Before the reading gets under way, I would like to preemptively apologize for how jumbled and somewhat disjointed today's article is. My thoughts are kind of all over the place, even though I tried to have my words put down in an organized manner. With all of that in mind, enjoy.
I played fantasy football this last 2015 NFL football season. Conklederp and myself were recruited into a league played by a bunch of our friends from college, but no money exchanged hands so it has all been in good fun. It was a bit competitive in that we tried each week to end up with a higher score than the people we were playing against, but I never personally felt angst against or towards the people I played against (and the 8 people I have lost to).
I played fantasy football this last 2015 NFL football season. Conklederp and myself were recruited into a league played by a bunch of our friends from college, but no money exchanged hands so it has all been in good fun. It was a bit competitive in that we tried each week to end up with a higher score than the people we were playing against, but I never personally felt angst against or towards the people I played against (and the 8 people I have lost to).
For today's post I wanted to talk about my experience playing in a fantasy football league for the 2015 NFL season and how my misconception about how this game is played, how I probably do not play the game as one should, and how it is nothing like Dungeons & Dragons.
Before the season started, my preconceptions about fantasy football were pretty far off. I thought that by creating a football team made up of players from a number of teams, it would create a conflict of interest while watching. Very rarely (as in most likely never) would I actively pay attention to which teams my players were a part of. Being a 49ers fan, I figured that if my quarterback was on the opposing team, say the Seattle Seahawks, that I would want that quarterback to be as successful as possible and to hell with the 49ers defense performing well. What I found was that I actually did not care which team my players were on. I still rooted for the 49ers, even though I only had one player, and that was late in the season (Week 8 I believe) when I traded someone for someone else.
The way I picked the members of my team happened on a day and time that I did not have access to a computer, so my starting team was picked for me by. . .you know, I am not really sure how my team was picked, only that it was picked for me and it was not by Skynet. Which might explain why my record when I was eliminated this season was 6-7; I am okay with that result by the way. Perhaps if Skynet had chosen my players for me I would have had a better result? This is not to say that I had ineffective players as I did have Eli Manning as my quarterback, LeVron Bell as my running back (until he went and got injured for more than half of the season), and the New England Patriots as my defense. I had (and still really no idea) who LeVron Bell is/was when the season started and only realized that he was a good player while talking with my friend (we'll call him FNL for lack of a better ALIAS) who organized the league.
The way I decided upon which players would be on my team, I feel, was very short sighted. Each week, I would peruse both the free agent list and available players and whomever had the highest predicted point total that week is the player I tried to acquire if their estimated weekly point total was higher than an existing players total. This may have paid off on a few occasions, but the fact that I ended up ranked 10th out of 16.
Before the 2015 football season, I had uneducatedly (sp) compared fantasy football to Dungeons & Dragons for people who would normally have a negative reaction towards role playing games in any medium. What I discovered, for myself at least, is that it is nothing like D&D. With D&D, I would be in control of a single player whereas in fantasy football, I had a whole team of players that I had no attachment to unless they had a high potential point total for that week. The players with the highest point total for that week that were already on my team, I would put into the appropriate position and if they were injured (as pointed out by Yahoo's fantasy football browser client), there would be a good chance I would trade them for someone who might give me more points.
Weekly points is something that became frustrating. Before games began for the week, Yahoo would give me an estimated amount of points that that player might earn for the week. How these predetermined potential points were determined is beyond me, but each week it would seem that, more often than not, a handful of players that were "supposed" to have earned 15 points for the week performed poorly and only earned me 6 points. And since no changes to the roster could be made once their respective game started, there was nothing to do once games started. There were no savings throws, no boosts, no pep talks. On occasion though there were times when that running back who was only supposed to earn 8 points came up with 22 for the week. He must've been really good with the ball that week.
Fantasy football and all fantasy sports for that matter which I will again, uneducatedly assume are all played and scored in a similar manner, are a mind bogglingly huge source of income, both for the organizations running their leagues and those who gamble within their leagues. What I managed to gather from this first, and probably not last season, is that there is no way that I will be putting money towards any type of pot. Well, maybe if the group of people I play with decide to have a $5 buy in fee with first place earning 50% of the pot, second place 31%, third place 13% and the person who comes in last 6% of the pot; that I could get behind. That would turn into a $40, $25, $10, and $5 respective winnings. Needless to say (or perhaps not), I would have been one of the other 12 people who would have come away with $0 from the 2015 season.
My final assessment is that I would play in the same fantasy football league (among friends) next year, but only because it is something that I do not have to think too much over to stay interested in.
Now to find out how the playoffs are going to decide who to root for in the Super Bowl since the 49ers will not be going.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
It Resembles the Unheard Screams
The way I picked the members of my team happened on a day and time that I did not have access to a computer, so my starting team was picked for me by. . .you know, I am not really sure how my team was picked, only that it was picked for me and it was not by Skynet. Which might explain why my record when I was eliminated this season was 6-7; I am okay with that result by the way. Perhaps if Skynet had chosen my players for me I would have had a better result? This is not to say that I had ineffective players as I did have Eli Manning as my quarterback, LeVron Bell as my running back (until he went and got injured for more than half of the season), and the New England Patriots as my defense. I had (and still really no idea) who LeVron Bell is/was when the season started and only realized that he was a good player while talking with my friend (we'll call him FNL for lack of a better ALIAS) who organized the league.
The way I decided upon which players would be on my team, I feel, was very short sighted. Each week, I would peruse both the free agent list and available players and whomever had the highest predicted point total that week is the player I tried to acquire if their estimated weekly point total was higher than an existing players total. This may have paid off on a few occasions, but the fact that I ended up ranked 10th out of 16.
Before the 2015 football season, I had uneducatedly (sp) compared fantasy football to Dungeons & Dragons for people who would normally have a negative reaction towards role playing games in any medium. What I discovered, for myself at least, is that it is nothing like D&D. With D&D, I would be in control of a single player whereas in fantasy football, I had a whole team of players that I had no attachment to unless they had a high potential point total for that week. The players with the highest point total for that week that were already on my team, I would put into the appropriate position and if they were injured (as pointed out by Yahoo's fantasy football browser client), there would be a good chance I would trade them for someone who might give me more points.
Weekly points is something that became frustrating. Before games began for the week, Yahoo would give me an estimated amount of points that that player might earn for the week. How these predetermined potential points were determined is beyond me, but each week it would seem that, more often than not, a handful of players that were "supposed" to have earned 15 points for the week performed poorly and only earned me 6 points. And since no changes to the roster could be made once their respective game started, there was nothing to do once games started. There were no savings throws, no boosts, no pep talks. On occasion though there were times when that running back who was only supposed to earn 8 points came up with 22 for the week. He must've been really good with the ball that week.
Fantasy football and all fantasy sports for that matter which I will again, uneducatedly assume are all played and scored in a similar manner, are a mind bogglingly huge source of income, both for the organizations running their leagues and those who gamble within their leagues. What I managed to gather from this first, and probably not last season, is that there is no way that I will be putting money towards any type of pot. Well, maybe if the group of people I play with decide to have a $5 buy in fee with first place earning 50% of the pot, second place 31%, third place 13% and the person who comes in last 6% of the pot; that I could get behind. That would turn into a $40, $25, $10, and $5 respective winnings. Needless to say (or perhaps not), I would have been one of the other 12 people who would have come away with $0 from the 2015 season.
My final assessment is that I would play in the same fantasy football league (among friends) next year, but only because it is something that I do not have to think too much over to stay interested in.
Now to find out how the playoffs are going to decide who to root for in the Super Bowl since the 49ers will not be going.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
It Resembles the Unheard Screams
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