Just Around the Corner

Celebrate! Rejoice! Strip down to your skivvies and run screaming through your neighbor's yard. That's right, baby, football season is almost upon us with the first preseason games being played last weekend. And, as always, hand in hand with football season begins the reason we suffered through the rest of the year, fantasy.

With drafts coming up or already going on - my first is on Thursday - I wanted to throw out a little update about how this little project is going to work. First, let me say that I'm no expert when it comes to fantasy football. I'm just a football fan who thinks that fantasy enhances the game watching experience by introducing a little personal risk into the equation, aside from enduring the seemingly never ending ridicule from friends and strangers when your team losses. I've been playing fantasy for the better part of five years now and have yet to win a league, though I've come agonizingly close a couple of times. Obviously, I don't have all the answers. In that vein, even the experts aren't going to be right all the time. I'm sure they'd consider a fifty percent success rate a major accomplishment and it would be. It's the nature of a prediction. No one knows the future. These guys don't have a crystal ball - if they did, they wouldn't be writing fantasy football columns for decent but not extravagant pay, I promise you that much. I'm not here to criticize but rather to establish who's really on their game. To find the one person who's reading the stats correctly, deciphering the trends and making the best picks and plays humanly possible. Maybe, this year, someone will ascend to their rightful place and be the Nostradamus of fantasy football. Who knows? If that happens, I hope to be the one that lets you know about it so we can all jump on the bandwagon.

I'm still working out the rating system by which all shall be judged. I know it'll be a points based system, possibly weighted somehow. I hope to throw everything into a spread sheet so I can update the site with pretty graphs and charts and the like. Blogger is pretty simple and maybe Alex can help me out but I'm surely no web genius. The extent of my knowledge on such things is limited to the use of "p", "i" and "u". Very sad, I know. I'm part of a generation that pioneered the internet, yet I have no idea how it works. I need to invest in HTML for Dummies.

The hope against hope is that I'll work out my scoring system and spread sheet before the end of the week and have them up for general review and approval of the masses. I also plan to throw up a response to an article or two as well as an opinion or prediction as the season progresses and my fancy is struck. If people begin to berate me for my views I'll post different pictures of a cartoon hand giving the finger. And honestly, I don't think that would do the site much good at all, so don't force my hand (<-- possibly the stupidest pun I've ever written. I swear I didn't mean it).

Initially, I was considering not acting upon my idea, which I had way back in the middle of last year's season, because of some serious time constraints, but seeing as I'm writing this now, I've thought better of things. The least I could do was give it the old sailor's try. One more for the Gipper? Though I do think it might be tough to consistently post while playing in three fantasy leagues, two pick'em leagues, real-life soccer games every Friday, training for a marathon I'm supposed to run in October, writing and recording music that doesn't make homosapien ears bleed, the desk job and keeping the little lady happy, I'll try to work this site in whenever I can. I'm also thinking about recruiting some help, possibly in the form of a co-author or the regularly occurring/random guest post. Negotiations are ongoing.

Good luck to everyone this season, draft wisely (watch your bye weeks), don't take Mike Vick as I doubt he'll be playing for anyone but FCC Petersburg and drop by any time you want some advice on whether Karabell and his cronies are earning their keep or spending it all on blow and hookers. Oh yeah, and referrals are encouraged. Thanks.