The Four Outcomes of Fantasy Football

Yes, I know, I have a monthly blog now. But just like the New Yorker, writing this good takes time and it can only be released once a month. In other news, I'm lazy and most of the free time I get turns into me watching Game Of Thrones cause I have yet to see a better mix of sex and dwarves in my entire life.

For those of you that follow me on twitter, or stalk me, or are in my league, you know that I had my fantasy draft on Monday.....AND I NAILED IT! It's a 14 person league, so you're not gonna have a team of all studs, and it took a little bit of research to make sure my team turned out the way I wanted - I also phoned a friend a time or two for advice.

But anyway, my awesome drafting skills aren't what this is about. I'm not here to talk about how well I did in the draft on Monday, or how I was able to pick up sleepers in the late rounds, or how I was able to make snap decisions when the player I wanted went the pick right before my own. THAT'S NOT WHY I'M WRITING!!

I'm writing today to illustrate the four possible outcomes of a Fantasy Football season (a reader of the title of the particular post may have already been privy to that information, and for that you get a gold star).

1. "The Quitter"

For all of you playing the home game, this is when you quit Fantasy Football. But it's never as simple as that, there are a lot of factors that go into "The Quitter". Usually a Fantasy Football manager will have more than one team, and just the like the wildebeests of the Serengeti, you leave the sickly child behind. If you have one team that has yet to score 80 points in a week, you may stop checking in on those guys for a month or two at a time. "The Quitter" is the worst outcome though, cause not only does that mean that you're left with a team of losers, and now have to shoulder that kind of failure, but now you're basically giving anyone that plays you a free win - starting injured players, players on a bye week, Tim Tebow - it can really be a vicious cycle.

2. "Devine Intervention"

This one is just like "The Quitter" with a twist - you leave your team to rot and for some unknown reason, you keep winning. Johnny Butterfingers who you autodrafted in the fourth round is going to win the MVP and whenever a better team plays you, no points will be put on the board at all. You wander through life without a care, grinning from ear to ear like a true idiot, while you get angry phone calls every monday from your step brother cause your Hassleback/TO combination scored 97 points. There is no fitting punishment for a "Devine Intervention" team, all you can hope to do is to figure out your buddies password and hack his account - though he still might win, God knows how.

3. "Analysis Failure"

This guy does all the research. He mock drafts every night before going to bed. He researches all the match ups and looks at the best potential for varying off weeks. He looks at his weekly opponents and drafts accordingly. He's the first one in the draft and the last one out. He has set his own player rankings in case of rolling black outs. He is a Fantasy Football master!! ....then week 1, Brady goes down with a blown knee, Calvin Johnson gets cuts for sleeping with the Coach's daughter, and Jimmy Graham decides he wants to go back to playing basketball. All his best laid plans are crumbling some kind of morbid sand sculpture. But don't fret! This man is not a quitter, he hits the waiver wire and tries to pick up some good back ups, maybe to salvage a playoff berth after all - only to have these pickups usurped by "Devine Intervention" man because "I've totally seen that guy at a bar and I thought it would be cool to have him". There is a fate worse than death, dear readers, it's being this man in a Fantasy Football league.

4. "The Winner"

After the other outcomes, this is the only other possibility. Either you crash and burn in a fiery storm of failure, or you come out the victor. There is no, "We'll at least we won our division." No, if you're not holding up the trophy at the end of the day, then it was all for not. The winner of Fantasy Football isn't always the best prepared. Or the one with the most free time to make sure all the match ups are the best they can be. It's the guy who picked the right random combination of players in the right year and had the fewest injuries and one or two late round picks that just happened to roll out of the right side of the bed for 16 games. I've played a lot of Fantasy Football and from my experience, there's not one guarantee winning strategy - you kinda just gotta close your eyes and hold on. It's like having a child, you can do everything you can to give it the best chance in the world for success, but eventually you're gonna have to ship that little guy of the first day of school, and it's gonna be up to the kid to win or lose.

Alright gang, that wraps up today's post, hope you all liked it. I realize some of you may have had no idea what-so-ever as to what I was talking about, but I tried to involve a bit of humor for the metaphorical groundlings of my blog. 

Hope y'all are having a good week, good luck in the coming school year, and as always GO TRIBE!!