The iPhone: Sometimes It Doesn't Pay To Be Contrarian

Like I wrote in the post about Facebook, there are times where I like to be contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian. Part of the fun for me in not having Facebook is that just about everyone else that I know has a Facebook account. But also in the case of Facebook, I actually have substantiated reasons for not wanting many of these things in my life as well, which brings me to the iPhone. iPhone users have no qualms about telling anybody and everybody that the iPhone is the greatest creation that man has ever conceived. There is a certain snootiness that all iPhone users have when it comes to their phones, and the ability to look down at owners of all other phone types is apparently part of any iPhone service plan. I know this because I am related to people both by blood and by marriage who have the iPhone and said accompanied snootiness. The iPhone is the perfect thing for a natural born contrarian like me to rail against. It’s trendy, it’s the “it” thing that everyone must have, and its users are generally really annoying when it comes to proclaiming their devotion to it. Most of the time, I treat overzealous iPhone enthusiasts in the same way that I treat pompous soccer fanatics. Their points of view regarding their greatest love are completely one-sided, and they aren’t even interested in opposing opinions at all…thus, it’s better to just ignore them all together (or hit them in the head with a snow shovel, as Tony Kornheiser would suggest).

All of you, just get out.

There’s also a part of me that just likes things to be simple, and sometimes I wish that my phone was just “a phone.” Being able to use the Internet anywhere is great, but paying for a data package is not, and I often wonder if my quality of life would suffer all that much if I just went back to an old-school regular cell phone. Maybe I’m at the point of no return already, but I truly like my trusty ol’ Blackberry. I like having a keyboard as opposed to a touch screen. I like the organizational and file storing features of it much better than my wife’s/brother’s/wife’s brothers’ iPhones. I guess it’s nice to have everything synced, but I don’t like the iPhone’s overreliance on iTunes to configure updates and organize different kinds of files. The iPhone also has a zillion apps that I can’t imagine ever using. When Krissy and her brothers all got the iPhone (her oldest brother had had it for a while), the “in” thing to do was to use one of the video chatting apps whenever they wanted to call one another. This wasn’t appealing to me because I am not a big phone-talker in the 1st place…why would I want someone to be able to look at me while they are talking to me too? The video chatting phase lasted for about a month (if that), but like most of those things that seem really awesome at 1st it died out pretty quickly. I don’t know that Krissy even has the app on her phone anymore at all. I realized though that in effect I had started to become the snooty one when it came to this stupid phone stuff. My holier than thou viewpoint had made me look down at iPhone users in a way not that different than iPhone users probably look at me. I had had an iPod Touch for a few years, but had never really used it all that much other than for music. For whatever reason (maybe I had secretly started to think some of Krissy’s iPhone apps were pretty cool), I started downloading and using some apps on there in addition to some of the features in comes with: games, fantasy sports trackers, email. The problem is that at some point I started to develop a liking for my enemy…like Stockholm Syndrome or something.

Sweet! Angry Birds!

My iPod isn’t exactly like an iPhone (you need WiFi to be able to use anything that requires an Internet connection for one), but it can do a lot of the things that an iPhone can do, so it at least gives me an idea of what it would be like to use one. First, the screen size blows my Blackberry out of the water, and the touch screen isn’t all that bad for typing, which I originally thought I would never get used to. Obviously, the touch screen makes gaming, viewing things online, and the use of most other apps easier. For the most part, Internet browsing seems faster than on my Blackberry, and maybe most importantly of all, getting an iPhone would consolidate some of my current devices. More and more often lately, I have found myself double-fisting my electronics when I get home from work: phone at my side in case anyone calls, iPod in my hand whenever I want to do anything else. It’s just so damn cool! What the hell do you want from me? My Blackberry looks like a dinosaur next to it. And iPhone and Android are killing Blackberry so much that Blackberry (much like dinosaurs) could become extinct. Blackberry's App World has become a barren wasteland on the same wavelength as MySpace, filled with sad little apps that no one could possibly ever want. Other people must have realized the same things I'm realizing. I used to have a decent amount of contacts for Blackberry Messenger...as of today, I have 3 (of which I'm not sure if any still have active BBM accounts, as I haven't used BBM in over a year). I could also trade-in/sell my iPod Touch and iPod Classic (which is sitting in a drawer somewhere), and just use my iPhone for my listening enjoyment as well. Krissy has a smaller iPod Nano for working out, and her reasoning for that is that she doesn’t like the clunkiness of the iPhone when she’s running and training, but if an iPod Touch doesn’t bother me I don’t see why an iPhone would. Anyway, what used to be utter defiance has now turned into resigned acceptance. It’s probably only a matter of time now before I join the rank and file now.

