(Ladies) and Gentlemen, Start Your Vicarious-Glory Geekwad Testosterone Engines!

Howdy,

Before we get to FANTASY FOOTBALL, a couple notes...

On Katrina:

OK, lets give some massive incompetence and failure points
where they are due: GW completely bungled this one, showing his
complete ineptitude at leading and callous disregard for the
public good. He's a pooper. But don't take my word for it,
as Levar Burton of Reading Rainbow would say, go with the sage
opinion of that liberal firebrand Thomas Friedman at the NY Times
(I'm sure Limbaugh and the rest of the neo-fascist reactionary
conservative radio crowd are singing Bush's praises and blaming
the storm on Jimmy Carter, but when Friedman does such an about
face, it is worth noting):

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/opinion/07friedman.html?incamp=article_popular_1

On way overdue links of the day:

http://www.windley.com/archives/2003/06/david_weinberg.shtml

On music:

Going to hear Benevento Russo Duo for first time tonight at Bowery
Ballroom, and Tea Leaf Green for the first time on Sat at the Knitting
Factory. Heard good things about both bands. Will report back..


Aiiight, now on to the good stuff. So, I'm a straight male between
the ages of 16 and 38. Not that that matters. As they taught me in
grad school, correlation does not imply causation. Though I'm putting
the correlation between that demographic and playing
FANTASY FOOTBALL at about .97. Yes, my little brother meets the
criteria and doesn't play, but he will once he discovers there's as
much strategy in FF as there is in Civilization III, and my older
brother doesn't play but he may be, on some level, still "figuring
things out."

I'm not gonna blog about how brilliant FF is, or how much fun it is,
you just gotta jump into the pool and find out. So this bit is for
the folks, like my good cousin Matt Otto, who have. Once you do, one
kind of learns to speak a new language. You get my fiancee Jen
together with a handful of her Columbia Law grad buddies, and they
will quickly slip into law speak. I'm gonna be full throttle on the
FF speak for a while now. Without further ado:

This year's team:

QB: Peyton Manning, Drew Brees
RB: Jamal Lewis, Michael Bennett, Mike Anderson, DeShawn Foster,
Michael Pittman
WR: Chad Johnson, Michael Clayton, Laveranues Coles, Issac Bruce
Eric Moulds, Tyrone Calico, Marty Booker
WR/TE: Alge Crumpler
K: Mike Vanderjagt
Def: Pittsburg

(already.. how can't you love a game with names like DeShawn Foster,
Laveranues Coles, and Alge Crumpler???)

Strategery: Grabbed Manning with the #2 pick. My league places
more scoring emphasis on TDs than yardage, but you really can't
lose either way with this regular-season stud. Emphasis on regular
season. If I was picking a playoff roster, I think I'd go with
Jake Plummer before Mr. Indianapolis.

Beyond that.. my feeling was that it'd be wise to spend high picks
on WRs, cus high flying, reliable WRs are hard to come by, they get
injured quite often (picked Steve Smith with #2 or 3 last year,
that was awesome), and many quality RBs would be available in
the late rounds. We'll see if this pays off.. I feel great with
the WRs, but the RB core is a little sketchy. Biggest disappointment
here was magical reappearance of Stephen Davis, who has less
cartilage in his knees than {famous ex-Pop Star} has in his
{work with me here}. Though if he lasts past week 4 I'll be
surprised.. beyond that, Jamal's ankles are weak, I would not hire
Mike Tice to coach my middle school team, Mike Anderson might lose
the Broncos 1500/yd season sweepstakes to Tatum Bell. We'll see.
Any way this plays out, it should be better than last year's fiasco
with picking Clinton Portis with the #3 pick, which torpedoed my
entire season.

HOW GOOFY WILL GUYS GET OVER FF???

Very goofy. I had a couple weeks off last summer.. was in New Haven
and went to a FF clinic at Sports Haven put on by the local paper.
I asked the panel point blank whether Portis would sink or swim and
the Redskins running back from the 88' Superbowl Team and the agent
for Antonio Gates assured me he'd do well under Joe Gibbs.
They were wrong.

Uhh.. so that's enough for now. Last comment: in three seasons I
have not drafted a Bill, more often than not because Mr. Buffalo,
Phil Wittman, grabbed half the team in the first 8 rounds, but this
year, when Moulds was still on the board in like round 6, I felt
compelled. So... lets go Buffalo!

Alright, time to take a break...


After a year living Upstate, Dave finally had to pick a Buffalo Bill