Fantasy Football 2013 - Need More Teams

We need at least one more team for a 12 team league in my Annual Fantasy Football League.  If you're interested and will play all season (i.e. not drop out half way through) send me an email to wmnoe at yahoo dot com.


Thanks

Fantasy Football 2013

2013 marks the 24th Season that I've run a Fantasy Football League - and at least the 14th on Yahoo (they only go back to 2001, but I'm pretty sure I ran one there before then).

If you wish to join up, there's still 9 NEW teams available, but I'm going to be kind of picky.  I want players who aren't going to disappear after the first few weeks.

So leave me your email and a sentence or two as to why I should choose you and if you get an invite you'll know you are in rare company.

FWIW - I do have a couple of people who have been playing with me for over a decade, including a few who played all the way back in 1990 when I started ON PEN AND PAPER!

FANTASY FOOTBALL 2010

I have started my 2010 Fantasy Football League, and am looking to add new owners again this season. I have 4 confirmed at the moment and invites out to a number of others. If you would like to play in a FUN but competitive league, one that I've been running in one incarnation or another for almost 20 years, then leave me a comment.

Thanks.

Fantasy Football 2009! Already?

It's only June, but Yahoo Fantasy Football leagues are now available...so I started my annual league already. I invited back all the owners from last season, but I'd love to have a HUGE league, so if you'd like to play with us, please leave me a comment with your email and I'll send you the password.

Weekend Sports Wrap-Up & This and That

World Serious?

I completely underestimated the tenacity of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, losing game six only to come from behind to win game 7 and a trip to the Big Dance. I honestly don't really care who wins the World Series, though if I had to pick I'd say I'm rooting for the Rays. I love it when teams who have never won a championship win their first one, it's always a special moment. I also don't particularly care for the Phillies, though I don't hate them either.

I would think that several executives at Fox are shitting bricks right about now, estimating that they'll get the lowest ratings of any World Series that they've shown. Ratings have been pretty low for the World Series since the 2004 edition (featuring the BoSox vs. the Cards) which got a 15.8 average with about 25 million viewers. The last several years the ratings have been just above a 10 average with about 15 million viewers. Think about that number for a second, if there's about 305 million people in the U.S., 15 million viewers is less than 5% of the population. If you compare the numbers to the Superbowl, you get a HUGE disparity because of the 40+ ratings that the big game gets year in and year out. What that translates to is that almost HALF of the U.S. population tunes into the Superbowl at some point during the game.

Now the World Series does get better ratings than both the NHL and the NBA finals. The NBA finals routinely draw under 10 ratings, and in fact haven't scored higher than last year's 9.2 since 2004! The NHL finals aren't really even in the same ballpark in reality, they aren't on broadcast TV and they don't even draw more than a couple of points each season. I could go on for days on television ratings as they fascinate me to no end, however, I would just be flogging the same dead animal. Football is America's #1 sport and everything else pales in comparison.

Adjusted for Inflation

Wasn't like that when I was a kid, but then again gas was under $1.00 a gallon when I was a kid too. Heck the year I was born (1971) the average price for a gallon of gas was just over 35 cents. Adjusted for inflation that would be about 1.77 now. Then again, my first packs of trading cards were $0.25 in 1977, and today they're at least $2.00 or more. It gets worse though. Comic books were $0.35 when I started collecting, now you're LUCKY if you can find a comic with under a $2.99 cover price, and more likely they're $3.99 or higher. In fact in the last two weeks I've bought two, count 'em TWO comic books both with the $3.99 cover price (The Barack Obama comic and the new Ghostbusters comic both from IDW).

Inflation only covers some of the increase in prices. That 35 cent comic according to the inflation caluclator should cost 85 cents now, BUT they don't make comics like they did in 1977. For one, the paper and printing process are all very high tech now, that old newsprint that will distintigrate over time is long-gone, replaced with fancy glossy stock. The old hand coloring and hand lettering processes have joined the dodo in extinction with most everything being done by computer. Same thing goes with trading cards. What you bought for a quarter back in 1977 (any set of Topps really) doesn't exist anymore. For that price you got 10 cards, one of which was always screwed up by the wax wrapper, and another of which might be screwed up by the gum, which was bloody awful. Now I respect both Topps and UD for having entry level card sets that approximate the old days in both tone and set content, but the card stock and photography are all technologically advanced. When you think about it though, for a dollar you do get about the same contents as you would in 1977. Then again, I didn't have the opportunity to pull an autogamer or a piece of a dead Presidents hair in 1977 either. I could pull a C-3PO card with a stiffy so it's all good.

