Week 10 Wrap Up

Anita’s feeling a bit under the weather this week (she hasn’t fully recovered from the shocking thrashing that she took at the hands of Dead Meat Pete), so she had to pass off her blogging duties to her assistant, Jean-Louis Knowitall, whose scribblings are mostly incomprehensible and idiotic. We're sorry for this inconvenience, and we'll do our best to return to normal "What the Hell Just Happened?" next week. But first, before I begin the wrap up, here’s my brief “Can-You-Believe-They-Did-That” complaint of the week:

Sports Illustrated recently featured women’s basketball on its cover. Nobody cares about women's basketball. To call it a niche sport is an insult to niche sports. It's insulting that Sports Illustrated and (especially) ESPN try to force women's college basketball down our throats, but it's time to stop the nonsense. It's BEEN time to stop the nonsense. In a Harris Interactive Poll taken last year, 1% of sports fans listed women's college basketball as their favorite sport, ranking it behind men's soccer, bowling, track & field, boxing and horse racing. Horse racing, for crap’s sake! The 1% is actually a high water mark for the sport. In 2005, women's basketball rated an "*" which meant that the sport received less than .5% of the votes. So, SI is running cover stories about subjects that 1% of their audience likes best. Think about that and what it would mean if other magazines put stories on the cover that only interested 1% of it's intended reading audience. The stories would be something like this:

Newsweek: Sarah Palin Makes a Great Pie
Rolling Stone: In the Studio with Ja Rule
Playboy: The chick who played Andrea on '90210' bares all
Playgirl: Southern Molesters bares all
Good Housekeeping: Tips on how to get the most out of your Ikea's Leksvik drop-leaf table

Okay, ‘nuf said….onward and upward to the wrap up:

Nashville Nimrods vs. Nonads
The Nimrods finished the week in a decisive way…err, the Nimrods squished the opposition this past week…err, let’s just say they finally won without having to stay up for the finish of the Monday night game. Any way you cut it, Lou left no doubt that he is determined to turn his season around before it’s too late. Getting 75% of the votes, the Nimrods turned Timmy the Greek’s prediction of a three-point victory into ten times that much, and it was the first (and maybe only) time that the he could gloat over the fact that his team made it to the century mark in points. Poor Nonads…his team looked battered and bruised (and that was BEFORE the games even started). Although he got double-digits from three of his players, the Nonads looked like a sorry bunch. Since the draft, he’s relied on quarterback Donovan McNabb in 9 out of 10 weeks (reluctantly sitting him during bye week 7, a game that he won). And he’s only won 2 other games with this poor slob McNabb in his line-up! There's something about a train wreck where you can't look away. So far: league voters 1-0 and the Greek 1-0…..


Southern Molesters vs. Belmont Boozers
Can I get a “Woo-Hoo” for the effort put forth by the Molesters the past week? This wily manager, who fills our heads with hopes of playoff positioning and his pockets with delicious free candy, received 60% support from the rest of the league and a vote of confidence from the Greek. We all agree that the Molesters write some of the funniest smack this side of the Dallas red light district - and that he likes the close company of school kids even more than he likes women of the night, gay men, and goats – but did you know about his tattoo fetish? Take a gander at his most recent body art. Meanwhile, me thinks the Boozers should be a bit less concerned about gift bling and more worried with his floundering record and injury-prone Clinton Portis. I know he says he'll play, but Adam should be far more concerned with the part where he says, "right now I can't straighten my leg." I'm no doctor, but that doesn't sound too promising. More evidence is that old Clinton doesn't seem of sound mind right now: he thinks, of all the rookies out there, Malcolm Kelly can make the most impact. Who the hell is Malcolm Kelly? Boozers, we all recommend dumping the bathwater before it turns rancid, and before you go into a tail-spin (and stay away from the candy man). So far: league votes 2-0 and the Greek 2-0….


