Fantasy (Football) Time

Just under 2 weeks until the first Sunday of the NFL season, 10 days until the big Thursday night kickoff. Finally tonight is the draft for my fantasy football league. I do hockey and baseball and basketball and even box office pools, but without a doubt the sport that is best suited for fantasy is NFL Football. The other pools I talked about require daily roster moves, baseball can be tricky in that it can be tough to figure out starting rotations, hockey I've found a certain degree of manipulation by owners attempting to preserve a pristine GAA after a couple early week shoutouts. Who exactly is playing goal for your team if you've benched all your goalies. Football is great in that you can sit back on a Sunday and watch your matchup progress. By Sunday evening you usually have some idea whether the Sunday and Monday night evening games will have any impact on your matchup. It truly makes for a tense evening when you realize every play has an impact on the outcome of your fantasy matchup.

For about 6 weeks there has been discussion about what offseason moves will result in big fantasy numbers for players, which rookies are worth drafting and which former backups. I really haven't put a lot of research into this, mostly I depend on the yahoo pre-rankings. If there happens to be a contract holdout like a Steven Jackson or a training camp/pre-Season injury like a Willis McGahee or Chad Johnson then I tend to wait a little later to draft these players. Our league, mostly at my insistence, switched from drafting team defenses to drafting individual defensive players. The logic was basically that in a league of 18 owners and 32 NFL teams there wouldn't be enough depth for every owner to have a backup plan. My basic strategy the last few years has been pretty simple, draft as many starting running backs as possible. In my league we can only start 2 running backs, but the frequency with which these players get injured, I've found that 4 or even 5 RBS is great to have. The downside of course is there is always going to be that Sunday where you leave a guy on the bench and had you started him you would have won, but at least that guy is on your bench and not on someone else's like your opponents starting roster.

The QB position is pretty important. If you can't get the first or 2nd pick and get LT or Adrian Peterson it's worthwhile taking Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, generally durable QBs who are almost guaranteed to average 2+ TD passes per game. If you are in a league of less than 10 with only 1 active QB you can always get a decent starting QB, if you are in a league of 16 + it is pretty important to draft your QB probably by round 4 at the latest. I fill out my roster with all the wide receivers and running backs I need before I even think about looking at the tight end, defensive positions or my back up qb. I frequently save my kicker picks until the very end. In season I just closely monitor injuries and look for capable running back backups like an Earnest Graham I picked up mid-seaon last year and was pretty consistent averaging I believe around 75 yards and a touchdown per game for my during that timespan.

The biggest mistake I've made in the past besides drafting Raiders has been drafting players from teams who share the same bye weeks. However if you have a vast majority of your players on a bye week and they happen to be good, during a regular season it may not be a bad idea to just concede one week rather than dropping players that you may need come playoff time.

I'm just hoping my PC won't crash during the live draft. I anticipate someone is going to get really excited and take Favre in the 1st round which I'm sure will be met with a great deal of disapproval from fellow owners. I don't know which rookie if any will have the kind of impact Adrian Peterson had last year with the Vikings, based on talent you would say Darren McFadden might be that guy, but splitting carries with a couple other running backs and a team that has traditionally had to play from behind might mean fewer opportunities. I don't think there is anyway Moss and Brady can replicate the success they had last season, but as long as they are both healthy those guys have got to be top 10 picks.

4 hrs until the live draft we will see how I do.

Time to Pay the Piper!

