Think Before You Draft

In addition to dealing with Hurricane Irene, the people who bring you this fine blog has gone through two fantasy football drafts in the past week. (Neither one was for the People's Pigskin, which will hold its draft Monday night, so you still have time to vote on the fantasy football polls on the right side of this page.) It's amazing how much a draft can sneak up on you, especially when the off-season is sacrificed at the altar of short-sightedness. So it might be helpful to remember some simple rules.
First and foremost, plan ahead. Take a look at the pre-draft settings at your league's Web site, and adjust them if you think whoever compiled them goes to Ricky Williams' old dealer. You never know when Mother Nature is going to decide to interfere with your draft.
In the days leading up to your draft, know what matters and what doesn't. In the long run, Chris Johnson's holdout wasn't going to matter, since everyone knew he would get a new deal in time for the season. And Arian Foster calling you sick for playing fantasy football doesn't matter. But Foster posting a picture of a possibly torn hamstring will matter. As for Vince Young's hamstring, whether that matters remains to be seen.
Next, get online early. If your draft is scheduled to start at 8 p.m., it's best not to try to sign in at 7:59 p.m. For one thing, many leagues will release the draft order a few minutes before your draft starts, so you can get a head start on figuring out who will be available when your turn comes. For another thing, you want to give yourself a few minutes to handle any last-minute computer glitches.
Also, keep an eye on bye weeks. Yes, both of your favorite receivers may be available when you pick. But if both of them are taking the same week off, that will make it twice as hard to field a full lineup when that bye week comes.
And if possible, don't leave early. After one of our drafts, someone sent out an email asking how he got a couple of the players he didn't recall drafting. As it turns out, this player left the room a few rounds early, and the automatic picking feature took over. (Again, it helps to know whose ranked where on your Web site.)
One more thing: Take the kicker last. This serves two purposes. First, it will keep from being laughed at for taking a kicker too early. (In one of our leagues, someone used a keeper protection on a kicker. You can lead some players to water...) Second, if you have to leave a round early, your computer will pick your kicker automatically.
That should be enough to get you through the draft in one piece.
Now you can turn your attention to your Labor Day weekend, the MDA Telethon (yes, it's still on, and yes, the kids still need your help) and Sunday night's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The three NASCAR lineup polls will close in a few hours, and we need your help to keep the People's Pitstop at the top of our league. Thanks. We'll be back with the results.

Overdue Updates (and Polls)

First of all, thanks for all your kind thoughts and words over the past few days. They were greatly appreciated. But now, we at the People's Pigskin have some updating to do.

We'll start with the Internet's favorite fantasy football team, which fell to the Hudson Valley Hawks by a score of 123-112. This lowers our record to 8-3 for the season. Here are the details.

Peyton Manning, QB: 38 of 52 passing, 396 yards, 4 touchdowns, 3 interceptions and 25 fantasy points. Manning's last interception was also the last time he touched the ball in the Indianapolis Colts loss to the New England Patriots.

Michael Turner, RB: 28 rushes for 131 yards, 1 reception for minus-4 yards, 1 touchdown and 19 fantasy points. Like Manning, Turner contributed enough to keep the People's Pigskin in the ballgame.

Darren McFadden, RB: 10 rushes for 14 yards, 2 receptions for 16 yards and 2 fantasy points. McFadden did not.

Calvin Johnson, WR: 6 receptions, 46 yards, 1 touchdown and 10 fantasy points. Even when he's not having a big day, Johnson finds the end zone and saves his fantasy stats.

Dwayne Bowe, WR: 6 receptions, 109 yards, 2 touchdowns and 22 fantasy points. Bowe has inherited the "All He Does Is Catch Touchdowns" title from Cris Carter. They should have a ceremony.

Chad Ochocinco, Flex: 3 receptions, 28 yards, 1 touchdown and 8 fantasy points. Ochocinco scored the first Bengals touchdown in a 49-31 loss to the Buffalo Bills. After that, he was something he never is: quiet.

Randy McMichael, TE: 0 receptions, 0 yards and 0 fantasy points. Someone please remind Norv Turner that he still has a tight end available, and even though his name is not Antonio Gates, he's still an eligible receiver.

Olindo Mare, K: 4 for 4 on field goals, 1 for 1 on extra points and 15 fantasy points. Who would have thought we'd be singing the praises of a kicker in a fantasy blog?

Tennessee Titans, D/ST: 1 interception, 3 sacks, 1 punt returned for a touchdown, 19 points allowed and 11 fantasy points. The defense held up much better than the quarterback in a 19-16 loss to the Washington Redskins.

Bench: Leaving Knowshon Moreno out of the starting lineup proved fatal. He scored 17 points. Vince Young scored 6 before his injury/meltdown, and Justin Forsett scored 4.

Now, we have some work to do and very little time to do it. The Pigskin faces the Chicago VinSethBears this week. We have two players with Thanksgiving Day games (Ochocinco and Johnson), and we have to get Vince Young off the roster. Four polls, including a Thanksgiving-themed one, are now available for voting and will close Thursday morning. Please vote now.

We'll be back with a final update on the People's Pitstop.

The Draft Results Are In

It's not quite as momentous or historic an event as, say, the invention of the Big Mac, but it's a moment of pride nonetheless.

The People's Pigskin has completed its second annual draft, and as a result, the Internet's favorite fantasy football team has a fairly strong lineup to test the theory that the masses can do just as well as the "experts" in running a fantasy team. Here are the round-by-round results.

