my new plan

a lot of time has passed between my last post (#199) and this one i am currently scribing (#200!), and those last few were far and few between. i guess this has been an eventful spring/summer/fall in a couple of ways. i am now attempting to get back on track and provide the 3 of you the trashcans in the street that you forgot you loved.

one thing i kept meaning to write about was my decision to completely remove myself from fantasy football. but you were so awesome at it kevin! i know, i know. no really, people called you a fantasy football genius! well maybe that's stretching things a bit. seriously, if people were having a fantasy draft, but were drafting fantasy owners amongst the pool of millions of owners, you would be a lock for top 3 and nobody would argue if someone chose you first. well...thanks. it is good to know my abilities were so highly regarded. well anyways, i am not playing at all this year. i may come back to it next year or sometime down the road, but for now i am out and not missing it at all.

i thought i might regret this decision. phil came up with ways to keep me in the league which were tempting, but i still declined once i knew the league had enough people. just this morning eskay was complaining about having a high scoring team, but continually losing to the top scoring team that week. i recall this specific frustration/anger so clearly now and it only helps justify my decision. the bottom line is, fantasy football is based way too much on randomness and luck for me to really enjoy anymore. this is why i prefer fantasy basketball and am curious to see how fantasy hockey with dave goes. unfortunately none of my friends feel this way and after giving it a try a few years ago, none of them would ever play again. so i am forced to try my luck with strangers where no money is involved and the dropout rates are high. last year went pretty well, but i don't think that league is being carried over into this season.

my interest in just regular football has been equally nonexistent. i've watched a few highlights on espn and maybe a few minutes just flipping through the channels on sunday, but had not sat down and watched a game until yesterday and that was just because my dad was. while watching, i saw that the ravens pulled out a last minute victory. it left me with a let down feeling. i never cared about the ravens before, nor do i care at all about the steelers. i was confused by this, but decided to chase the feeling. i realized a way for me to regain interest in football. i will take up the role of the hater.

like a villain slowly discovering his role in his comic world, i too began to realize my fate as the hater. if you are a fan of a football team, you can guess how i will feel about them. i am curious to see if this sustainable throughout the season. this experiment may be over by this time next week or could be the start of something interesting. i don't really care. i leave this post with the following questions that may answer themselves as the season progresses:

• what happens when 2 teams i am currently hating on face each other?
• will there be levels of hate or is it clear cut hate/don't hate?
• did this grow out of my love for hating or do i just want to ruin other peoples' fun?
• at what point do i feel sorry for chris and his broncos and no longer have the ability to hate on them? are the broncos any good? i just assume they are bad.
• what is the timeline for when i transition to finding this funny to just feeling like a jerk?

short of murdering dan snyder, this had to happen

after years of threatening....i think i am finally at that point. mark it down, i am no longer a redskins fan. i enjoyed the 80's and some of the 90's. my dad is a skins fan, so i followed suit. and when i think about it, it's his conviction to remain a fan that i was both impressed with as well as what had me barely holding on as a fan for the last 5 or so years. i know die-hards like steve will shake their heads disspointingly, but hey, that's just the way it's gotta be sometimes.

now i am going to be making some poorly thought out points, throwing out questionable statistics and possibly fabricated quotes, but my main argument is the redskins are no good and the reason for this is one man, dan snyder. fuck that guy! seriously...what a fucking tool. as you might be able to tell, i have a lot of anger and extreme hatred directed towards this ass. i'm sad that becuase of this baby murderer, i will no longer get to enjoy sundays with my dad like i used to.

look, as a former redskins fan, i know the issues. besides the very obvious racial slur of a team name, protected under the guise of it being historical or tradition or whatever, this team has had a constant ceiling of mediocre and floor of awful. being bad is ok. i am ok with that. it's how you deal with it that makes a difference. see how good teams build through the draft? well how about we say screw that and trade away our draft picks for over-rated or past-their-prime "star" players? i admittedly fell for this throw money around to win plan and boy was i wrong. i realized this, how come wonder boy couldn't? and when we do somehow have draft picks, we don't use them wisely. we had 3 second round picks 2 years ago. any normal gm would address the biggest need which is/was an aging o-line with no depth. what do we do? draft 2 wr's and a tight end that have done jack shit. this team continues to pull stupid move after stupid move and that is why we gave the lions their first win in almost 2 calendar years. we don't have a gm. just an incompetent team president that is basically danny's yes man. ugh.....it's so irritiating...glad i'm done with them.

snyder loves the attention of the flashy signing. his love of big names continues with coaches. and when he went on to sign a nobody, he hired him first as offensive coordinator and then promoted him head coach when nobody else would touch that job. cause people have come to realize what a dysfunctional organization this is. now zorn is now on the hotseat and while he hasn't been a great coach, it's hardly all his fault, but snyder probably doesn't see it that way. he apparently wanted mike shanahan, but when shananan said he would only do it if he had control over player personel, snyder balked. because he and vinny have had such a great track record building teams. i was being real sarcastic in that last sentence.