Book 'Em

Krissy and my absence from Facebook is partially functional, partially because we admittedly like to act like we're "too cool for school" sometimes. I mean, we have to be considered "1st generation Facebook-ers"...we had accounts back when you had to have a valid college email address to join. By the time we closed our accounts, Facebook apps were just starting to catch on, but for the most part they didn't exist. Farmville was probably still a glimmer in some software developer's eye at that point. Now, grandmothers and kindergarteners alike can join, and there are enough Facebook apps and games that you probably can save you Xbox money for something else if you really want to. But Krissy and I (summoning my best "hipster" voice here) liked Facebook before it was cool...well, not really I guess, but you get the point. The fact is that it's fun to go against the grain sometimes. When you were a kid, you may have bought this really dope pair of sneakers that no one else had yet. If everyone else went out and bought them a week later, where's the fun in that? Some of the looks you get when people find out you are not on Facebook are priceless though.

So, part of it is just being a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian, but truthfully by the time I deleted my account Facebook had become more of a pain in the ass than anything else. I am awful enough at correspondence and responding to people's emails, texts, and voicemails. Sometimes I really do wonder if people tried contacting me by carrier pigeon whether my response time would take just as long as it does now. Facebook was just another communication medium on top of all of those that was bogging me down. And for anyone who has ever read this blog, you know that I can be pretty wordy with even the simplest subject matter...not a good combination for me. The sad part is that it's not even like I had "that" many friends, but I guess I should be glad I didn't. Also, Facebook is nice for staying in the loop on what's going on in your circle of friends and stuff, but most of the thrill is gone once you're in a committed relationship. Just as The Social Network made perfectly clear, Facebook was and still is fueled by sex. Sure, it's nice to reconnect with old friends and look at a family member's vacation pictures, but at the end of the day people go on Facebook to look at and read about people they want to bone...people they knew from back in the day, people they know now, people who are friends of friends of their friends and they actually have no idea how they stumbled onto their page, but they're there now and...anyway. Even when Krissy and I were just in the beginning stages of going out, we still used it as a means to flirt with each other and whatnot. We are, for all intents and purposes, and old married couple now, so 90% of the intrigue that Facebook has for most people is gone for us. The other cue for me to exit stage left on Facebook was when kids that I used to be a camp counselor for in summer camp started to send me friend requests. On the 1 hand, it was kind of cool that these kids remembered me enough to look me up. On the other hand, it's annoying when you have to explain to your wife that all the girls she doesn't know that are writing on your wall are actually 12 years old. Also, most of them type in that weird version of English that kids use these days ("hAi, wAzuP?")...sigh. It was all just too much to deal with for an old fart like me.

That was pretty much the end of Facebook for me, and Krissy soon followed suit. Our friends like to chastise us for not having it, but I'm not sure how much we're missing. Every once in a while Krissy will go on her little brother's account because she heard that some girl she went to high school with got fat and she wants to see pictures, but those times are few and far between. My friend Mac has made the argument before that even if I no longer used it or kept up with it, I should have just kept my account open. What would it hurt? But to me doing that is just silly. Before long, Facebook would be a bottomless wasteland of a website just like (shudders) MySpace. No, a clean break is better in the long run I think. Besides, it's nice to be somewhat off the grid. Maybe the world could stand to be a little less connected from time to time, but that's just me (he says from his blog...oh well).

A Little Bit Of Everything

While this year I didn’t have much luck with my fantasy football team, I have probably covered the full spectrum in terms of the type of season you can have over the years. Looking at my Yahoo fantasy profile (discounting the couple of leagues I’ve done on ESPN and Fox Sports), I’ve played in 11 fantasy football leagues dating back to 2006. In those 11 leagues, I’ve won twice, and I’ve finished anywhere from last to 3rd place in the other 9 leagues. Fantasy basketball has been a slightly different experience for me. In the same time period, I’ve been in 6 (now 7) fantasy basketball leagues on Yahoo. My best finishes (coincidently in the last 2 leagues I’ve participated in) were 7th out of a 12 team league and 8th out of a 16 team league. My 1st 4 attempts were historically bad though: 13th in a 14 team league, 13th in a 16 team league, last in a 14 team league, and 13th in a 16 team league. That’s “Curse of Le Boulez” bad.

There’s a laundry list of reasons why I have done so poorly with fantasy basketball leagues. 1st, I just never seem to care quite as much about fantasy basketball as football. Football has established itself as “the” fantasy sport, and everything else (even though fantasy sports originated with baseball) is pretty much small potatoes compared to it. When people ask me how I like fantasy basketball compared to football, my usual response is something to the effect of, “It’s ok. It’s just different.” So, take that for what it’s worth, but it leads to my next reason of why my past fantasy basketball teams have sucked so hard…2nd, I have never actually been present for a fantasy basketball draft (at least not that I can remember). The amount of times I wound up with a starting frontcourt of Adonal Foyle and Lamar Odom those 1st few years was absurd. Missing your league’s draft is a cardinal sin of any semi-serious fantasy player. At the bare minimum, you at least should pre-rank the players you want to draft if you know you’re going to miss it, but I rarely did this either. So distracted was I with my fantasy football prospects (and life in general) that fantasy basketball drafts would usually come and go without my knowledge at all. 3rd, I was very often the victim of the strange and bizarre. I’ve said it a million times before, but injuries and luck are part of the deal with fantasy sports…but it was tough to account for some of the things that would happen to my teams. One year, I made a trade with someone where the centerpieces were Yao Ming and Amare Stoudemire. The deal got accepted, and Yao had one of his many season ending injuries while the trade was still pending. I thought this was fair game, but the deal got vetoed by the league commissioner, and I was stuck with Yao’s decaying body. I was furious, but there wasn’t exactly much I could do. In a last gasp effort, I traded away my next best player, Rashard Lewis, for 3 or 4 lesser players. I just needed bodies, and I was hoping that I could catch lightning in a bottle with at least 1 of them. The league commissioner, my friend Josh, thought I was up to some kind of shenanigans though where I was trying to throw my season and give an unfair advantage to my trade partner, Eyun. He essentially David Stern-ed my team (locking me from making moves and assuming control of my roster).

