Pistol's Fantasy Football Week 1 Rant

Having no job and very little to do, I took it upon myself to assemble 30 fantasy football teams for the upcoming season. It's a formidable task to monitor and keep up with 30 different teams, but I have been able to manage so far. It only takes me about three hours to set the line-up for 15 of the teams. In one league, I am the "commish." Since it's on yahoo, there really is very little responsibility involved with being "commish." I don't have to organize anything or inform people of pending deadlines. Yahoo takes care of everything for me. I just like the fact that I can call myself the "commish". That's pretty much the best part.

I also have my “main” league, which is the only one that actually takes place in real life, as opposed to being on the internet. Everyone has to pay $50 to enter, but it's not to pay for a prize or anything like that. We meet twice during the season at a restaurant for the draft and the supplemental draft. In other words we pay $50 for the food we eat during our drafts. Most "real" leagues you pay to enter then bet money on each game every week. It just becomes another form of gambling. But this league is more "pure", well as "pure" as fantasy football can be I guess.

Then I have 28 public leagues through Yahoo. I started early in the Summer doing drafts, and before I knew I had 28 teams. Nothing beats the thrill of a fantasy draft. By the time I made it to my 28th draft, I could pretty much predict where every player was going to be drafted, well except for the asshole that drafted Alex Smith with the 1st pick overall, thinking maybe being the 1st pick in the real draft means something in fantasy football.

I picked Daunte Culpepper in about all of my public leagues with my 1st pick. Some people were down on him without Randy Moss, but I had a feeling he was going to have a big year. I guess there is nowhere but up to go for him after a disastrous first week. I got annihilated. I managed to win a third of them by dumb luck and easy match-ups and was more than happy with this outcome. On one team I play no tight end, because I have so many solid players and happened to win this week even with Culpepper at the helm.

But, what really pisses me off about public leagues is that two teams that clearly know each other made a ridiculous trade, one of them giving up Peyton Manning and Steven Jackson for absolute garbage. Now the team that traded Peyton is starting Kurt Warner. That's a real upgrade.

Then there are the leagues where a team makes no roster changes the whole season. I'm playing three teams this week alone that are still starting Jevon Walker, who is out for the season. What's the point of even doing a fantasy draft if you're never going to do anything with your team? And how the hell do I still end up losing to a team that is starting Jerry Rice at wide receiver?

However, for the most part public leagues are a good solid way to waste a few hours a week. In a few of my leagues people dropped Brett Favre and Trent Green, after one bad game. Both these QBs are top QBs in just about any fantasy expert's board. It amazes me that people care so little or are just that stupid, but I’m happy to pick these guys off waivers and trade them to these idiots later on in the year.

In the league I’m the commish I played Steve in the first week and beat him until he was purple. If he had combined the points of the 5 players he had on his bench with the rest of his team, I still would have won by 10 points. I proceeded to tell the league that he picked shit for qb’s and needed to get off the can the following week in my weekly breakdown of the league's matchups, my only real duty.

In my main league the results are not still posted yet (its Wednesday) because the commish doesn’t know how to work a computer. I told him I’d put the league on yahoo for free, but he's trying to keep things the same way they have always been, which gives you a clear indication of how old he is, and also probably the way he votes.

That's it for this week.

Written by Peter Moulton
Edited by Steve McFadden