Round 1. The People's Pigskin drew the ninth spot out of 10 teams, and all six of the players selected in the who should top our draft board polls were taken in the first seven picks. We responded by taking the best player left, Michael Turner. No truly shocking picks, except Tony Romo's pick at No. 10 overall.

Round 2. One of the side effects of picking 9th in a 10-team draft is picking again three picks later. Drew Brees didn't make it to this round, so we took the second-rated quarterback on our board, Peyton Manning. And a few weeks ago, you would have won a few bets if you guessed that someone would pick Arian Foster in the second round of a fantasy draft.

Round 3. Time to get a receiver, but none of our top four receivers made it this far. (Brandon Marshall almost did.) We took Calvin Johnson.

Round 4. Again, a quick turnaround. We took Knowshon Moreno, the winner of this year's T.J. Houshmandzadeh award for "player whose name the people who run this blog will be able to spell in their sleep by Halloween."

Round 5. Dallas Clark continued his habit of coming off the draft board ridiculously early (in the fourth round, along with Vernon Davis), but we got the tight end who was ranked second on our board, Antonio Gates.

Round 6. Time to get a second receiver. We went with Chad Ochocinco, who, despite his ongoing love affair with himself, manages to put up solid numbers season after season.

Round 7. This round saw a run of tight ends, but we were able to avoid it by taking Dwayne Bowe.

Round 8. Time to get Turner and Moreno a backup. We went with Justin Forsett, since his numbers won't go south if Matt Hasselbeck still have a gimpy back. (By the way, this was the round where the first defense/special teams, the New York Jets, was selected.)

Round 9. Since the Jets escaped our grasp, we went with the next-best option, according to our draft board, the Minnesota Vikings. They went eight picks after NFL2K10 RedZone took the first kicker, Nate Kaeding. And you probably already know what I would say here, so let's just move on.

Round 10. Time for another receiver. We went with Robert Meachem.

Round 11. We missed out on our chance to get Donovan McNabb as our backup QB, so we picked Chad Henne instead.

Round 12. Three more kickers found homes in this round, but we selected Kenny Britt as a backup receiver.

Round 13. Santonio Holmes did not make it down to us in this round, so we grabbed a third QB in Vince Young.

Round 14. We rounded out our running game with Darren McFadden, while two other players drafted kickers, including NFL2K10 RedZone, who made David Akers his backup kicker. Or something.

Round 15. The boneheaded move of the night goes to the People's Pigskin, which forgot about Montario Hardesty's injury and drafted him. Just goes to show that you don't need to have any intelligence to write about fantasy football. (Don't worry; we already have a waiver claim on Kevin Smith to take his spot.)

Round 16. Four teams waited until this round to draft a kicker, including the People's Pigskin, which selected Jeff Reed.

What do you think of our lineup? Feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the football lineup polls are open. Most of them will stay open until Sunday morning. The one about the Vikings defense/special teams will close Thursday, since the Vikings play the New Orleans Saints in the season opener. Feel free to vote now.

Why We All Love Sports

I just finished reading "Rules of the Game," a collection of sports-related essays from Harper's magazine. The essay topics run the gamut from Kaiser Wilhelm's sailing party to the Mitchell Report. I could give you any number of reasons for picking up this book (including the fact that Mark Twain -- yes, that Mark Twain -- wrote one of the essays), but this blog post is about one essay in particular.

The essay is called "Obsessed with Sport" and was written in July 1976 by Joseph Epstein, the former editor of The American Scholar, "the magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa Society." Yes, this may be the last time the words "Phi Beta Kappa" appear in this blog without being preceded by "He's not exactly a candidate for." But what Mr. Epstein has to say about sports is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it, because it says succinctly why so many people invest so much of themselves in sports of all sorts.

"On the court, down on the field, sport is fraud-free and fakeproof. With a full count, two men on, his team down by one run in the last of the eighth, a batter (as well as a pitcher) is beyond the aid of public relations. At match point in Forest Hills a player's press clippings are of no help. Last year's earnings will not sink a twelve-foot putt on the eighteenth at Augusta. Alan Page, galloping up along a quarterback's blind side, figures to be neglectful of that quarterback's image as a swinger. In all these situations, and hundreds of others, a man either comes through or he doesn't. He is alone out there, naked but for his ability, which counts for everything. Something there is that is elemental about this, and something greatly satisfying."

It isn't very hard for Mr. Epstein to make these same points about NASCAR (or soccer or just about anything else). When the race comes down to a green-white-checkered finish, it doesn't matter how many championships you've won, how many tracks you own or how many commercials feature your face. Either you get the job done or you don't.

It's that simple.

A couple of Hall of Fame remarks

(That is, comments about Hall of Fame Weekend. I'm not claiming that my thoughts are worthy of any busts, bronze or otherwise.)

If I ever get enshrined in anything like the Pro Football Hall of Fame, I want Ted Cottrell introducing me. His tribute to Bruce Smith was the perfect combination of roast and tribute and would have been the most memorable speech of the night if Bruce hadn't confessed to hiding Thurman Thomas' helmet.

And if I were in Vince Young's shoes, I would not want my first throw in the Hall of Fame game -- the only throw of his, frankly, that many people saw before switching the channel -- to be a lollipop of an interception. If you're wondering, I'm not going to put Vince Young in any polls asking who I should start. If you're thinking that this team should start Vince Young, may I suggest another hobby? Say, building ships in bottles?