No not that Piper! This post is actually inspired by true events that occurred last Thursday and Friday at my sister's Scottish themed wedding (we aren't but her husband's Maternal Grandparents are Scottish). Going through the final details at the rehearsal the day prior the Best Man and Groom were trying to figure out who would pay the Piper. Both Garry (my other brother in law) and myself found this really amusing literally having to figure out who would pay the piper. The day of the wedding things we were about a half hour behind starting dinner. The piper was supposed to pipe in the wedding party, but around 6:30 pm he got really agitated and demanded payment, I guess his Winnebago was double parked. The best man gave him his money and the guy took off before the wedding party could be piped into the reception hall. Well not quite what the cautionary tale about the Pied Piper of Hamlin is about but certainly anytime someone uses or misuses the expression, well it will have a whole new meaning to me, this finally brings me to my actual posting... one of my biggest annoyances is the reliance on cliches, or corporate speak, or sports analogies or war metaphors unless it is specifically used for the purposes of irony or humour. I'm going to just briefly describe some of the more common instances of what I believe to be annoying reliance on cliches:
The most common place to hear cliches is of course in sports. Hockey athletes are well known for their really dull interviews riddled with "one game at a time", "give it 110%". I find it really amusing when hockey analysts describe an offensive defenceman as the "Quarterback" of the powerplay, yes we all understand what you mean when you use the term, but I didn't ever see Tomas Kaberle putting his hands up Mats Sundin's butt last season and Sundin hike him the puck. Boxing is quite popular, "going toe to toe" or being in a "heavyweight bout". I notice Tony Kornheiser likes to throw in a lot of baseball terms when he is on Monday Night Football, it makes me wish they brought Dennis Miller back.

War references are very commonly used in sports. In basketball, announcers often refer to a particularly skilled Point Guard as a "floor general". Football loves to describe a very physical game as a "war" and coaches love to describe the opposition as the enemy and "we are going to go out there and take no prisoners", which I presume to mean they are going to kill everyone, because otherwise it wouldn't be very threatening "ok you are free to go now". Ironically enough in war, they tend to use a lot of sports or medical analogies, or so all the stuff I've seen on HBO's Generation Kill seems to tell me. When a unit has been selected for a special mission there is often talk of "taking the ball and running with it" or "being on the goal line" (presumably the oppositions goal line). I suppose the use of sports analogies in the military is a sort of common language, so many kids who end up in the Marines at some point in their life played high school football so I guess using the war as a game metaphor sort of distracts them from the seriousness of what they are about to do and also sort of brings the unit together to accomplish a goal, either that or they are all bunch of dumb jocks I don't know. I suppose on the other hand the "game as war" serves to turn a pointless game that is supposed to be played for fun into something really serious. Strange, I was tempted to quote something from Confucius that I saw in Ghost Dog about paying great mind to trivial things and little mind to important things but blah, blah, blah.

Along with sports and war references you also hear a lot of other expressions that no one really is quite sure where they came from like: "crunch time", which I always think of like Captain Crunch and start wondering what that has to do with football, did Captain Crunch play football for the Naval Academy?
I don't know whether the use of cliches in sports has something to do with the intelligence of the broadcasters and the fact that they are former athletes for the most part who have spent their entire life listening to former athletes now coaches feed them the same pre-game, halftime/intermission speeches or whether it is indicative of the intelligence of the people at home watching and listening.

Even worse than the use of cliches in sports is the reliance on cliches in the Corporate Environment. The worst part about cliches in an office environment just about any sort of cliche or analogy can and will be used sometimes rendering the entire conversation completely ridiculous and incomprehensible. The one expression I hear most frequently "touch base", I have no idea where this came from perhaps it is some kind of sports reference I don't know it just always sounds so insincere, what's wrong with "we should do lunch", or "I'll give you a call", also frequently insincere but at least it's clear what is meant. I hear a lot of corporations refer to their work units as "teams" and managers and supervisors as "coaches", I find this all a bit ironic. What usually happens to a baseball or hockey team that performs poorly, the coach or manager gets fired, in most corporate environments the first people to go are the lowest level employees and not the management team so I find this fictitious "team" concept to be a bit amusing. Call it what you want "coach", "supervisor", "manager" in the corporate world it is hierarchical and everybody ultimately has a "boss" usually more than one.

The most amusing thing I've ever heard was a mid level manager who liked to mix sports analogies in a corporate environment to create if you followed it some crazy combo sport. "Well we need to see you step up to the plate and see if you can make it from behind the 3 point line and if we have confidence in you we will give you the ball and let you run with it and maybe give you a shot at goal". I hear this and I was like this is some weird base-ket-foot-soccer ball game almost sounds like something I might want to create and sell to corporations as a "team building exercise" unless they are already playing this in Ireland or Australia or something.

