Well, the season has officially started, and the Patriots won. Was anyone surprised? I think I was most surprised that it took Kerry Collins until the second half to turn the ball over.
I do want to make a quick rant, however, that pertains to Randy Moss. I dislike Moss just as much as the next guy (especially his disturbing braces that are just weird), but it’s not him that I want to rant about. It’s the people who now cheer for him because he’s on their fantasy team.
In the past couple years I’ve actually developed quite an appreciation for fantasy football, and have really started to enjoy it last year and so far this year. However, I play fantasy football by my own rules (ie, I never let myself care too much about it) and I never let it change the way I watch the game. I will never pick up someone from the Vikings nor the Packers (however, I did take Longwell this year, but he’s the least evil), and I will not take players that I generally don’t like. I don’t want to root for those guys period. However, every year it gets worse that I go to a bar to watch the games, and you have the stupid table of guys behind you cheering “Pass it to Moss! Pass it to Moss!” and slamming their fourth beer glass down on the table when Burleson catches it instead (this being a last year example). Those are the guys that give fantasy football a bad name. And I’m sick of them. But I already spotted a couple of them last night watching the game, so thus the season began, the good and the ugly.
Here’s something I wrote earlier this year. It sums up how I feel pretty nicely, and it’s comparable to how you feel:
http://www.jonathanlaughlin.com/archives/000203.html
No one commented on it, probably because they were secretly pissed at me.
Totally, totally agree. I would have commented on that entry, but unfortunately I think I had just met you a couple weeks before. I’ve had a couple moments where I think “If the Bears win, it may actually hurt me fantasy-wise” but the Bears are going to win that battle everytime. I resisted fantasy for a while because of exactly this, so when I did start doing it, I always play by my rules, and I never let that interfere with what teams I pull for. So far I’ve been successful keeping with that, but I get really aggravated with the people who have become fantasy fans and not football fans (or whatever other sport). As a sidenote, I can’t imagine doing Baseball fantasy. It would be so much work. The great thing about football is it’s just once a week.
Yah, I stopped doing fantasy sports for the same reasons…I’d rather root for the teams I like without division.
And I LOVE LOVE LOVE how the patriots keep winning superbowls but their receivers are “bad” fantasy picks because Brady distributes to so many of them that noone gets huge numbers themselves. And as for Brady himself….how many QBs get picked ahead of him in fantasy drafts? 4? 6? Someone tell me what number Brady went for QBs in your draft. If you were picking a QB to lead your team, how many would you pick ahead of Brady? Payton Manning MAYBE and you’d have to argue even for that. I guess the bottom line, is that football is one of the most team oriented sport out there, and fantasy sports tracks individuals.
Brady went in the first round in our fantasy draft, but after Culpepper, Manning and McNabb. I think he may have been the fourth quarterback taken. However, in fantasy talk, I think that’s nuts for that many quarterbacks to go that high, but whatever.