In honor of our pathetic, retarded dog, I'd like to recap the most pathetically one-sided matchups of the week and discuss some of our pathetic, retarded owners in the uberleauge (box scores and commentary after the jump)...
Wolverine's Fat Brother 117.3 (4-0) defeats Hoosgow 67.5 (2-2)
So, I went 4-0 because Normalinda pooped out a new kid. congrats, Joe! I'm glad Valentina Marie Hammond was born during AP's bye week (not that it mattered that much with Ldt in there). Since Joe chose to support his wife rather than set a fantasy lineup, he started 3 players on bye this week: Favre, Jamal Charles, and Shiancoe. Other than those 0's, he actually had a great day. He had double digit scoring from Lesean McCoy, Dallas Clark, Roddy White, and Ryan Matthews. However, Fat Wolverine was too much. With AP out, Ldt went off for 28.5 pts against Buffalo. I also had a great day from Zach Miller (19.2 pts). Four wins and no losses, bitches.
London's Lackey's 112.4 (4-0...and he still has Tom Brady to go) defeats Boys on Boats 78.8 (0-4)
Another week; another dominating performace by dois's squad. This week, Addai (20.2), Foster (31.7), Gates (27.4), and the much maligned Bradford (18.2) led the way. And, then there's Blick. Blick made a wonderful managerial decision to NOT play a defense. Great job! Way to show your uber dedication. I mean, I can understand if you put someone in, he gets injured in practice, you go away for the weekend, and miss it. Okay, I get that. But leaving in a defense on bye? That means you didn't log into the site once all week and take 5 minutes to set your lineup. Booooooo. I summed up my thoughts on bad owners in a tersely worded email to Joe (he's now excused), Blick, and Larson (who chose to start Romo on a bye and leave an injured Pierre Thomas in his lineup). What should be done about them? I mean, I can try to make fun of them in the blog, but I do not have the Vichian gift of being able to effortlessly emasculate someone with the written word. Are we getting to the point where we have to talk about kicking people out of this league? More on this below...
Dr. Teeth n the Electric Mayhem 112.7 (3-1) defeats Nude Tayne 82.7 (2-2)
Sovic kicked some ass for the second week in a row. Rivers provided his normal above-average-contribution (17.6), but Sovic has to be happy that MJD is finally healthy and dominant (25.1 pts). Combine them with Mike Tolbert's surprise 17.3 pts, and Sovic tops 100 pts for the 2nd week in a row. Whiteford, on the other hand, wishes he had some contribution from a position other than QB. Orton (21.7) and Gradkowski (14.6) provided most of Nude Tayne's flaccid firepower, since no one else on his squad made it into double digits.
DISCUSSION TIME:
Am I being unreasonable to think that barring a cataclysmic event, all lineups should be set? I started this league as a haven for people who care a little too much about fantasy, but obviously I only wanted to include people who we were familiar with. So where do we go from here? We have owners (who are our friends) who consistently say "fuck it" when it comes to even minimally managing their teams. I'm not talking occasionally, I'm talking consistently. Do we kick them out of the league? Do we go premier league style and drop them down a division? Does anyone even care? I know I like playing teams with active owners, and I'm annoyed when I beat a team that doesn't set a lineup (or even worse, lose to a team that doesn't set a lineup). Does that mean we should kick people out? I don't know. The best thing I've come up with is a monetary penalty system where a team is charged every time they fuck up (and fines go into the total pot). If a team refused to pay, then I could probably justify kicking them out of the league. Thoughts? Tell me what you think.
TONIGHT: Monday night football
Dekker and Steuber will settle their matchup tonight. Steuber's up by 6 pts, but only has wes welker to play. Dekker still has ronnie brown and Randy Moss.
Trey and xadam will battle for futility as well. Seriously, look at that boxscore. They are fucking awful this week.
The writeups to these two games, along with Beb's win over a Romoless Larson will come later in the week.