My final point about cliches is that when they are intended to express a certain sentiment on a subject, frequently people do understand what you mean and it is efficient, however on occasion people pretend to understand what you mean but are just too embarrassed to admit they don't and your very profound point that you thought you just made with a clever use of a cliche wasn't made at all. An example of cliches being lost on certain people, we have different themes for the instruction every month in my aikido dojo and the month of May the theme was "Silence is Golden". One of the members who is not originally from Canada, wasn't really sure what this meant he says to a group of us "This silence is golden....what does this mean....silence is good...." being the topical comedian that I am I'm like "yes, very good and increasing in value every day".

Argozzz!

August is generally an exciting time for football fans. August means Fantasy Football drafts and the latest installment of the MADDEN series. In Canada, the CFL season is in full swing, in the US College football season begins; NFL players, well at least some of them have returned to training camp and the much anticpated pre-season schedule begins. Yes the pre-season where 3rd and 4th stringers battle it out for 1 or 2 spots on the kick coverage or practice squad, what a wonderful time.

Friday I decided to take in my very first CFL game of the 2008 season (I always think it`s strange that there are so very few sports that have a season entirely contained in a single calendar year). I had to that point not really watched a full Argo game this season, I picked this game for several reasons, the most important being it was on a Friday night of a long weekend and it was against Winnipeg, perhaps not as big a rivalry as Hamilton or Montreal, but having a good drinking buddy from Winnipeg who also enjoyed watching the CFL, I thought at the very least I can enjoy imbibing even if the game wasn`t very entertaining. Let`s just say this theory was about to be put to the test.

Approaching the stadium I was accosted by an Anti-Buffalo Bills campaigner who wanted me to take some flyer protesting the pending pre-season game and regular season game to be held in Toronto over the next few years. I declined. I will briefly explain my stance on this. I do attend Argo games, I am also an avid NFL fan although not much of a Bills fan. Personally, I think even if an NFL franchise were to come to Toronto, the CFL and the Argos could manage to survive. I would not pay the outrageous prices that are being charged to see a pre-season game, a regular season game it would depend entirely on the match up. Even if we had an NFL franchise, I don`t think that`d stop me from seeing an Argo game for a fraction of the cost. The CFL operates during the summer months and the season ends in November right when the NFL starts to get interesting. You can argue the Argos and the CFL are a cultural institution and to lose that would be a shame, I agree, but I think if the CFL fails it won`t be because people have chosen to attend an NFL game over a CFL game, I think even without the NFL people will find other places to spend their entertainment money if they don`t enjoy the CFL. I mean the NFL is hardly Walmart I don`t think they really care whether the CFL lives or dies, in fact I think the presence of the CFL as an almost North American farm system could be invaluable especially since the end of NFL Europe.

The Argos failed miserably at building any kind of energy in the crowd prior to this game. I showed up at 6:15 expecting some kind of tailgaiting event, either a barbeque or beer garden, but there was nothing. I managed to buy tickets off of a scalper friend below face value, when we got to our seats in the 200 level we noticed there were no upper bowl cheap seats sold at all. This I find extremely disappointing. Maybe you are only selling 25,000 seats, but open up the upper bowl, sell tickets at $2 a piece if you need to fill it. Perhaps the costs of security and ushers for the upper bowl keeps the Argos from making seats available in the upper bowl, but it just seems pathetic. The game itself was nearly as dull as an NFL pre-season game. There were 3 exciting events the entire game: an Argo punt return for a TD, a 80+ yard Blue Bomber TD pass and the drunken fan in the 4th quarter who tried to run across the field. Too many punts led to a lack of continuity, an inherent danger in watching a CFL game, but rare to see teams punt or settle for field goals so frequently. When the star of the game is Mike `our drunken idiot kicker` Vanderjagt you can tell it`s not such a good entertainment product. The only thing I could take solace in is I got a 200 level seat and 4 beers ( the fact I was drinking a beer for which the rival team was named led me to question whether I was somehow being disloyal to my home team) for the price of a person would pay to watch the Steelers vs. Bills Pre-Season ticket in the upper bowl.

Next Argo home game: Friday August 15th vs. the Montreal Alouettes. I wonder whether they will have taken down all of the Bills banners and displays from the night before by then.