another bad aspect is that this isn't a bad coach or qb or gm, where you just have to deal with it for a little bit, but you know they will soon be out of a job. this is the owner. and even worse, he's like 40 years old! also, the redskins are like the most profitable team in the nfl! so he's never gonna sell and he'll probably own then for the next 40 years. at least with other shitty owners (al davis) they will be dead soon. there is light at the end of the tunnel for those fans. not so much for those poor redskins fans. maybe one day i will come back, but it would have to take something drastic....not just a good redskins team.
so that leaves me a man without a team....unlike dan, my fellow ex-redskin fan, i cannot just jump on the ravens. something about that doesn't feel right. i can't pick another nfc east team either. i also would not want to pick one of the best teams in the league as i am no fair-weather fan nor do i want a team with a huge national following. and i hate the patriots. so what does that leave me with? i don't mind picking a bad team as long as they are learning from their mistakes and building for a better future.

possible new teams going from west to east

• 49ers
• texans
• lions
• dolphins

what do you think?

week 1 - it's all downhill from here

a perfect storm may have converged on my team this weekend. michael turner lit up the lions defense for 220 and 2 td's. that's just silly. the rest of my starters all did as well as i had hoped. the only stinker was my kicker, netting me 3 points. i almost made the ideal lineup, but should have played kevin smith over nate burleson and surprisingly kevin walter over larry fitzgerald, but we are talking a difference of like 3 points. even my bench performed well with most of them getting around 10 points.

i still have greg jennings to play tonight, which should secure my top score for week 1, and thus a $5 bonus.


the thing is, my team will not play this well again...probably for the entire season. i have peaked way to early, and thus, i would like to capitalize on the increase in perceived value of many of my players through trades. this would work except, nobody ever wants to trade in this league, so i will probably not be making any blockbuster moves...at least not this early in the season.

everyone else's teams played about as well as i expected. interesting things i noted:

• phil got a huge boost from mcnabb.
• l.t. did not come up big for sean.
• hines ward caught 2 tds?
• willie parker had almost as big of a day as the burner.
• nam's team got screwed in the draft, but with tom brady being out for the season, it might have worked out with espn autopicking a backup qb early for him.
• chris johnson may be more of a beast than i originally thought

i will enjoy the quick start my team has gotten off to, with the understanding that i am probably looking at a very big letdown in week 2. luckily, this week i play phil's roommate, eileen, who drafted deshaun foster...so i should enjoy at least one more week of winning.



hold on...you're telling me i still play football? in the nfl?...cause let me tell you, i am pretty awful at football....ok, just checking.

...and we're off!!!

as i sit here at my stupid job waiting for the nfl season to begin, i ponder many things. with the imminent poor play of both my fantasy teams as well as the redskins, this may in fact be the happiest and most optimistic i will be all season long. is it too much to ask that the redskins return to the playoffs? is it too much to expect that all of my fantasy teams perform to the level i had hoped and expected? probably.

i'm sure this season will be filled with a lot of trash talk with eskay. there will be a whole lot of stressing over which players to start. i know there will be a lot of nagging phil about league specifics where he bitches about me not being the commissioner. there will be a lot of eye rolling going on when the redskins break the record for most consecutive three-and-outs. there will be a lot of cursing myself for once again being seduced by lady potential. basically, this will be a season of regret.
my best bet is to become more heavily invested in fantasy basketball. anyone in? anyone? oh well. good luck to everyone, except when you play me. good luck redskins, try not to embarrass yourselves too badly tonight.

a cowardly theory

i've recently made an interesting observation concerning the colts qb situation. yes, this one is purely about football...so dave, feel free to read this one carefully and then comment.

anyways, jim sorgi is the backup qb for the indianapolis colts. this has to be the best job in the nfl. peyton manning has never missed an nfl game because on injury and as far as i know sorgi has been healthy throughout his 4 year career. this preseason manning undergoes suergery to remove an infected bursa sac and may potentially miss some games. time for sorgi to step up, right?

sorgi has had some playing experience, usually at the end of the season when the colts have their playoff situation all wrapped up and they want to rest their starters. those are pretty low pressure games to play in. now he might have to start the season as the team's qb1 and we suddenly hear of some mystery knee ailment or something. coincidence?

now i have no evidence or really any reason to arrive at the following theory, but it popped in my head, probably because this is how i would deal with it as well. sorgi can't handle the pressure and is faking his injury to avoid having to play. he's cool with his cushy situation of collecting big paychecks, wearing a baseball cap and standing next to tony dungy, but now that the pressure is on, he's wilting faster than flowers jessie just breathed on. oh snap! yeah, i just went there...

anyways, he's probably praying for peyton to get healthy now with some sort of reverse voodoo doll. i checked and sorgi is 6'5, weighing in at 196...hmm, that sounds like a louis brown physique, which is good for running, but not for getting piledrived by 2 300 pound men. much like nam and his blog, jim sorgi...consider yourself exposed!!!