Fantasy Football Update

I lost BOTH games this weekend, second time in two weeks. UGH. My players just had awful days in both leagues, and I didn't pay much attention to my lineups on Sunday, which meant that I ended up starting Chris Chambers when he didn't even play. In my league my top four performers all scored in double digits, but the remaining guys didn't break 7 and that was for my defense. In Gellman's league, where I WAS tied for first place, I did horribly scoring my worst performance of the year. Thankfully it's only week 7 and there are 7 more weeks to go in both leagues. In my league I'm 3-4, tied for 5th place. I'd still be in the playoffs though because top 6 go in my league. In Gellman's league I'm now 5-2 and there is currently a five way tie for first. Talk about parity. The three teams that WERE tied for first last week at 5-1 all lost, and the two teams that were 4-2 both won, leaving a HUGE log-jam at the top. I believe that I still have the number one seed though, like it means much since there's only 4 teams in that league that make the playoffs. I need a few of my guys to get healthy really quickly, just like the UCLA Bruins Football squad.

This or That

I'm working on a piece about the difference between retail and hobby, when to buy what and why. Seems like this is always a sore subject with hobby bloggers, and I think that my take will be a little different than most. Here's a quick preview: I like retail, but I'd prefer to shop hobby, even though currently I buy more at retail. There.

My next post will be my list of needs to complete a 2008 Upper Deck Baseball set. You might remember that I was able to get a box of both series gratis from Upper Deck, not to review or anything like that, though DAMN I wish that I could get free product like Chris and Mario (kudos to both of you too), but because I enrolled my child into the Upper Deck Kids Points Club, and amassed a huge number of points in a short amount of time. If anyone's interested I'll do a post on the club in the future and other freebies that you can get from the hobby.

The "Free" Controversy

Speaking of freebies, I'd like to weigh in on the current blogger controversy between Mario of Wax Heaven, Chris of Stale Gum and JV of Treasure Never Buried. If you don't know what's going on, in a nutshell, Mario announced with pride that he had been contacted by Upper Deck to start receiving free product that he can review on his blog. Pretty standard stuff to be honest, this goes on in pretty much every industry. As soon as the announcement was made other bloggers started to weigh in, JV being the most vocal. Mario was accused not of being less than objective, but rather lying to his readers about the origins of a couple of boxes he broke earlier in the year. Whoop-de-doo. Later Chris also announced that he had entered a similar agreement with UD and would also be getting free product. Both Mario and Chris are also sharing much of that product with readers through free contests.

Here's my take:

WHO THE HELL CARES if they get free product. AS I said earlier, free product is RAMPANT in pretty much every industry. DO you think that movie reviewers pay for their movies? No way no how. For every 100 movie reviews that a reviewer writes he or she will have paid for MAYBE one or two of those films. Why? Because the movie industry has set up a process where they screen films for critics for free, at least in major cities they do. I know this for a fact, I have family in the movie industry. I've been to COUNTLESS press screenings in Los Angeles dating back to the early 80's when my Uncle edited one of the oldest trade publications in Hollywood. It's been my privilege to see some great films days or weeks in advance, including a rough cut of Back to the Future in 1985 and two out of the three Star Wars prequels.

The same thing goes for DVD reviewers, they get FREE copies of the DVDs they review. If they didn't they wouldn't review them, plain and simple. Book reviewers get advanced copies, they show up on eBay all the time (seriously do a search in the books section for ARC or Advance Reader Copies). Plays aren't any different, critics are given passes to early performances or full dress rehersals. This is the way of the industry my friends. Television critics often get cool advance DVDs with episodes on them way before they hit the airwaves.

It doesn't just go for the media either, I worked for Price Club for several years in their buying office. Samples would just show up at work, and though we had a strict no "graft" policy, most of the samples would end up in some employee's hands. Hell I had a Hasbro Millenium Falcon that they gave us as a sample for the toy department on my desk for YEARS in the 90's, and when I left the company they let me take it home. Wasn't just toys either, jewelry, watches, cameras, food, clothing, gifts - you name it, it got sampled.

Did I mention that I haven't paid to get into a major convention since the early 90's either? I went to two or three Wizard World Los Angeles cons, a couple of GenCon Anaheim cons, and I stopped paying for San Diego Comic Con in 1988. Granted I haven't been to one since 1997, but from 1989 to 1996 I didn't pay a thing to get in.