I’m hoping that this year turns out a little bit different. Through 3 weeks, Krissy and I (she’s my co-commissioner) are 13-11, which is good enough for 7th place in a 14 team league. We weren’t logged in to our draft, but we at least had the good sense to do a draft pre-ranking this time. I thought I was going to have to live through another trade veto when my offer of D-Rose for LeBron got accepted, but it eventually got pushed through. Our roster is at least solid. If it wasn’t for 2 long term injuries to Manu and Z-Bo, it might be downright scary. One thing’s for sure though: at least I will be paying attention this time.

The key to our fantasy basketball season...

My last post was my Redskins wrap-up for the 2011-2012 season, but I couldn’t help but add 1 more little tidbit of information after reading an article in the Washington Post. Strangely enough, the Redskins hold a 7-2 regular season against teams that made it to the NFC championship game during a particular season dating back 4 seasons. It was an idea I actually had (but can’t take credit for since I didn’t write it) back when the Giants beat the Falcons during Wild Card weekend. If the red hot Giants could upset the Packers, it would be yet another year where the Skins beat one of the championship game participants during the regular season. In 2008, Washington beat the Cardinals once and the Eagles twice to go 3-0. In 2009, the Skins lost by a field goal in a game that they absolutely should have won to the eventual Super Bowl champion Saints. In 2010, the Redskins beat both the Packers and the Bears. This year, they had their 2 most convincing wins of the season against the Giants (although they got manhandled by the 49ers in a game that wasn’t as close as the score indicates).

It should be noted that in none of these 4 seasons did the Redskins have a winning record. The article correctly points out that this gives Redskin homers something to point at to feed their delusions that the Skins are a relevant franchise. It’s also one more thing that could serve to drive the more grounded Redskins fans mad. How can they be that bad, and yet still give good teams competitive games? Well, maybe that is the whole point (if there is 1 at all). They NFL thrives on competitive balance, and any 1 team can beat another on any given week. Even in the event that a seemingly dominant team pops up in this day and age (the Patriots in 2007-2008 and the Packers this year), there’s a good chance they will get beaten at some point as well. Also, those teams that the Redskins beat those years were either teams with records barely above 0.500 who got hot at the right time of year (the Cardinals in 2008 and the Packers last season), were not the team they were by year’s end that they were at the time the Skins played them (the Bears last season), were talented but wildly inconsistent (the Eagles in 2008 or the Giants this season), or some combination of the 3. So, when Brian Orakpo tries to convince us through Twitter that the Skins are actually not that far away from greatness, and they just need to bring the same intensity every week that the team brought to those 2 Giants games, try to look the other way.

So, that means the Skins are really at least the 2nd best team in the NFC, right?

Speaking of “The Curse of Le Boulez” and “historically bad seasons” earlier on in this post, the Wizards might be well on their way this year. The only thing that might save them is the fact that this lockout-shortened season will come with an asterisk in the history books. It’s not just that they are 1-12 so far, it’s that they look like the most bumbling franchise in the NBA (maybe in all of sports). I have always been somewhat emotionally detached from the Washington franchise. I am and always will be (rightly or wrongly) more of a fan of the college game, and the Wizards/Bullets have been as consistently mediocre as any team in the league since I was a kid. Couple those points with the fact that they traded away 1 of the only Washington players worth watching (Chris Webber) in the last 20 years and made dumb personnel move after dumb personnel move ever since, and they aren’t exactly doing a lot to gain my undying support. Still, I admit that I went to a handful of Wizards games during the Gilbert Arenas era, and if there is a team that I would call my NBA home team, the Wiz would be it. 1-12 is 1-12 though. In this 66 game season, that extrapolates to a record of 5-61 for the season should they keep this pace up, and it would mean only 6 or 7 wins if it were a full 82 game season (the record for futility in an 82 game season is 8 or 9 wins I believe). Even worse than the record is the cast of characters that makes up Washington’s roster. John Wall appears to have regressed, and there are fair questions about whether he is really a basketball player, or just a great athlete who happens to play basketball (his turnovers are up, and his shooting is down). I’m willing to give him a pass right now just because he has literally no help. Actually, “no help” doesn’t begin to describe it. Just from the standpoint of basketball as a sport being played for fun, the other guys logging major minutes for the Wizards this year look like the least fun players to play with ever. Rashard Lewis, unfairly or not, has become the posterboy for the overbloated contracts in today’s NBA that were partly the blame for the lockout. While his skills have declined, and he’s not worth a third of the money he’s making, he probably is at least a serviceable player…but he carries around the stigma of the bad apple that spoiled the bunch, and given that he’s getting old and playing for a team going nowhere it often looks like he is only interested in cashing his paycheck and getting the hell back on the team bus. Worse than that are these 3 characters: Andray Blatche, Nick Young, and JaVale McGee. Where does 1 start with this trio…“7 Day Dray” is the epitome of the lazy selfish athlete. Young is a glorified chucker. McGee appears to have no basketball IQ (or overall IQ for that matter) whatsoever. Add to that 2nd year guard Jordan Crawford, who is at least young and relatively inexpensive, but who is almost as big of a black hole on the offensive end as Blatche or Young. All are enormously talented…none will be in the league in 5 years. None of them “get it.”