11 comments:
i think the fine is not a bad idea - maybe upon second offense though.
go warfishes warfishes.
couple of comments:
i like the draconian nature of your idea to fine people, but i think if people can't show up to the draft or bother to set their lineups there is no way they are mailing in an extra check.
here's an even more dickish suggestion. maybe at the beginning of each year we have an anonymous ball session. anyone getting two or three balls is out for the next year with the option to petition for rejoining in the future if a spot opens up.
not really sure if that's better, just a thought.
also, maybe we should require an essay for league entry in the future. not only would this be entertaining, but if you can muster the effort to write a ridiculous essay about why we should let you in you'll probably be able to spare the time to manage your team.
and a couple questions:
can we vote to change yt's team name to nude tayne's flaccid firepower? please?
could will having a powerhouse of a team actually turn out to be more annoying than when joe or yt did?
the fine sounds like a good idea, but it's going to get very complicated very soon when you start having to decide what's a 'good' or 'bad' excuse for fucking up your line-up. like joe's excuse this week was a good one, right? having a baby and all? but did it really take all week for normalinda to have that baby? couldn't joe have set his line-up on, say, wednesday? and didn't he e-mail us on saturday, indicating that he had some internet access even as the lovely valentina was being birthed?
i'm not actually suggesting that joe's excuse is not a good one, and obviously congratulations to joe and normalinda, just trying to point out that there will always be gray areas in making the judgement, and that'll fall on you, commish. are you prepared for the heat?
if someone is truly a shitty owner, i could get behind the idea of throwing them out of the league (as i have done several times already in cluj), but then it becomes a question of who will replace them. more people like xadam? that seems like the last thing we'd want. i mean, i'm all for active owners, but we can't have an entire league of douchebags.
in short, i have no good suggestions for how to deal with this problem, but plenty of criticism of the suggestions that have been made so far. useful, right?
Beb: I know if some people were fined, they wouldn't pay. But, that would be easy to deal with: they'd be kicked out at the end of the year. I'm not sure about the ball session, but the pure dickishness of it intrigues me. I LOVE the essay idea. In the future, we're definitely doing that.
Sovic: I agree that Joe's excuse is moderately bullshit. When I have a kid, I will still set my lineup (now that I own an uberphone). Because of that, I think ANY bye week player left in would be an automatic fine. I have the power to change people's lineups! Even if they couldn't get on the site, they could call me or email me and I could set the lineup for them. Injuries are indeed a gray area. Off the top of my head, I would say that if the person was declared out BEFORE sunday, then it's a finable offense. If they are ruled out Sunday morning, you're just a douche...but I could see repeated offenses getting fined.
And Sovic, excellent commentary on xadam. His douchebaggary knows no bounds.
Phil here.
Not to wax ‘phil’osophic, but I believe my starting Tony Romo on his bye week results from this league’s narcissistic need for vanity and Will Shoaf’s conceited desire for self-importance. I believe somewhere along the way, this league has steered away from a core set of values I hold dear. In particular, I joined the league because I wanted a forum to keep up with some old friends whose weekly tidbits and one liners make me laugh and remind me of simpler times on Chancellor St. I like football well enough, but with a pregnant wife, a new job, and the stresses of having moved halfway across the country I find myself with less time than I would like for 'uber'activites. In most leagues, this is not a problem. You can login on Friday afternoon and pick up a QB to fill your slot and maybe pick up a kicker if you need. Not this league. No. This league prides itself on futile structures and obscure rules which change season to season if not week to week in apparent homage to the monarch of this autocratic empire.
