Playing Doctor ... with Your Team

The lineup polls for the People's Pitstop will close in a couple of hours. (Here's a hint: Kasey Kahne may not be a strong candidate for this week's Sprint Cup race.) In the meantime, it's time to discuss a painful subject for every fantasy football player.

Injuries.

Anyone who has played fantasy football is already familiar with the concept of monitoring the health of their own players. If you have Antonio Gates on your roster (as the People's Pigskin does), you probably already know that he's looking like the dreaded "game time decision."

Most fantasy football players also know to watch the health of their players' teammates. For example, you probably have heard about the injury woes of Dallas Clark and Austin Collie. These injuries may hurt you if you're starting Peyton Manning (as the Pigskin does most weeks), but they might actually help you if you have one of the other 4,579 receivers on the Indianapolis Colts roster, whether it's the veteran Reggie Wayne or the up-and-comer Pierre Garcon or the where-the-heck-did-he-come-from Blair White.

But the National Football League took this concept to a whole new level this week by forcing fantasy players to monitor something new: the health and safety of their players' opponents.

If you have the Pittsburgh Steelers defense/special teams, and James Harrison delivers another hit like the ones he dished out last week to the Cleveland Browns, you better make sure the recipient of that hit gets up quickly. If he doesn't, the NFL won't hesitate to suspend Harrison, and the Steelers defense will pay the price.

And fantasy football players already have enough reasons to do this.

Speaking of fantasy football, the polls for the People's Pigskin are still open. Please vote.

We'll be back with the NASCAR poll results.