Fantasy Leagues

It’s amazing how we Americans can take something very simple, contort it ten different ways, and make it new and fascinating.  Take football, for example.  You had the forward pass, followed by the spread, then the West Coast offense.  On defense, you went from the 4-3, to the 3-4 to the Cover 2, to whatever Bill Belichik could dream up next.

Not only did play improve, but safety did, too.  Cloth helmets gave way to real helmets with face guards.  Pads were introduced.  Then we added penalities to regulate the game and protect the players.

Not only are things more interesting for the athletes, but fans have devised new and more exciting ways to watch the game as well.  If we go to the game, we tailgate, and maybe end up at the bar afterwards.   At home, we have the huge plasma screen, and entertain our friends for twenty-something consecutive Sundays as though we could afford to party all the time.

Even the geeks have found ways to improve their participation and enjoyment in the game.  First, it was Strat-o-Matic, then fantasy leagues.  We not only followed our favorite team, but found reasons to follow the other thirty-one teams regardless of how good or bad they were.  We hold mock drafts.  We trade up and down in the draft.  We even join a second or third fantasy league if we can’t get enough.

Thanks to Roger Goodell and Jim Irsay, however, we’ve come to realize that one more component needs to be added to this fantasy league bonanza.  We missed it all this time.  Why?  Because we were selfish.  We wanted OUR team to win.  We wanted OUR players to do well.  We wanted to win our fantasy league championship.

How self-centered of us?  We were missing out on the most important part of professional football.

What is that, you say?

Political affiliation.

Yep, that’s right.  Starting next year, YoHoo Sports is upgrading its fantasy football leagues to include a “political beliefs” factor for each player.  Within each fantasy league, this “political beliefs” factor will be multiplied to a player’s (individual stats) or team’s (defense) fantasy stats to determine the true points earned by each fantasy team.  Say you have Big Ben on your team, and say he is conservative.  His political beliefs factor may read .2, meaning each point he earns during the game is only worth .2 the total points.  On the other hand, Chad Ochocinco’s 1.8 rating (highly liberal) would earn him more game points.

It’s a risk some fantasy team owners may be willing to take.  Sure, it makes it difficult for owners to select conservative players, but that’s not a problem.  As the fantasy league market starts to make an impact on the pro football level, owners and GM’s will quickly learn that it is wise for them not to select conservative athletes for their teams at all.  Everybody wins – the fans, the league, and the owners.  Everybody, of course, except for the exceptional conservative athletes.

Wardrobe Malfunction

This article is just way too funny.  If you are responsible for manufacturing your teammates’ jerseys, maybe you should learn how to spell.  Or at least proofread.  Hah!

Rooting for the Home Team

For all the lunacy and craziness that has come with Cleveland’s decades’ long championship dearth, this year they really have a chance to do something.  Being the homer that I am (see my About page, which explains where this all started), I am fully qualifying my support for the Cleveland Cavaliers.  No idiots here!

Reverse the Curse

An Open Letter to Randy Lerner

Mr. Lerner,

I know this past football season for the Cleveland Browns was a disappointing one, not only for us fans, but for you as well.  The thought of starting over again – for the fourth time since the Browns were reborn, correct? – must be heartbreaking for you.  I know you love the city and the team.

I, as a forty-something year old who spent all but three years of his life in Cleveland, and spent his entire life rooting for the Browns, promise you that I will hold the home team in the highest regard.  No matter how well or disappointing they perform, no matter how disorganized or finely tuned the team and organization are, I will root for the home team.

Unfortunately, I do not believe the same can be said for my seven-year-old son.  Yes, he roots for the Browns every week.  Yes, he loves to watch the games with me.  Yes, at the start of this past season, he even pulled out his football, and played make-up games between the Browns and their upcoming competitor.

Over the season, though, I could sense things were changing.  The sacks.  The interceptions.  The injuries.  The drops – heaven forbid, the drops!  The penalties – no, not the dumb penalties!  Yes, he saw all of them.  The come from ahead losses  started taking their toll.  He was still happy to root for the Browns on game day, but the other activities started changing.  His imaginary games started pitting the Packers against the Patriots, the Jets against the Bengals, the Broncos against the Giants.  No longer did I hear him mention the names Braylon Edwards or Derek Anderson.    No longer did he talk about how good a kicker Phil Dawson was.

Then the playoffs started.

Before every game, regardless who was playing, I’d ask my son who he wanted to win.  He would tell me.  But I noticed one nagging issue with his selection.  He was always picking the Steelers.