Yesterday’s game was a microcosm of this. McGee, who earlier in the year started an online campaign lobbying fans for All-Star votes (really, All-Star votes?), threw a pass to himself off the backboard for a fastbreak dunk in the 3rd quarter, and was subsequently benched. The post-game comments of Blatche, Young, and McGee were quite revealing. Young actually had the gall to give McGee props. Why that surprised me, I am not sure, but it did! Blatche, team captain as he is (cough, gag), said he didn’t really care for McGee’s play, but basically gave a “that’s just Javale being Javale” type of response. McGee’s response was that of a high school prankster who has been sent to the principal’s office one time too many for it to have any effect on him. “Apparently, if you get a fast break and throw it off the backboard in the 3rd quarter, and you’re 1-11, you’re not supposed to do stuff like that,” McGee uttered after the game. He could have saved his breath. If he had rolled his eyes, and said, “Whatever,” to the reporter’s question, that would have sufficed. Wall, who had his best all-around game of the season in defeat (38 points and 8 assists), sounded like a guy who would rather be somewhere, anywhere, else. “A dunk is a dunk. I would rather seen him do a regular dunk. We’re down. We’re 1-11. 1-12 now. So there’s no point in doing any kind of excitement…” No wonder Wall always looks like he just got the news that his dog died; he goes to bed knowing who he has to come to work with the next day! What’s truly sad is that the Wizards brass had a chance to unload all of these guys this offseason. I don’t know the ins and outs of the new NBA “amnesty clause,” and I’ve read that it wouldn’t have been entirely beneficial to use on Rashard Lewis, but they still could have used it and got out from under his enormous contract. Young and 7 Day Dray could have been given their walking papers. McGee’s trade value (whatever you could in fact get for him) was certainly higher before the season started than it is now. At 1-12, you couldn’t be any worse starting all the young guys on the roster than you are right now. And yet, they chose to bring them all back. Why, we may never really know. Your 2011-2012 Washington Wizards, everybody…where amazing truly happens

Another Merciful End

This might be the longest gap in between blog posts since this blog’s current reincarnation. Holiday travel and deadlines at work don’t make for ideal blog-writing conditions. So, as I started writing this I couldn’t help but think that a Redskin season wrap-up would be way late…and yet this past weekend was the 1st weekend since their bye week that there was no Redskins game. This served as not only a reminder of how crazy the holidays are, but how dismal this current stretch of Redskins seasons has been, as another year has passed with not even close to a playoff appearance. 4 out of the last 5 weeks I didn’t even see the game. For anyone that knows me, this would probably come as a shock. From the time I was a 3rd grader, I probably averaged missing about 1 Redskins game a year on TV. Granted, I was either in the car or outside the viewing area for all of these games, but in years past I would have made every effort to plant my can in front of a television set to see the game somehow, someway…not this year.

2011 was a year to forget for Redskins fans. I got frustrated during the middle of the season because so many people had clamored for the Redskins brass to finally truly rebuild the team by tearing the roster down and starting from scratch, and yet in the same breath those people complained about how terrible the team was. How can you be overly critical of a strategy that you wanted in the 1st place? However, by the end of the year I was admittedly just as disgusted with the product on the field as the same people I was originally angered by. I still maintain that the Redskins could actually have an improved team with the same or a worse record this season compared to last year. Well, my theory is about to get tested out…Mike Shanahan’s record in his 1st season: 6-10. Shanahan’s record this year: 5-11.

