What Hype Can You Believe?

Now that the NFL teams are scrambling like mad to get ready for their season, like a student putting together a term paper the night before its due date, we, the fans, are going to get inundated with all sorts of stories and reports. Unfortunately, most of them will feature the words "sources say" or "reportedly."
True, a few of the NFL items of the last 24 hours have been concrete announcements, but they have been the types of items that should come as a surprise to no one. (The Carolina Panthers offering Charles Johnson a long-term contract? What a shock!) But the more common stories involves things like the Denver Broncos reportedly looking to trade Kyle Orton, or the Dallas Cowboys reportedly planning to cut Marion Barber and Roy Williams, or the Tennessee Titans reportedly looking to sign Matt Hasselbeck.
The one saving grace for the fantasy football player is that you're probably not drafting your team this week. In fact, this is why it's always a good idea to hold your draft as close as is feasible to the start of the regular season. Not only do you want to know what will happen to this tidal wave of free agents, but you want to make sure your starting fantasy players do not have immediate competition for playing time because their general manager made a deal.
This is going to sound like a copout, but it's also the only strategy that makes sense right now.
Stay tuned.

Ice Cold (Draft) Facts

You still have a few minutes to vote in this week's lineup polls. Remember that the winners will represent the People's Pitstop this weekend at Richmond International Raceway, and the ones who qualify the best on Friday will start for us in Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race.
In the meantime, we, like most of the non-British world, turn our eyes to the National Football League draft. If you follow NFL football at all, you know that this is one of the most exciting times of the year. All the folks selected between now and Saturday evening are full of potential. Not a single one has proven a bust yet. Not a single one has been busted for codeine possession. Not a single one has ... well, you know.
But the perspective is just a bit different if you are a fantasy football player. That's because most of the folks marching across the stage (or fielding phone calls at home) this weekend will not be in your fantasy lineup immediately. Last season, the top-scoring fantasy rookie was Sam Bradford, with 180. Yes, he got the keys to the St. Louis Rams offense almost as soon as he walked off the stage at Radio City Music Hall. But he ranked only 20th among quarterbacks in terms of fantasy points. That means that if he was in your fantasy starting lineup, you were desperate, stupid or this guy.
Someday, one of these draft picks may prove to be the cornerstone of a fantasy title-winning team. But you shouldn't be lining up to take Cam Newton in August, even if the Carolina Panthers can start force-feeding him the playbook right away.
We'll be back with the poll results.