The Steelers.

I hate the Steelers.  My wife of seventeen years, who could care less about football, hates the Steelers.  My eleven-year-old daughter, lovely and genteel as she is, hates the Steelers.

The boy who gets totally engrossed in football at the college and pro levels, the one who would actually buy sports merchandise and attend games if he could afford it, rooted continually and consistently for the Steelers.

The Steelers.

It’s not as though he has been a Browns fan his entire adult life.  I survived the bad early 70s, Red Right 88, The Drive, The Fumble, The Belichick, The Move, The Return, etc.   I remember Turkey Jones dumping Terry Bradshaw on his head.  I bleed brown and orange during football season.  I can take it like a man.  My son doesn’t know about the Butch Davis era, much less the Schottenheimer era.  He doesn’t care about Forrest Gregg, Blanton Collier or anyone else.

What does he know?

“I like the Steelers.”

Why?

“Because I like Ben Roethlisberger.”

Why?

“Because he’s a good quarterback.”

After testing him week after week just to see if his answer would change – and I tested him every other day, not just when he was watching the football games – and hearing the same exact answers every time, I realized what he meant.

Ben Roethlisberger knows how to win, and does what it takes to win.  He is positively reckless, just like Hines Ward and Troy Polamalu.

Granted, my son does not yet realize that it takes a team of talented, focused individuals to work together for Roethlisberger to succeed the way he does.  All he knows is that, no matter what the situation, good things are bound to happen when #7 has the ball.

After the Super Bowl, I asked him who his favorite team was.  He faithfully said, “The Cleveland Browns.”  To which I say, you’ve learned well, my son.  However, I realize that it is only lip service to appease his father.  If he had the money, he would be buying #7 jerseys and football cards, and being “Ben” during his imaginary games.

To my son, who I want to be a Browns fan, he has no fond memories of playoff runs or playoff fever.  He only knows one team has trouble getting it all together, and the other just keeps trotting out successful year after successful year.

Please, Mr. Lerner, organize your team for on-field success.  Pick up a couple of those positively reckless players.  Otherwise, my son and all the others like him that do not know the tradition and winning history of Cleveland Browns football won’t care when the opportunity strikes.

Sincerely,
Rick

It’s Called “The Super Bowl”

The NFL playoffs started last week, starting the progressive elimination of teams until only two remain to play in “the big game”.

The big game.

Doesn’t sound right to say it that way, does it?  But that is the way you have to say it, if you are advertising your wares and have not bought into the official licensing agreement of the NFL to use the term “Super Bowl”.  So let me, on behalf of all those companies and advertisers that could receive a boost from sales but refuse to pay licensing fees to the NFL, say something:

SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL
SUPER BOWL

The NFL makes enough money, you’d think they could use some of their goodwill to help companies instead of taking more money from them.  NFL:  You are my idiots of the week.

To the NFL

The NFL is not the only winner of the award this week.  No, I have a winner from last week, too, but did not have time to post.   The title of this version of the award is “How Not to Show Your Impartiality”.  Tell me if you’ve heard this one:

A media outlet that has a reputation for leaning right, but occasionally conducts on air conversations with an acerbic liberal writer, schedules another TV segment with this writer.  The station knows the writer has a book to promote, and they have no problem scheduling the writer, who will increase ratings, cause additional dialog and keep their station in the news for a couple days, if not for a full week.

The author’s latest book, though, points out some glaring biases in this station’s programming and coverage of the recent election cycle.  Realizing what this could mean to the station, and how they have a reputation to uphold with their viewers, permanently cancel the interview, and replace the author with one of the most vitriolic, right-wing on air personalities.  Because, of course, the best way for this station to disprove its right-wing bias is to cancel a scheduled appointment of the liberal author and replace the author with someone even more right-wing than the media outlet’s reputation.

Right?

Oh, one more thing.  The story is actually reversed: it was a left-leaning outlet that did this to an acerbic right-wing author.  You can read about it here.  Great job, NBC in general and the Today Show in particular.  Way to show your impartiality.  You win last week’s IOTW award:

Good job, NBC

It really is a good thing that the Fairness Doctrine would fix these kinds of issues across the media.  Oh, it doesn’t affect television, only radio?  How shocking!