In Shanahan’s 1st season, it was evident just how much dead weight was on the roster. The Skins roster was not only old but overpaid and underperforming as well. Shanahan and GM Bruce Allen did well to make the roster younger and cheaper in their 2nd season, but they misfired on 1 acquisition so badly in year 1 that they contributed to their own problem. Donovan McNabb was a completely failed experiment, and while the Shanahan/Allen regime has done well overall in its 2 years of stockpiling draft picks, acquiring young talent, and avoiding the overpriced aging veterans (at least compared to the Vinny Cerrato era, where management gave away draft picks like they caused an allergic reaction), the McNabb trade may still prove to be the singular move the dooms Shanahan’s stint in Washington. The draft picks and money they spent getting McNabb and the team’s mistake at the most important position in the sport probably set the team’s rebuilding/development back at least 2 years. The best thing you can say is that at least they cut their losses early on and didn’t stubbornly hold on to him too long when they realized McNabb was a complete bust at this point in his career.

Next year will be the 3rd year of the Shanahan/Allen battery. While a combined 11-21 record over the last 2 years was acceptable and somewhat expected, a plucky 6-10 season will not be tolerated in 2012. 3 years should be long enough to clean house, put your system in place, and fill the roster with the type of player that can produce a winning team. Shanahan is oft-criticized in the personnel department, but most of the players they picked up last year look like they could help the team for the next few seasons. Roy Helu shouldn’t be mistaken for Arian Foster, but he and Evan Royster look like steals for 4th and 7th round draft picks. Ryan Kerrigan could be a bookend rush linebacker along with Brian Orakpo for years to come. Leonard Hankerson showed promise as a receiver in the 1 game he was given an opportunity before getting injured. Barry Cofield and Stephen Bowen look to be cost-effective upgrades to the defensive line. And Jarvis Jenkins, who was hurt in preseason and lost for the year, will basically be an extra 1st or 2nd round pick next year. None of this means that anyone deserves a parade just yet, but it’s at least a small glimpse of hope to hang on to.

There are still plenty of holes to fill. The defensive secondary is awful. London Fletcher could use some help at inside linebacker (if they even choose to resign him). You can never have enough offensive linemen, and that’s even if Trent Williams gets his act together. Fred Davis probably cost himself a lot of money with his shenanigans as well, which may have made him much more affordable for the Skins to resign if they so choose. The receiver corp has lacked a fast, big-bodied, do it all Calvin/Andre Johnson type receiver since forever. And most importantly, the Skins need an upgrade at quarterback. While John Beck was a complete disaster in his audition, as bad as Rex Grossman was at times you would have to say he at least did a serviceable job as a fill-in this starter this year. If the Redskins believe Grossman is actually their answer at QB, they are nuts. However, their draft position puts them in a tricky position: they have a high pick, but not high enough that the guys thought to be elite franchise-type quarterbacks will still be around when it comes their turn to select. Hopefully, they don’t reach for a guy that they really don’t believe in just out of desperation. I would be more than fine with someone like, say, Justin Blackmon (probably will be picked by then as well, but one can only dream). If they can’t pick or trade up to pick Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin, I fully expect them to be in the Matt Flynn running, as he seems to be the guy most likely to have someone throw starting quarterback money at this offseason. Otherwise, the best we can probably hope for next year with Grossman at the reins is 8-8 or 9-7 (assuming the team improves in other areas). That’s all pie in the sky stuff for now though, but hope springs eternal. As for Skins talk, see you in April at the draft.

It's The Circle, The Circle Of Liiiiiife...

Count me as one of those kids who was a sneaker addict growing up. I never had enough disposable income to really go crazy (my parents would buy me 1 pair of sneakers a year whether I really needed them or not, and I would usually save up enough to buy another pair a year on my own), but I made the most with what I had. Weeks’ worth of research (and by “research” I mean pouring over Eastbay catalogues) would go into my decision, and I would keep my shoes in pristine condition. New sneakers rarely got scuffs because I would reserve them for playing ball indoors, but in the event that they did get a blemish they got the royal treatment: bleach, toothpaste, whatever it took to keep them looking new. Eventually though, I would get a new pair and “demote” 1 of my other pairs. I kept such care of my sneakers that they would last for years, but I still had a natural progression which kept me from stockpiling dozens of shoes at once. I usually kept my 2 newest pairs in my office at school. These were my indoor balling shoes. I would keep anywhere from 2 to 4 pairs in my room at home, which were kind of my all-purpose shoes: street shoes, shoes to wear to class, shoes to ball outdoors, etc. Finally, I kept a singular pair of sneakers (my oldest pair at the time) in the garage at home for mowing the lawn and yard work. This pair was usually on its last legs, covered in grass stains and cement, and starting to get a little bit mousey. When I would get that new fresh pair, the lawn-mowing pair would get thrown out, the oldest pair of all-purpose sneakers would become the lawn-mowing pair, and all the way down the line.

That's just beautiful...

The problem is that in the few years since I have moved away from home, this naturally occurring system of checks and balances has disappeared. I don’t have a lawn anymore, and I only play basketball once a week as opposed to 4 or 5 times a week. Also, I used to wear sneakers to class and work 9 out of every 10 days when I was in college. Now that I’m a participant in the daily rat race, I spend the majority of my time wearing dress shoes. So, my sneakers are seeing less wear and tear over every stage of their life cycle. All of that means that I should be buying sneakers less and less often, right? Wrong…I am a sneaker addict after all.