Does this have anything to do with objectivity? Absolutely not. Whether you pay for something or not, as a reviewer you are OBLIGED (get it) to be objective in your opinion. Those who question other's objectivity have issues with their own. As I learned in journalism class, your integrity is the most important thing you can have, you have to be objective to be a journalist. Now, I don't really consider blogging to be professional journalism, it's more of an amateurish kind of thing, that said, bloggers should STILL conform to the rules of professional journalism. They should be fact-checking their articles and confirming their sources. Both Chris and Mario have their own domains, meaning they've paid someone some money to host their site. The don't get any income as far as I know for doing what they do, they do it out of love. Surely they're entitled to some perks along the way.

Now, having said all that, if you have some stuff you'd like ME to review, go ahead and shoot me an email to wmnoe at yahoo dot com, and I'll be happy to review it for you, no matter what it is. I promise to give an unbiased objective opinion as well. Even if it's McFarlane Sports Picks toys. Really.

Fantasy Footbal Update: Week Two

Good Afternoon Gents:

Sorry to be a tad late with this report, life as always intervenes, though nothing really that drastic occurred, I just didn't want to post an update yesterday because several of the games came down to Monday Night Football.

Which blew chunks for me. I went INTO the game with a lead AND a Tony Romo against Westbrook, T.O. and DeSean Jackson. I get outscored by 16 points and LOSE to Sharkey's because he scored the most points in the league this week. I scored the second most points. See that just SUCKS.

But in my OTHER league I won, so I'm 2-0 over there and have scored the most points so far.

BUT I digress.

This weekend's loss to Sharkeys' Fat Cats makes me 2-6 against them overall. James has my number I guess.

BTW - How are you all liking the 4 moves per week thing? I think it makes a nice deterrant to mass roster moves, and yet makes you think about your moves as well. Of course I gave everyone too many roster slots, but that's neither here nor there.

So we know what happened in MY game, let's look at the other four games in the WWFL:

The 49ers knocked off OmegaJaguars to pull his record to .500. Omega is now 0-2, and it doesn't help him that his best player is LT, and we all saw what happened to LT last weekend. Too bad he wasn't quick enough to grab Darren Sproules (and who did that I wonder?)

Kama Sutra Mallards ran through Best Team Ever, HOWEVER, the victory was by only three points, AND BTE's Kicker plays for Houston which had it's game postponed. I don't know how Yahoo is going to handle that one, perhaps whenever the game is played the points will go in retroactively. I don't know.

Actually, now I do know - I checked out the message boards, and the two teams Houston and Baltimore are treated like they had a bye week, so if you had a player on either team, they don't get any points.

Kind of sucks, but there it is.

That also applies to our next game: Pants Wearer showed that he certainly wears Electric Boogaloo's pants. Err, that didn't come out right. Anyway, EB has Baltimore's defense, that can be the difference in even a lopsided score. PW is now 2-0 and EB is now 0-2.

Pigskinz didn't need any unscheduled bye-weeks to kick AllDayEveryDay's you-know-what. To be fair, it's hard to win when your starting QB gets negative points. I'm playing you next week, and you had better bring the paint bud, 'cause I'm looking to make a statement here. A statement that my team is the DOMINATOR....of not sucking!

If you look at the standings, you can see a very alarming trend so far; the teams in the top six all have right around 200 points or more. The teams in the bottom four are all around 150 or lower. At least Omega is TRYING to get better, he's done 12 moves so far! Again, to be fair, it's been a VERY strange two weeks in the NFL, it should get a bit more stable in the next couple weeks. Someone who isn't on anyone's roster will have a career game and get snatched up via the waiver wire. Happens every year.

Fantasy Footbal Update: Week One

WildWill’s Weekly Fantasy Football Update

Welcome to Week 1 of WildWill’s FFB Update, I’ll either do this update on Monday or Tuesday mornings during the season just to keep you all informed as to the state of the league. If this gets too tedious please let me know.

2008 represents the 9th season for my Yahoo league, and the 19th season that I’ve been playing FFB overall. My first season was 1990 when I worked for the Dana Inn and Marina, and back then we did everything by hand. It was a lot more fun back then I think, since every owner worked for the same place and we all trash talked throughout the season. I remember I lost in the Fantasy Bowl two out of the first three seasons.

This season I had five owners return from last season, and we lost a couple of long term owners (Rob was invited back, but declined to sign up, and Rems was finally not invited after years of last place performances). We welcomed five new owners mostly from the sports blogs that I’ve been reading lately.

So let’s take a look at week one shall we?


Game 1: Kayee’s Knights vs. The 49ers.