This complex amalgam of shifting rules rewards neither strategy nor expertise. Rather, it rewards the efforts of those self-righteous and time-rich individuals who have the cycles and inclination to study and master the complex set of underlying rules that govern this shifting chess board. This league does not support my style of fantasy football management. My strategy is akin to investing in an index fund. Draft well then ride them out over the long-term with minimal management. I believe that you avid "day-traders" who continuously change your teams are probably making them worse rather than better over time. Your bravado and confidence lead you to make changes, moves, trades, and general management decisions that degrade the intrinsic value of your teams over time. In the same way over 60% of corporate acquisitions destroy value, I'm pretty sure that over 60% of the "strategic" moves you all make over the course of a season probably destroy the long-term value of your team. In fact, I count on it. My Index 500 strategy depends on you money-managers screwing things up for your clients (read “teams”) like a bunch of monkeys throwing darts at the proverbial wall st. journal. This strategy has netted me 5 wins in three leagues over the last few years and a strong, positive return on my fantasy football investments. “Shitty owner” indeed.
Yes, I started Tony Romo. That's because I bid on some QB on Friday, wasn't even sure whether or not I would win the bid, and then got pulled into a weekend of breastfeeding classes and pregnancy videos. Why the fuck can't I just pick up a QB Friday afternoon to fill my empty slot like any normal league? Everything about this league encourages activities that complicate an Index 500 strategy. From a philosophical perspective, I find this league’s bullying and hard-ball tactics that encourage “over management” to be akin to the overbearing wall street Geckos whose grand ideas to chop up mortgages and trade unintelligible derivatives destroyed the housing market and eventually the global economy.
If what you are telling me is that this league will never be structured in a way where I can get my team ready for battle in one 30 minute block at the end of the week, then next season I may need to gracefully bow out. It is a shame because aside from the haphazard name-calling and pre-menstrual episodes of our fearless wolverine leader, I do enjoy you people. You are funny and smart and when you are not putting random “x”s in front of things you make me a better person.
Phil, your thoughtful comment makes me feel like my pets died. However, I loved it. I wish you would wax 'phil'osophic more often. Don't leave the league...but remember to set your fucking lineup.
that was a fantastic diatribe. i feel inspired. to do what i am not sure.
by the way i took xAdam down with 53.7 pts. got my first W. and the warfishes are off to the races.
Why I would rather be a shitty owner:
So, I watched very closely everyday, checkin on ray rice playing, making sure my line up is ok, seeing if there is anyone that could replace Vince Young...
But, turns out, if I had done something like NOT played ANYONE in my QB spot, I would have won. Fuck you Bears oline/Cutler, your negative points literally lost me the game.
So, Will, if next week I dont play a quarterback at all, know that its not negligence, its good strategy apparently.
Hey guys. Well I have a few things to say and I'll try to stay on topic first. When I was begrudgingly invited to fill a spot in the elite league that was "Uber", I joined the league under the constant chiding and scrutiny of Beb and Will. My first foray into the arena of fantasy sports was met with plenty of hazing from a bunch of assholes - many who I'd never met - from UVA. It was part of the drill for a league which I was promised represented the ultimate in fantasy gaming (clearly y'all should've tried some World of Warcraft). Regardless, our league was competitive and fun and produced heroic champions including Trey, Joe, and myself. Over time I have met many of you and (with the notable exception of that douche-nozzle Dekker) I can honestly say that you are good people. But over the course of the years most of our lives have changed and we don't have the luxury of constantly managing our teams. Larson said it best so I won't dwell on the sentiment but I do believe that there may be some room for leniency. I for one specifically hate that there are no free agents in the league. While we should not encourage the neglect of a person's team, we should also not exact so harsh a punishment among our friends to drive them from playing the game when this is a great forum/excuse for us all to interact for at least a third of the year. I suggest a three strikes rule based on not adjusting one's lineup, before considering a person for dismissal from the league. The caveat is that it's only a strike if a lineup change could have made a difference in the outcome of the match, e.g. only if the insertion of a player on that person's bench would have resulted in the win, otherwise it doesn't count. All of that being said, if someone needs to be kicked out, I vote for Dekker.
As to Beb's question: I'll change my name when you're ahead of me in the standings, until then you and Manning can shove it.
@Big Cat - the diatribe seemed to work better with an antagonist so you ended up getting the short end of the stick. You know I love you and your gimpy pets.
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