How many points did the star of your fantasy football team score last week?
Would your neighbor be impressed?
One of the strangest things about fantasy football is that there is no standard scoring system for it. Every football fan knows that a touchdown is worth six points, whether it's scored by Local High or the Green Bay Packers. Every baseball fan knows a grand slam scored four runs, whether it's hit in Little League or at Busch Stadium. Every blackjack fan knows that a queen is worth 10, whether she's dealt at a church fundraiser or the Bellagio.
But every fantasy football fan learns sooner or later that all points are not created equal.
To illustrate that point, let's look at Tony Romo, one of the quarterbacks for the People's Pigskin. Last week, in a performance that drew its share of attention, he completed 34 of his 47 passes for 331 yards, 3 touchdowns and 3 interceptions. In the People's League, that added up to 19 fantasy points, which ranked sixth among quarterbacks that week.
In a Yahoo fantasy league, Romo's stats would have been worth 24.99 fantasy points, ranking him seventh among quarterbacks. (To be fair, Yahoo also notes that Romo was sacked.)
In a Fox Sports fantasy league -- that's right, the same site that told us Jamaal Charles was the best available running back -- Romo's stats would have been worth 25.2 fantasy points. Again, he ranked seventh among quarterbacks.
And in an NFL.com fantasy league, Romo's stats would have inflated Violet Beauregarde-style to 46.37 fantasy points, ranking him fifth among quarterbacks.
Of course, there are many reasons for discrepancies like this. Some leagues emphasize yardage. Some punish players more than others for turnovers. Some offer extra credit for "big plays." And on and on.
And until we have a fantasy sports commissioner, fantasy players will continue to say things like, "He got 25 points, but..."
Remember to vote on the lineup polls on your right. The NASCAR polls will close tonight, and the football ones will close Saturday night. We'll be back with the NASCAR poll results.
Showing posts with label Fox Sports. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fox Sports. Show all posts
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Football Preview Review - Fox Sports
Over the next few weeks, the people who bring you the People's Pigskin will try to get you prepared for fantasy football season (that's football, not futbol) by taking a peek at one of the most critical items in your preparation efforts: the fantasy football preview magazines. Today we continue our series with an offering from the people who brought you this.
Fox Sports Fantasy 2010 Fantasy Football
Vital stats: $4.95 price, 98 pages, 302 offensive player reviews (no individual defensive players) and no tearout sheets.
Top 10 picks: Fox decided to base its predictions on a 12-team league conducting a 16-team draft. However, for those of you playing in a 10-team league, Fox recommends drafting Chris Johnson, Adrian Peterson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Ray Rice, Michael Turner, Steven Jackson, Frank Gore, Andre Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald and Reggie Wayne.
Intriguing nugget: The minions of News Corp. should get credit for breaking down the typical weekly schedule of those concerned about a player's injury. Crunch time starts on Thursday, according to this magazine. ("Two practices [missed] in a row? Time to worry.") However, Friday is the time to pull the trigger on any roster changes, since, "if a player doesn't practice Friday, he often doesn't play Sunday. With some teams," practicing the Friday before a game is "almost a requirement."
Head scratcher: Since these things are usually collaborative efforts, it is quite common for a fantasy preview to obey a rule in one section and disregard it in another. However, one would expect a magazine to be consistent enough in its advice it offers that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing on a single page.
The first page of Fox's "Draft Day Cheat Sheet" has a list of do's and don'ts for drafting. One of the do's: "Draft a top RB in the first round." However, the first page also has a list of "recommended position selections (rounds 1-6) based on team order and round." Again, the advice assumes that you have a 12-team league and a 16-round draft. How many of the 12 teams does this list say should draft a running back first? Seven.
Another of the do's: "Pick a quarterback in the second round." How many teams does this list say should draft a quarterback in that round? Three. (To be fair, that list also said one team should take a quarterback in the first round.)