My first game was against the 49ers, a returning owner from last season who got the second pick in the draft. Instead of taking Adrian Petersen like he should have, his auto-draft picked, wait for it….Tom Brady. Yup, the 49ers season is basically over. His neglect let me pick up AD, and I’m as happy as a clam. His players are all finished and he scored 54.88 points, his best player being the Steelers D which scored 23 points. I have two players still to play tonight, AD and the Vikings Defense, and I’ve already won. My total going into tonight is 55.86 with my two best players so far being Tony Romo (14.9) and John Kasay (15). I’m hoping that AD and the Vikes D score a bunch of points, because when you’re tied in the standings points are the first tie-breaker. This was the only game featuring two returning owners against each other. This victory evens my record against The 49ers to 1-1, as I lost to him by 3 points in our only other meeting last season. We play again in Week 10.



Game 2: Pigskinz vs. Sharkey’s Fat Cats.
Sharkey’s team is owned by James, my daughter’s Godfather, and he’s been in the league now since 2005, and has done quite well over the years, winning in 05 and coming in third in 07 (we won’t talk about that 7th place finish in 06). Pigskinz is a new owner this season who despite having the last pick in the draft put together a formidable team. This game wasn’t even close, despite getting great performances from Brett Favre (17.76), T.O (11.13) and Brian Westbrook (18.24) Sharkey’s lost by over 30 points, thanks mostly in part to Michael Turner’s star making 26 points in his debut for his new team (Atlanta). I knew Turner had the chops after watching him backup L.T. for so many years, so it wasn’t a surprise to me that Turner went off. Pigskinz also got double digits out of Kurt the ageless Warner (12.34), Nate Burleson (11.13) and the New England D (17.44). This game is a final 95.07 to 64.91. Sorry James you’re 0-1.

Game 3:Pantswearer vs. OmegaJaguars
OmegaJaguars is a returning owner from last season, and in fact he got the first pick in the draft because he had the worst record amongst returning owners, basically winning the L.T. sweepstakes. Pantswearer is also a new owner and he got the 7th pick in the draft. Right now this game is too close to call, Pants has a slim lead and two players going into tonight’s double header (Darren McFadden and Mason Crosby), while Omega has just one (Greg Jennings). Anything can happen, but I think Pantswearer has the edge.

Game 4: Electric Boogaloo vs. Best Team Ever
BTE is a third time returnee (though we don’t really count his 2005 campaign since he stunk on ice and he was therefore skipped iin 2006). Electric Boogaloo is a new owner who had the 8th pick. This game is pretty much over, even though E.B. has Ryan Grant still to play, I seriously doubt he’s going to make up the almost 35 point lead that BTE has, especially with a sore hammy. Most of BTE’s lead was made by Willie Parker who had a career day with 28 points, and both of his wideouts scored double digits.

Game 5: Kama Sutra Mallards vs. AllDayEveryDay
Our last game is a bona-fide blow out with KSM (I’m not spelling that out every time) enjoying a 53 point victory courtesy of his QB, his WRs, one RB and his D all getting double digits. Both he and and AllDay are new owners, AllDay is Gellman of Sports Cards Uncensored, the site that I occasionally write for, and I’m also part of his Yahoo league (more on that in a sec). I actually feel bad for Gellman, because NO ONE deserves huge blowout in one league, only to get creamed in another. Sorry dude.

I mentioned I’m in a second league, I won’t give you the full details on that league since it’s not mine, it’s Gellman’s, but in week one, I played him, and am beating him 111 to 46 at the moment, though we both have players tonight (I have Mason Crosby, he has Sidney Rice). My insurmountable lead was built by SIX of my players scoring double digits to his one. Ouch. I love going 2-0 in my opening week of play, but I sure hate to see Gellman going 0-2.

Pick ‘Em

Besides two Yahoo FFB leagues, I’m also in a College Pick ‘em and a Pro Pick ‘em group. I started both groups when I worked for Pojo.com, but have since turned them over to others. In the Pro Pool I got 9 out of 14 missing Tampa/N.O., Buffalo/Seattle, Jacksonville/Tennessee, San Diego/Carolina and Indy/Chicago. Of course, those were ALL upsets, with the exception of the New Orleans victory, so I don’t feel bad. Tonight I have Minnesota and Denver, though I hate Denver, so I won’t be upset at all if the Raiders manage an upset. Still, 9 out of 14 is good enough for second place in week one, but missing that many is really bad.

In my College pool I’m doing much better, scoring 19 out of a possible 20 this week, and 17 out of 21 last week. Everyone is tied with 19 though because that pool drops the lowest total (my week one so far). This week I’m pretty much sticking to the favorites, with the exception of Kansas over South Fla (though I think that Yahoo has the favorite screwed up on that one) and UCLA over BYU. I really don’t think it’s going to happen, but I don’t pick against my Alma Mater, so there.