My demand for sneakers may have gone way down over the past 3 or 4 years, but my means for buying them have gone up. While I’m not exactly making bank at my current job, I’m making much more than my $10 an hour college job, and Krissy and I don’t have any kids or a house or anything expensive to pay for yet. And I will say that the frequency at which I buy myself new basketball shoes has gone way down lately. I probably only get 1 pair of new basketball shoes a year now (and my most recent pair was a gift from Krissy…when you’re a sneaker addict trying to quit the habit, it doesn’t help if your wife is an even bigger sneaker addict than you), and seeing as how I don’t play nearly as often as I used to I could probably get away with buying them even less often than that, but I can’t help it being the sneaker addict that I am. However, I used to only buy basketball sneakers because their sole purpose once they came out of the box was to play basketball in them. The purposes of those shoes evolved over time into whatever I needed them to be, but that’s how they all started out. Now, I buy trainers for the gym (prior to that I hadn’t owned a low-top sneaker since elementary school) and sneakers specifically to wear out with a pair of jeans or something as well. So, where I was only acquiring 1 or 2 new pairs of sneakers a year before, it’s probably like 3 or 4 pairs of shoes now. The result of this is a glutton of sneakers everywhere around our apartment. It was time for some population control.

So, when I got rid of my old pair of Iverson’s (the original “The Question”) this morning, it was with a heavy heart. I had contemplated getting rid of them this past summer when I had begun to play ball outdoors with them (they had started to get worn and come unglued in certain spots), but they just weren’t quite worn out enough for me to toss out just yet. I figured eventually a day would come where I would get them so beat up and dirty from hiking in the woods or digging a car out of a mud hole or something random that I could justify it to myself. This past weekend gave me a reason (albeit a weak one) after my friend Mac borrowed them to play ball in after forgetting to bring a pair of shoes of his own. Mac's feet are a good size bigger than mine, and the parts of the toe that were already coming apart looked even more worse for wear afterwards. The shoes had definitely seen better days, but I couldn’t bring myself to simply throw them out, so I dropped them off in 1 of those clothing bins for homeless people. Crisis averted…the shoe circle of life goes on.

Why couldn't they have just stayed like this forever?

Cue Elton John.

A Miserable End To A Miserable Season

It’s been a week or so since I last made a fantasy or any other update on here, but it wasn’t because I was hiding in the fetal position somewhere. I actually got to the acceptance stage fairly quickly, as I knew even if I made the playoffs my team was likely going nowhere. Either way, the odds were greatly in my favor to at least get in. If I won I was in. If I lost, I could still get in as long as Krissy lost and my brother Dan didn’t win his own matchup and outscore me by more than 50 points. From early on in the weekend, it didn’t look like I had a shot to win, but it looked like Krissy was out of it pretty early on in her matchup also. The only problem was that I had the perfect storm of a bad fantasy weekend, and Dan’s team put up a wopping 123 points. Matt Hasselbeck, who I picked up thinking that he would be a solid fill-in starter, left the game in the 1st half and got me 1 point. Plaxico Burress, in a game where the Jets beat the Chiefs by 4 touchdowns, put up 0 points. Mike Wallace, who had carried me at times earlier in the year, put up a pedestrian 7 points. DeMarco Murray broke his ankle in the 1st half and got me 2 points. CJ Spiller, in a blowout loss to San Diego, got me only 5 points. Jermichael Finley was held without a catch in Green Bay’s game. The only players that did anything for me were Roy Helu, who had his 3rd 100 yard rushing game in a row, and Seattle’s defense. My total output was my yearly worst by far: 53 points for the week, good enough to be outscored by Dan by 70! Adding insult to injury, I had 3 different receivers on my bench (Laurent Robinson, Julio Jones, and Nate Washington) who had at least 24 points apiece. Now, I would have never started all 3 of them because Mike Wallace is a must-start every week, but I could have conceivably started 2 of them over Burress and Spiller for example…especially Julio Jones, who I had consistently started (when he was healthy at least) all season despite having an up-and-down year. To put a positive spin on it though, this mercifully ended what was by all standards a pretty crappy fantasy season for me. Earlier in the year I complained about being unlucky, but my final record was 6-8, and in all honesty this was a 6-8 fantasy team (and all things considered I had to work pretty hard and get pretty lucky even to get to 6-8). Why was this team such a failure? Let’s run down the list…

