The Fire Sale: Getting With the Program

By Mr X | Published 11/19/2008 | The Fire Sale | Unrated

Mr X

Mr. X hails from Parts Unknown, where the men are still men and the women are damn happy about it. Blessed with bulging biceps and a rapier-like wit, he can beat you sensless with brain or brawn; pick your poison. Above all else, Mr. X is a keen fantasy sports analyst and even keener narrator of the human condition.

View all articles by Mr X

Getting With the Program

If you have to draft Dan Orlovsky, there's something wrong with your league...

I'm going to break from my usual format this week, mainly because my editor said I shouldn't. And there's nothing I enjoy more than pissing him off...

It should come as no surprise to you rubes that I participate in a truckload of "Experts" leagues each season. Then again, most of you didn't make it past high school, so maybe it isn't so obvious.

Anyway, a lot of these leagues are run by guys that have been in the industry for decades. That's right, they've been running their own websites or publishing fantasy magazines for over 20 years. Hell, even that idiot Georgopoulos has been in this business for almost 15 years, and he ain't as old some of those other dinosaurs. My point is that these guys have got to get with the program when it comes to the rules in the "Experts Leagues" that they run. Here's my list of the things that annoy me the most about those relics-- pay attention, because I'm sure a lot of you hayseeds are doing the same things.

Eight-Team Leagues - as a writer, I get a lot of e-mail from idiots like you asking for advice. Sometimes I get e-mails that sound like this: "I have LaDanian Tomlinson, Clinton Portis and Willie Parker in my redraft league..." As soon as I read that nonsense, I know he's in an eight-team Yahoo league, and I just delete the e-mail. Let's get one thing straight: less than 10 teams is bullsh*t; more than 14 teams means that you end up drafting Dan Orlovsky as your backup QB. Stop this nonsense immediately! 10- and 12-team leagues are the natural order of things in fantasy football. Anything other than that is like trying to get gay marriage passed in California: there's a bunch of folks who think it's a good idea, but in the end nobody really pays any attention to them.

No First-Come, First-Serve Waivers - I don't mind waivers where I need to bid on players, and I don't mind waivers that are awarded in reverse order of standing. But there's got to be a FCFS waiver for game days... anything else is just lunacy. Don't believe me? Try having to take a donut because you can't swap out John Carney on game day due to Tom Coughlin acting like Lawrence Tynes being activated is a damn state secret. That blows huge chunks, and I 'm no mood to listen to some jerk Commissioner tell me that it adds to the strategy of the game, because it doesn't. It just makes me so upset, my girlfriend ends up walking funny for a week after the angry sex I'm forced to have with her.

Scoring-Only Leagues - Believe it or not, there's still leagues out there that basically award points just for TDs and field goals. These leagues are boring and involve no thought from week to week. These leagues are run by Commissioners who still remember having to read the USA Today every Tuesday and score the games manually. Under those circumstances, I'd stick to scoring TDs only too... then again, under those circumstances I'd rather just ditch fantasy football and stick to banging broads. C'mon people, let's just standardize the formats here, folks! WCOFF rules are fine by me, with the one exception of...

No IDP - can we stop pretending that it's still 1997? The whole idea of using defense/special teams as a position was because back in the day, most stat providers didn't track stuff like tackles, sacks, passes defensed, etc. Hell, up until a few years ago, tackles weren't even an official NFL statistic. But give it up fellas... it's 2008. Stop using those stupid D/ST and use real defensive players. It just might make things a bit more interesting.

That's it for this week... since I know that you don't handle change very well, I'll be going back to the usual format next week. Until then, try to keep this "change" mojo going by doing something different this week... like reading a book that doesn't have big pictures in it.

How would you rate the quality of this article?

	1	2	3	4	5
Poor						Excellent

Add comment

Comments

No Comments Found. Submit Comment