I’ve never been a football fan. I like playing it, and I’ve been to a Rider game or two, but I’ve never watched football on Sundays, or taken much interest in the Superbowl.Last year, Ryan invited me to join his Yahoo fantasy football league. I signed up for fun, forgot to attend the draft, had my team auto-picked for me, and promptly forgot about it. Imagine my surprise when “my team” did pretty well.
Ryan invited me to join again this summer. I considered it, and decided that if I’m going to do it, I should do it right. I should become a fan of NFL football!
So I have. I’ve watched more football this season than I have in my entire life thus far. I’ve learned some new things, like what a tight end actually does, and the difference between a reverse and a double reverse. I’ve read NFL news and commentary on espn.com. I’ve placed small Pro Line wagers on each weekend’s games. And I’ve taken an active role in managing my fantasy football team, the One Trick Yaks.
I’m sinking into NFL fandom, which I never thought I’d do. All in all, I’m enjoying it. Sundays used to be days of relaxation and outdoor activities. Now they are spent indoors with snack foods, HD television, and laptops showing fantasy updates in real time. I now know not to pick 3 wide receivers first in fantasy drafts, and what Gary and Mark are talking about when they discuss Bill Simmons‘ commentary, or Jason’s crazy system of buying hundreds of dollars worth of Pro Line tickets with all of the different permutations of games so that he’ll at least break even. OK, I’m lying. I still don’t understand that 😐
But there’s something missing: I don’t have a favourite team. I’m thinking I should root for a perennially terrible team like Cleveland. But I’m open to suggestions.
Can’t wait until Sunday to see if Michael Vick can shake off his terrible performance in New Orleans last Monday and score me some points. And to see if my early games calls of Dal, Ind, Car, SD, Mia, KC pays off.
You’ll know where to find me.
mark - I think Cleveland is a good call, for the following reasons:
-they’re the Browns, which is funny on so many levels. or at least 1 level.
-no one will accuse you of jumping on a bandwagon.
-Braylon Edwards is a fantastic WR.
-Kellen Winslow has the world’s biggest ego.
-the QB’s name is Charlie Frye, so you can call him “Chaz”.
-Cleveland fans are crazy, and the stadium is affectionately known as the Dog Pound for some reason. This pre-dates the hip-hop “dawg” and “dogg” movements.
-they’re the only team in football that was too lazy to pick a logo.
-their colour scheme looks like barf.
Jason - Welcome Dan, we’ve been waiting for you. I’m sure shannon is pumped about this new development. Next weekend i’ll bet ‘the system’ just so i can explain to exactly how smart it is. My love of the nfl started in first year Uni because i had a nfl mad roomate(jared of bridge burning fame). This first stage for me was just loving the game and the sport, (i think that had alot to do with the fact that it’s the one sport i never got a chance to play on any level so i keep convincing myself i could be good at it), the second level of loving it came when i started playing sport select, cause now i had reason to be excited about any game, not just the good matchups or the team i liked. the third level is the fantasy football, and really i don’t think it gets much better than that. Now i care sooo much about every game, every player, i can’t not watch every game. And you know when it came down to picking a fav team, it was hard at the start, my team in 98 was tampa, cause they had an exciting running game and a crazy defense, and i had a non sexual man crush on SS john lynch. But as is the problem with sports these days, they dismantled their team, picked up players i hated and got rid of guys i liked, finally not resigning lynch 3 years ago, tampa i can no longer stand by you, they really only have two players left from when i liked them(brooks and alstot), and i found myself starting to watch Baltimore alot more, cause they had what i used to like in tampa, smash mouth running and great d, combine that with me finding a sleeper in my first year of FF with Balt TE todd heap, he won me two games on his own that year, i realized i had switched teams, terrible i know but it just happened. Now i draft jamal lewis every year, try my best not to pick todd heap int the 3rd round every year, and always bet on balt to cover the spread. So if i were you i would watch a bunch of teams and find one that you like to watch, forget uniforms, fan support and other things, find a team with a style that you like, cause if you don’t like how they play you are going to go insane watching them no matter what other reasons you have for watching them.
Also the guys in the us military use the term ‘clevland brown’ to describe at certain category of female: good uniform, bad helmet.
Gary - I have to give jason some well deserved grief for officially changing teams. That’s the worst kind of fan. Boooooooo!
i, on the other hand, don’t have a team to change from. i grew up cheering for san fran but i lost interest until recently. maybe i should just re-kindle my fire for san fran. i’ll have to think about that.
mark - Dan, pretty close w/ the picks. too bad SD dumped the bed.
if you watch the game tonight, get used to hearing “Favre-to-Jennings! Favre-to-Jennings!”.
dan - I need Favre-to-Jennings to be held to an absolute minimum to come out on top.
I figure I have a good chance too, since you’ve already used up your luck for the entire season with Adrian Wilson’s 99-yard run for a TD off a Vick interception.
As if.
In other news, I played point spread for the first time this week. I think that’s the way to go rather than trying to call wins and ties. There are fewer ways to lose – everything is binary, rather than your team beating the other team, but it’s less than 4 points so it’s considered a tie. That’s garbage.
Ryan - Well Dan-o…it’s my pleasure to have sucked you into fantasy football and to aid in the lowering of office productivity around the globe.
I’m a loyal Lions fan. You can’t get more futile than that. They are exactly the kind of underdog team you’d like. One playoff win since 1957! We’re on the rise baby!
OK guys…the new great thing on proline is POOLS! It’s awesome. You pay $5 and pick the outright winners of all the games (you may pay more to “box” games). If you get them all right, you get your share of the total pool. A friend’s friend just one 38K 2 weeks ago. The last 2 weeks I’ve lost 2 games each week. ARG! I should have picked Detroit and Tennessee!