Kicker rule obeyed? Nope. In a mock draft of 12 "experts," four participants picked a kicker in the 15th round. And this preview doesn't believe in the "don't draft a kicker until the final round" rule anyway. Its advice on the position: "Hardly any of them are worth a pick earlier than the 15th round."
Survey says: One bonus feature of this magazine is a survey of Fox Sports and Scout.com contributors on a variety of critical questions. We learn such valuable things as who has the hottest cheerleaders (the Dallas Cowboys) and who is the league's most hated team (the Cowboys again; maybe everyone's jealous of the cheerleaders).
One more thing: Instead of spending the time, energy and ink breaking down every possible offensive contributor for every National Football League team, the folks at Fox Sports assembled team previews from local Web sites such as PatriotsInsider.com and BucsBlitz.com.
All the local experts offered answers to questions like who will be this year's "fantasy stud" and which game has earned the label "must win." Thirty-one of the 32 experts also offered a pick for "Best Sports Bar." The one who didn't: the Cleveland Browns expert. Maybe it's because the Warsaw closed down.
We'll be back with our fearless predictions.
Fox Sports Fantasy 2010 Fantasy Football
Vital stats: $4.95 price, 98 pages, 302 offensive player reviews (no individual defensive players) and no tearout sheets.
Top 10 picks: Fox decided to base its predictions on a 12-team league conducting a 16-team draft. However, for those of you playing in a 10-team league, Fox recommends drafting Chris Johnson, Adrian Peterson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Ray Rice, Michael Turner, Steven Jackson, Frank Gore, Andre Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald and Reggie Wayne.
Intriguing nugget: The minions of News Corp. should get credit for breaking down the typical weekly schedule of those concerned about a player's injury. Crunch time starts on Thursday, according to this magazine. ("Two practices [missed] in a row? Time to worry.") However, Friday is the time to pull the trigger on any roster changes, since, "if a player doesn't practice Friday, he often doesn't play Sunday. With some teams," practicing the Friday before a game is "almost a requirement."
Head scratcher: Since these things are usually collaborative efforts, it is quite common for a fantasy preview to obey a rule in one section and disregard it in another. However, one would expect a magazine to be consistent enough in its advice it offers that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing on a single page.
The first page of Fox's "Draft Day Cheat Sheet" has a list of do's and don'ts for drafting. One of the do's: "Draft a top RB in the first round." However, the first page also has a list of "recommended position selections (rounds 1-6) based on team order and round." Again, the advice assumes that you have a 12-team league and a 16-round draft. How many of the 12 teams does this list say should draft a running back first? Seven.
Another of the do's: "Pick a quarterback in the second round." How many teams does this list say should draft a quarterback in that round? Three. (To be fair, that list also said one team should take a quarterback in the first round.)
Kicker rule obeyed? Nope. In a mock draft of 12 "experts," four participants picked a kicker in the 15th round. And this preview doesn't believe in the "don't draft a kicker until the final round" rule anyway. Its advice on the position: "Hardly any of them are worth a pick earlier than the 15th round."
Survey says: One bonus feature of this magazine is a survey of Fox Sports and Scout.com contributors on a variety of critical questions. We learn such valuable things as who has the hottest cheerleaders (the Dallas Cowboys) and who is the league's most hated team (the Cowboys again; maybe everyone's jealous of the cheerleaders).
One more thing: Instead of spending the time, energy and ink breaking down every possible offensive contributor for every National Football League team, the folks at Fox Sports assembled team previews from local Web sites such as PatriotsInsider.com and BucsBlitz.com.
All the local experts offered answers to questions like who will be this year's "fantasy stud" and which game has earned the label "must win." Thirty-one of the 32 experts also offered a pick for "Best Sports Bar." The one who didn't: the Cleveland Browns expert. Maybe it's because the Warsaw closed down.
We'll be back with our fearless predictions.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
In Most Places, It's Called Lying
Sometimes you plan an event but have to move it back or even cancel it because of unpredictable circumstances. Last weekend both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races were moved to Monday because Mother Nature had other plans. If you're running a sport, like the folks at NASCAR, there's nothing you can do about that. You just take your meteorological lumps and move on.