The Season For Change

Ages ago, I wrote this post about my relationship with my ISP (internet service provider).  Some how, some way, the relationship lasted an additional two years.  There have been cycles where I’ve called their customer support and talked to “Bob”, or “Nick”, or “Joe”, even when their accent says their name is really Sundeep or Anup.  The customer support is always the same: check the modem, check the router, reset the modem – “well, what did you change?” – retry the modem, THEN submit a ticket for support and have the problem cleaned up for anywhere from a couple weeks to several months.

We are at that stage again.  If I were to be diligent – which I’m not in this case – I could likely tie each degradation in service to major equipment upgrades.  However, the equipment upgrades did not upgrade my response times (digitally or verbally) or improve my internet service.

So, I called them again yesterday because the service STUNK again.  My wife has been re-setting the modem twice a day for the past week.  Not good, especially during Christmas.  I got in touch with Urai, who told me to reset my modem, try again, blah, blah, blah.  When that didn’t work, I asked him for a new modem.  I could get one, but only if I made a twelve month commitment to the ISP.  Fat chance.  Or, I could buy the modem for a mere $80.    Nah, free works for me, please.

The level 1 support rep could not help me.  Hence, I gently reminded him about the 3-4 tickets I submitted about similar issues over the past two-plus years, and indicated that I will be leaving the service in the amount of time it takes to find a new one.  We are purposely TV-challenged at home, and don’t want cable or satellite, so finding another ISP seemed to me to be a daunting task.  Mostly because I have to change our e-mail address at all the stinkin’ places we do stuff online and with family and friends.

At that point, Urai decided I should talk to his manager, “Nick”.  The dude didn’t help, but definitely sounded distressed each of the times he called back and I was still having problems.  Things seem to be okay now; however, because of word that the ISP is changing their service practices with their residential customers, and the fact my family does way too much online to deal with, we started the conversion to generic e-mail and away from ISP-based e-mail in preparation for us going elsewhere.  Wish us luck!

Earthlink, you are my Idiots of the Week.  You should have won this award many times over.

But wait, there’s more…I’m in the giving mood, being this is the Christmas season and all.

It’s snowing where I live.  No problem there.  People are scraping the snow and ice off their windows.  No problem there, either; a driver gots to do what a driver gots to do.  Something I saw on Sunday morning took the cake.  The driver of a sedan scraped the driver side half of their rear window.  Yep, tried driving like that.  Nothing like adding to his blind side, or making his rear view mirror pretty much useless.  Dude!  You are my runner up.  Congrats!  Next time, maybe you can take the extra 45 seconds and scrape the other side of the window, too.

And last, but not least…the sports team that played in front of 72,000 brown and orange seats – half of them brown because of the jerseys and jackets of their supporters, and half of them orange because no one sat in them – the Cleveland Browns are my third place winners.  They managed to take a city that supports football in good seasons and in bad, and turn its fans apathetic.  Way to go!

On a serious and sincere note:  Merry Christmas everyone!

Recycling…or, “What’s Good Enough For Obama Is Good Enough For Me”

I figured since the current presiding officer of the Office of the President-Elect – whatever THAT means (boy, talk about manufacturing importance!) – can recycle the Carter and Clinton administrations with his old and stale selections for his Cabinet positions (change you can count on? Yeah, right!), then I can recycle old material, too.

And, no, I do not think I could write a more convoluted sentence than the one above. So, don’t even bring it up.

Speaking about hope and change, however, it’s time again for Cleveland Browns fans to hope for change. It has been for most of the year. However, I stumbled upon this old post I did on my personal blog, almost two years to the day. Never in a decade did I think it would apply again. However, after having the privilege of attending last week’s fiasco against the Houston Texans, hearing about the guffaws of the General Manager, and observing the overall ineptness of the Head Coach and his staff, I think it applies in full.

• Braylon Edwards no longer pushes around his quarterback, he just can’t catch a football.  That’s like me, as a project manager, not managing projects.
• Charlie Frye is long gone, but the QB position in general is lacking due to injury, and poor performance by the QBs, the offensive line and the play callers.
• Romeo is Romeo.  At least “Manny being Manny” got the Red Sox two World Series Championships.  Romeo being Romeo is like asking if water is wet.

And to think, this issue exists with the same Head Coach (Romeo Crennel) and the same General Manager (Phil Savage). I want a change I can believe in. Mr. I-think-I’m-the-incoming-president-so-I’ll-make-up-a-stupid-title-for-myself won’t do it. He and his pawns in the Legislature (or did I get that reversed?) want us to re-live the fun times called the 70s. You remember, manufactured gas shortages and hunker-down-cuz-we’re-doomed thinking. That won’t float in my book. Maybe Randy Lerner, owner of the Cleveland Browns, will do it. I think he should take some cues from the ownership, management and coaches over at the Cleveland Cavaliers.

