I can't blame her. For most, spending your allotted work from home days doing copious amounts of research in an attempt to predict the athletic futures of whiny twenty-something-year-olds seems trite. And I can understand. But there's one aspect these naysayers are forgetting--it's exciting!
There's two types of fantasy sports players--those who used to play sports and those who didn't.
If you used to play sports, you get no better feeling than controlling a heap of people with greater ability than you and passing your judgment upon them daily.
If you've never played sports, then fantasy athletics provides you a perfect in. Being a fantasy guru immediately draws the drool of people who think you can predict the future. And what nerd doesn't like to be called the "smartest" at something?
For me, I'm a bit of both. I played sports my whole academic career up until college, where I got into some intermurals. After I graduated, I had a career and seemingly no sports life. Until fantasy...
My first career lead to my first fantasy football league (Golden Tate Showers), which I have been absolutely tearing up!
And by "tearing up," I mean sucking ass at.
It's definitely frustrating.
It seems as if, every week, I face a daunting flex decision (2012 Roster). I swore to Zeus that Stevie Johnson would be the death of me, and indeed he has been! I actually acquired him in one of my shining (and they're very few) moments of the season, though--a trade with my boss.
In my other trade for the year, I dropped Julio right before he came up gimp. So there have been some bright spots, but I'm still miring in dead last.
Long story short, this dude gotta make moves!
Here's a peak at all my moves this season.
And this is where my girlfriend comes in.
Setting your alarm to 4 a.m. to hopefully grab free agents, so you can save your waiver spot is somehow foreign to her. All in all, though, she has adjusted quite nicely to my glorious new hobby.
She's actually really good at picking winners.
Clearly.
I love being with her, but yesterday was the Thursday night matchup on the NFL Network--Bills and Dolphins. And I'd be lying if I said Stevie Johnson wasn't on my mind.
Nestled there in her bed, all cuddled up, all I could think about was whether that goddamn rollercoaster of a receiver would find the fucking end zone or not. Believe me, he haunts my dreams.
I left my place at about halftime, and he had already amassed 57 yards receiving (most on the team). Though Johnson didn't have a TD, I felt semi-confident in him...which, for him, is impressive. But upon entering the domain of the girlfriend, Stevie was in the hands of the Fantasy Gods.
It's kind of a queazy feeling.
The next morning, I got back to find out that the Bills couldn't find the end zone on offense, period.
Great.
He did go for 7 fantasy points, but man, oh man, I would have liked to see those other six!
So, since I used Johnson as my WR2 in the early game, I'm now down to my dreaded flex question. Right now, I'm sitting on James Jones, but I’ve got Darren Sproles, Mike Williams, Jonathan Dwyer, and Danario Alexander chillin’ in the stable.
When picking a player, you have to choose your sources of information carefully. One ranking system I really like is FFToolbox. Although, I will say, they are rather slow with critical injury and rankings updates. A great sit/start tool can be found at Fantasy Pros. They actually accumulate data from a multitude of the popular sites and compile rankings based upon averages and accuracy alike. You're able to literally see how well your best advice givers are doing during the season.
One guy I really like, because he’s usually ranked among the most accurate, is David Dodds of the Football Guys.
However, as the true guru Matthew Berry says on his weekday podcast, “Go with your gut.”
With that said, I have some research to do.
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