mwahaha