You may be saying, “But, editor, there are so many other idiots in the world doing truly terrible things. Why not write about them?” I cannot and will not attempt to make humor out of significant events such as what happened in India or where people’s personal lives are truly decimated. My hope is that, even with the idiots, they can turn things around and not become fodder for the next go-round. Obviously, my home football team can’t learn the lessons. Doh!

Halves and Half-nots

This past week was intensely busy.  Not only are all the lemmings voting for the Presidential candidates that cause the greatest emotional lift in them, but the Cleveland Browns have decided that, yes, they really do stink, and yes, Ohio’s Secretary of State really does know how to facilitate a squirrelly election cycle.

So many idiots, so little time.  Indeed!

Instead of picking a winner this week, I have one question to ask:  Did you vote for the half-black, or the half-Republican for President of the United States?

Organizational Dynamics, Sports Edition

Did you know that I spent a couple days in the hospital last week?  However, due, to HIPPA regulations, I couldn’t tell any of my employees.  I could only tell my manager, and he really couldn’t tell any of my co-workers, either.    My co-workers did call me and send me some text messages, though, to send along their well wishes.

In essence, I promised not to disclose my condition to anyone.

My boss only called me once when I was in the hospital.  My boss’s boss, the CIO, didn’t call me.

The idiot!  I can’t believe he cares so little for me.  Doesn’t he realize how much I do for him?  I give 55-60 hours a week to his projects, just so he can make the big bucks.  And he can’t even give me a single, stinking call.

The idiot!

Okay, I really didn’t spend a couple days in the hospital.  Kellen Winslow did last week.  And his boss’s boss – Phil Savage, the General Manager of the Cleveland Browns – didn’t call him.

Poor boy.  I feel so sorry for you.

People are debating whether the Browns have a problem with staph infections at their training and practice facility.  I am not going to discuss the merits of that opinion.  It may be true.  But Winslow’s reaction was way out of line.  Kellen, grow up!  Your freedom to speak your mind doesn’t mean you should be dumb enough to do it all the time.  You are my Idiot of the Week.

 

Phil, you make your living in an industry full of prima donnas.  You are the personnel manager.  Learn the personnel side of your job.  Pick up the phone and give a call or a text message.  You are my runner up.

A Recipe for Voter Disenfranchisement

I figured out how to whip up a batch of voter disenfranchisement. And I’m not even a good baker or cook.

1. Take one community organizers group. It could be any one. Let’s just call this one ACORN.
2. Hire folks who are down and out to work your “get out the vote” campaign. You know, campaigns like the one Barack Obama once ran for an organizers’ group called, um, ACORN.
3. Command your workers to canvass the local neighborhoods – the poor ones, you know, where only down and out non-whites live – and harass people into filling in voter registration forms. Have them each do it 2, 3, 5, 10 times, just to make sure they did it right. Be sure not to have them use the names of Dallas Cowboys players, though.
4. Work with a state’s Secretary of State to turn voting laws upside down, primarily by not allowing elections boards to confirm whether the registrations are valid AND by permitting registration and ballot casting to occur on the same day.
5. Have a handful of your workers show up at polling places to, er, “oversee” voting activity.
6. Have another handful of your workers round up adult citizens who couldn’t tie their own shoes, let alone know how to read a ballot, drop them off at the voting precinct, and prepare them to vote.
7. When these fine, upstanding citizens can’t remember their name, address, SSN – or can’t remember the ones their community organizer get-out-the-vote friend told them to use, and are turned away from voting, yell at the top of your voice:

A VOTER IS DISENFRANCHISED!

Not that the voter was legitimate to begin with.

So you take an ineligible voter (or five, or ten or ten-thousand) to a Democrat-led precinct, let them try to vote, and let the chips fall where they may. If only 1,000 of 10,000 are able to vote, you can say that 9,000 citizens were denied their right to vote.

It’s kind of like thinking you deserved a 10% raise, but only got 6%, so you declare that your company lowered your salary by 4%.

We’re disenfranchising non-voters. And elected officials in high places are complicit in this racket.

I’ll I have to say is this: I’m so glad the mainstream media is reporting this. Not. At least Michelle Malkin is on top of things.