1. Michael Vick…I have detailed this before, but prior to our league’s draft I heard ESPN fantasy guru Matthew Berry explain on a podcast why he would take Vick if he had the 1st pick in a draft this year. It went something like this…the Eagles have an explosive offense, and last year Vick put up numbers that would have made him a top 10 fantasy quarterback and a top 20 fantasy running back if you isolated his rushing stats (if you extrapolated those stats through a full 16 games). Vick came with risks: a lack of consistency over the years, the propensity to get injured, etc…but if he played up to his abilities and stayed on the field, it would essentially be like having an extra player in your starting lineup every week. I understood the riskiness, but I bought into the theory hook, line, and sinker, and when I found out I had the 1st pick in our draft this year, I didn’t hesitate in taking Vick. Unfortunately, Vick was inconsistent, got hurt early and often, and the Eagles were a bust in general this year. The theory works though…just ask Cam Newton owners this year. Cam went undrafted in our league though, but he is the overall 2nd rated fantasy player in the league right now behind Aaron Rodgers (by the way, while I had completely bought in to Vick, Rodgers was my 2nd choice). Vick’s current ranking is still a respectable 47th, but the pick killed me. I ended up dropping him with a week or 2 left in the regular season (during his most recent time missed due to injury). The result of this left me with a revolving door at quarterback this year including Josh Freeman, Tarvaris Jackson, Carson Palmer, and the aforementioned Hasselbeck. I did pick up Jay Cutler for a couple weeks, which was a good pickup except for the fact that he broke his finger, causing me to drop him shortly thereafter.

2. A bad draft in general…At season’s end I only had 5 of my original 14 picks still on my roster, and that’s generally not a good sign. I guess it could mean that you were really wheeling and dealing to try to make improvements. Also, it’s pretty common to have a lot of turnover with the guys at the back end of your draft, including kickers and defenses. However, it also probably means that you drafted crappy, and you have to replace a lot of the dead weight on your roster.

3. Injuries…One of my favorite “Dad” sayings is, “Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good.” Well, that is rarely more true than in fantasy football. Injuries are part of the game, and some guys (Vick for example) are more injury-prone than others. Still, most good fantasy teams (much like the real teams) are partially good because they managed to not catch the injury bug that year, but on my team injuries spread like a pandemic. Aside from Vick being in and out of the lineup, 2 of my best running backs going into the season were put on injured reserve during the course of the year with leg injuries. Felix Jones was my 2nd round pick, but I dropped him fairly early on in the year when he was out with a shoulder injury. His replacement, Murray, was my number 1 back by the end of the year, but even if I had made the postseason I would have been in big trouble, as Murray was placed on injured reserve after last week’s injury as well. Speaking of a little luck going a long way…

4. Sleeper picks (or lack thereof)…Most leagues aren’t won with the top picks in the draft. Sure, a superstar can have an unbelievable year, but it always seems to be the guy that is shrewd and lucky enough to get those players who have great years out of nowhere that end up winning. Last year when I won our league, I got Arian Foster, Matt Forte, and Fred Jackson in the middle rounds of the draft. I don’t even remember who I used my draft picks on for the 1st couple of rounds because it didn’t matter…those 3 picks basically won it for me right there. This year I tried to employ a similar strategy of grabbing a lot of “2nd tier” backs in the middle rounds with the hope that a couple of them would breakout from the pack. Hightower and Jackson were having solid and great years respectively before they got hurt, but the fact that neither James Starks or Ben Tate really ended up being sleepers for me hurt almost as much as those injuries. Starks has been fighting off injuries the 2nd half of the year, but even prior to that he hadn’t done enough to separate himself from Green Bay’s other backs in their multi-back system like I had hoped. I thought Tate was a smart pick given how Foster pulled the same hamstring like 3 times in the preseason, but while he’s having a great year for a backup running back, he’s still just that: a backup running back. I drafted 5 running backs in total, but none of them, for one reason or another, were one of my starting 3 running backs the last 2 weeks of the regular season.

5. Inconsistency at key spots…Wallace and Finley had been great at times for me this year, but they have been wildly inconsistent as well. Wallace’s decline has been more steady, as he started off the season on pace to break all kinds of single season receiving records. The combination of defenses paying more attention to him, the emergence of Pittsburgh’s other receivers, and the Steelers renewed commitment to the running game as we’ve crept into the winter months seem to be the cause of that. Finley has been more of an enigma, catching 3 touchdown passes 1 week, and disappearing from the offense completely the next. Blame the fact that the Packers have like 1,000 good skill position players for that. At this point, they have still been the 5th and 6th most productive fantasy players at each of their positions this year, but I would have traded a little more consistency for the couple of big weeks that they had.

6. No number 2 receiver…Percy Harvin was penciled in as my 2nd receiver at the start of the year, but when it quickly became apparent that Donovan McNabb couldn’t play anymore I traded him away. In retrospect, I should have held on to him a little bit longer, as he’s had a decent 2nd half of the season with Christian Ponder at the controls of the offense. Julio Jones has had 2 or 3 great weeks, but has had several other weeks where he hasn’t played due to injury or just hasn’t performed when he was on the field. I rode him for much of the year while he was healthy just hoping to catch lightning in a bottle, but as I mentioned before I stupidly sat him when I could have used his production the most this past week. Still, my number 2 receiver position was my biggest revolving door of all. It also may have proven another point when it comes to fantasy: having depth is nice, but sometimes too many choices can be a bad thing too.

