I hate to do two straight fantasy football posts. Like I said before, it’s one of those things that if you start talking about your fantasy team, you induce everyone around you to fall into a deep coma…but all those people would similarly love nothing more than to talk about their fantasy team. Still, I documented past fantasy teams in blogs, and (I don’t know if I can stress this enough) this team is actually good. I have had a history of lousy fantasy teams, so much so that I considered not doing a league at all this year. As a reasonably intelligent person and someone who at least considers himself to be a pretty knowledgeable sports fan, there’s not much that can make you feel dumber than having a bad fantasy team. It doesn’t really matter that at least half of a fantasy team’s success is basically decided by luck. Sure, you can make shrewd draft picks, trades, and waiver-wire pickups, but it’s just about impossible to account for freak injuries (not just in terms of the effect of the player who got hurt but the guy who replaces the injured player as well) or guys having great years out of nowhere. Exhibit A is my team this year, where 2 of my best players were my 9th and 10th round draft picks, respectively. Still, it’s hard to swallow when your team is barely treading water, and some guy who doesn’t know the difference between a tight end and a shortstop has the best team in the league.
My fantasy history is nothing short of mediocre. I’ve done a handful of leagues powered by ESPN and Fox Sports, but for the most part all of my leagues have been on Yahoo. If you go to my “Yahoo Fantasy Profile” page, it’s not much to write home about. All told, it lists me as having played in 21 leagues (including the league I’m in right now) dating back to 2006. 10 of those were football leagues, 6 were basketball, and 5 were March Madness pick ‘em pools. My overall fantasy rating (however that’s calculated) is 38 out of 100. I’ve won a fantasy league exactly once, and it was like the 1st league I ever played in. As I mentioned before, I believe that was a team that was the lowest seeded team to make the playoffs, and my team made some incredible New York Giants-esque run to win the whole league…the best part about it is that that was a league where I think I only knew 1 or 2 other people, my team looked like it was out of it early on, and I lost interest in checking it about halfway through the season. I didn’t even bother to adjust my lineup the last few weeks of the regular season and the entire postseason, and I somehow still managed to win. I don’t even think I realized I was the league champ until like a couple weeks later when I randomly stumbled on the league page…classic proof that it’s better to be lucky than good in all things fantasy sports related. My best finish other than that was 3rd place in a 10 team league back in 2008. Other than that, I think I’ve only finished in the top 50% of a league’s standings twice…not great, but at this rate once this league is over I could bump my Yahoo fantasy performance rating up to, I don’t know, 41 out of 100 or something!! I don’t know what’s sadder: the fact that these sites track you entire fantasy history or the fact that I actually went to the page to check my stats before writing this. I guess the point is that as soul-crushing as it is to have a bad fantasy team, it kind of reaffirms what made you think fantasy sports would be fun in the first place when your team is actually decent…so simple it’s got to be true.
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