And then we have situations like the one NASCAR has with Fox.
If you go to NASCAR.com's official schedule, you will find that Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Talladega is scheduled to start at about 1 p.m. EDT. If you go to ESPN's NASCAR coverage, those folks will tell you the same thing. And the good folks at Yahoo Sports will essentially agree. (Yahoo even goes through the trouble of predicting that, after we get through the national anthem and the other usual stuff, the green flag will wave at 1:19 p.m. EDT.)
The only people who seem to have a different idea about the start of the race are the people broadcasting it.
If you watched the telecast of Monday's Samsung 500 for any length of time, you saw and heard Fox telling you to tune in Sunday for the race at Talladega -- at noon EDT. If you have satellite TV and try to look up the race, it will show you "NASCAR Racing" starting at noon EDT.
What it won't tell you is that Fox plans to spend the hour from noon to 1 p.m. EDT giving you previews, analysis, interviews and other stuff. When done well, these can all be informative and entertaining and even worth the fantasy racing fan's time. What they are not is coverage of the race itself.
Now, Fox Sports also covers the National Football League, and before each NFL game, it has folks like Jimmie Johnson and Terry Bradshaw give their insights, opinions and analysis. And if you look in your TV listings, you'll see this analysis is called "FOX NFL Sunday." You'll also see that the game itself is at its actual start time.
In other words, they call their pregame show a pregame show. They just don't call their prerace show a prerace show. Is it because Roger Goodell has more sway over Fox than NASCAR does? Or is it because he has less?
And a disclaimer for those reaching for their e-mail applications: This post has nothing to do with the politics and opinions of Fox Sports, Fox News or any other News Corp. holding or any of the people working there. You don't have to think anything at all -- good, bad or indifferent -- about Bill O'Reilly or Simon Cowell or Darrell Waltrip or anyone else to have an opinion about Fox Sports telling its viewers that the race starts an hour before it actually does.
We'll be back Wednesday with some facts about the race itself.
And then we have situations like the one NASCAR has with Fox.
If you go to NASCAR.com's official schedule, you will find that Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Talladega is scheduled to start at about 1 p.m. EDT. If you go to ESPN's NASCAR coverage, those folks will tell you the same thing. And the good folks at Yahoo Sports will essentially agree. (Yahoo even goes through the trouble of predicting that, after we get through the national anthem and the other usual stuff, the green flag will wave at 1:19 p.m. EDT.)
The only people who seem to have a different idea about the start of the race are the people broadcasting it.
If you watched the telecast of Monday's Samsung 500 for any length of time, you saw and heard Fox telling you to tune in Sunday for the race at Talladega -- at noon EDT. If you have satellite TV and try to look up the race, it will show you "NASCAR Racing" starting at noon EDT.
What it won't tell you is that Fox plans to spend the hour from noon to 1 p.m. EDT giving you previews, analysis, interviews and other stuff. When done well, these can all be informative and entertaining and even worth the fantasy racing fan's time. What they are not is coverage of the race itself.
Now, Fox Sports also covers the National Football League, and before each NFL game, it has folks like Jimmie Johnson and Terry Bradshaw give their insights, opinions and analysis. And if you look in your TV listings, you'll see this analysis is called "FOX NFL Sunday." You'll also see that the game itself is at its actual start time.
In other words, they call their pregame show a pregame show. They just don't call their prerace show a prerace show. Is it because Roger Goodell has more sway over Fox than NASCAR does? Or is it because he has less?
And a disclaimer for those reaching for their e-mail applications: This post has nothing to do with the politics and opinions of Fox Sports, Fox News or any other News Corp. holding or any of the people working there. You don't have to think anything at all -- good, bad or indifferent -- about Bill O'Reilly or Simon Cowell or Darrell Waltrip or anyone else to have an opinion about Fox Sports telling its viewers that the race starts an hour before it actually does.
We'll be back Wednesday with some facts about the race itself.
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