In the end, I have no one really to blame but myself. Sure, I was unlucky with injuries, but I outsmarted myself on several draft picks and moves during the season. I guess I can take solace in the fact that as bad as I drafted and as unlucky as I was with guys getting hurt, I was able to piece together at least a mediocre season. Free agent pickups like Helu, Murray, Robinson, and Burress literally kept my season afloat when I probably should’ve been eliminated weeks before. Hopefully for my next fantasy team I can combine that resourcefulness with a little better luck and drafting as well.

The Replacements

The last time I mentioned fantasy football on here was October 26th. A snapshot of that point in time had me at 2-5 overall and on a 2 game losing streak (good enough for 9th place in a 12 team league). Michael Vick had a bye week that particular week, and even when he was on the field he was playing like garbage. Fast forward 5 weeks later, and lamenting picking Vick as my #1 overall draft pick is the only thing that has remained the same. After not playing in the last 2 games and already being ruled-out of this Thursday’s game in Seattle, I decided to drop Vick from my roster. It’s a stunning turnabout for a guy that I thought could potentially win the league for me by myself. Looking back now, it was a horrendous pick. I could’ve gone with a safe choice at running back like Adrian Peterson or Arian Foster. Even though those guys have suffered through injuries during different parts of the year, they have both been solid. I could’ve gone with Aaron Rodgers, who was actually my 2nd choice. Even though running backs are generally safer picks, I felt that the top-tier QBs had the most potential for having ridiculous fantasy years. Even Rodgers would have been a safer pick than Vick though. I decided to gamble on Vick because while he had the biggest propensity to do exactly what he has done so far this year (namely, keep getting hurt and playing lousy for the most part), he also could have had the greatest season in fantasy football history if he played his best and stayed healthy. Unfortunately for me, he has done neither. Meanwhile, Rodgers is the top rated player in all of fantasy this year…while Vick is currently a free agent in our league along with the likes of QBs on IR like Matt Schaub and busts like Tavaris Jackson (I actually picked Jackson up for 1 week for an emergency start).

A familiar sight this season.

To top it off, my team has been devastated at RB. Tim Hightower had already been lost for the year with a torn ACL by my last fantasy post, but my only fantasy stud, Fred Jackson, has since been placed on IR with a broken leg also. If you factor in that I dropped Felix Jones several weeks back in favor of his backup, DeMarco Murray, when he was out a couple of weeks with a shoulder injury, only 2 of my top 7 picks are even still on my roster…and those 2 guys have been shaky at best for me lately. Mike Wallace’s pace has slowed dramatically since the beginning of the year when he looked like he might challenge the single season record books for receivers, and Jermichael Finley could have 3 TDs 1 game and then go weeks without sniffing the end zone again. In fact, if you look at my draft results the only players still on my roster that I originally drafted are Wallace, Finley, James Starks, Julio Jones, and Ben Tate. Jones has had a couple of big weeks, but seems to miss every other game with a bad hamstring. Tate and Starks have been good spot starters, but 1 is a backup to the best back in the league, and the other splits carries with Ryan Grant in a predominantly passing offense…not a good combination if consistent production is what you’re after.

Oh, Mike Wallace...wherever have you gone?

With all that info, you would probably guess that I went from 2-5 to 2-10 by now…and yet I’ve managed to win 4 out of 5 to move to 6-6 overall. Even stranger, there is a logjam in the middle of the league standings right now (5 teams at either 6-6 or 5-6-1), and with last week’s win I moved from 9th place all the way to 5th due to tiebreakers. How is this possible? Well, the 1st thing is that as bad as I drafted, I probably have been that good at picking free agents up. Murray, Plaxico Burress, and Laurent Robinson (who knew?) have all saved my ass in various weeks. The other (and more important factor) has been that I’ve been very lucky, which ironically is something I didn’t have in the beginning of the year at all. Back on October 26th, I had scored more points than almost every other team in the league, but had the most points scored against my team as well. I was in 1 of those stretches where if I had the 2nd highest point total of any team in a particular week, I just so happened to play the guy who had the most points that week. Since then, those numbers have kind of evened out, as I’m more in the middle of the pack in terms of total points scored and points scored against. Which means even though I had my share of 119-108 losses earlier in the year, I’ve had a few 77-67 matchups go may favor since then as well.

Now, if only I can avert any other disasters for 2 more weeks, I should at least make the playoffs, and getting a chance to make a playoff run is really all you can ask for in fantasy sports. So, even if Starks or Tate might be slightly better plays, I felt it was only right to roll the dice and go with the backups of the guys I used to have this week (Murray, CJ Spiller, and Roy Helu). I also couldn’t resist changing my team name to “Injured Reserve.” I know they say you shouldn’t tempt fate, but nothing about this fantasy season has been conventional for me thus far…why should it stop now?

A heavy dose of Roy Helu against the Jets would be just what the doctor ordered.