Happy Hopheads vs. Dallas Demons
Oh, what a tangled web we weave…the Hopheads were picked 67% of the time by the league and received Timmy’s voodoo vote, so he was absolutely destined to go down in flames. Seems like those that were standing proud and tall at the top of the league last week have all stubbed their poor, little toes. The Demons pulled off a narrow 2-point victory in this barn-burner, but in the famous words of another manager: “An ugly win is still a win.” Yea, right, and an ugly loss is like meeting the Molesters in a quiet bar for a few drinks. But, wait, I digress. We found Bobbo contemplating his crazed decision to drop Brett Favre and pick up Ryan Torrain just after this heart-breaking defeat, and we took this sorrowful photo. Our suggestion is to keep your head out of the oven, Bobbo, and look to the future for inspiration. Have you read Simmons "Levels of Losing" column lately? Level XIV is called The Alpha Dog loss. Simmons' definition: "It might have been a devastating loss, but at least you could take solace that a superior player made the difference in the end. Unfortunately, that player wasn't playing for your team." Does Reggie Wayne’s 14 points vs. Marvin Harrison’s 1 point ring any bells? So far: league votes 2-1 and the Greek 2-1….


Homer’s Heros vs. Sunday Brew Crew
So, the Brew Crew got royally Thigpenned by the Heros (have I ever told you how much I hate that name, Timmy), and he was left crying in his warm beer. The rest of the league was sure that the Brew Crew would prevail (even Timmy the Greek called this one wrong), and we were all gravely disappointed when the Heros (no, really, it’s an idiotic name, Timmy) recorded their sixth victory in the past seven weeks. And all without Romo at the helm, who was still recovering from the devastating injury to his pinky, fifth finger, baby finger, digitus minimus, digitus quintus (or digitus V in anatomy), which almost ended his entire NFL career. This match-up, my friends, was a full-fledged butt-kicking. All I can say, Brew Crew, is that sometimes you can tell right away when it isn't your day. And that's the worst part, isn’t it? Not just the epiphany, but everything that follows - every botched play; every turnover; every instance where someone on your team wants to quit; every "deer in the headlights" look; every time an announcer says, "They can't get anything going"; every shot of the opponents celebrating; every time you look at the score and think to yourself, "Well, if I can score here and force a turnover, maybe I'll get some momentum," but you know it's not going to happen, because you're already 30 points down. You just want it to end, and it won't end. But it did end, mercifully, and without much hope for your fantasy football future. You’re welcome to join Bobbo in his oven? Now it was: league votes 2-2 and the Greek 2-2….

ChiTown Shysters vs. Brown County Blues
Wow, what can be said about this humiliating defeat? This can’t really be happening, can it? Yes, indeed, it can, we all shouted from the rooftops as the last of the top three were knocked down and kicked without mercy. This match-up sort of reminded me of the Alamo (though it didn’t involve any of those pitiful teams from the warmer region of the U.S.). This was the sibling of the Full-Fledged Butt-Kicking described above. You're supposed to win, you expect to win, the game is a mere formality, right? Suddenly, your team falls behind, your opponents are fired up, the clock is ticking and it dawns on you for the first time, "Oh, my God, this can't be happening.” Ultimately, only the Hopped-Up Hopheads had the gonads (or is it the nonads) to put his faith in the Preacher, and Timmy the Greek saw it as a 19-point victory for the Shysters. Well, it happened, and now the Blues have made ChiTown the butt of all our jokes. But don’t get your bloomers in a twist, Preacher….while staying somehow alive in the basement of the league, believing you can still make the playoffs, we all know that you live in a fantasy world far, far away from football. Can you hear that crackling sound beneath your feet, Pete, as hell begins to go below the freezing mark? Well, we can’t. It's over, just admit it to yourself. Pitifully, it’s now: league votes 2-3 and the Greek 2-3…


Sidehill Gougers vs. Last But Not Least’s
Well, surely, we all thought, the Gougers would redeem our faith in picking winners…would show us that we can’t always be wrong….would put a stop to this madness! But, no…the league believed unanimously that the Gougers would clobber LBNL, the Greek concurred, and we all sat back drinking our beer, eating our pizza, and preparing for the devastation to begin. This one combined the horrors of the This Can’t Be Happening with sweeping bitterness and hostility. Your team's hanging tough (hell, they might even be winning), but you can feel the inevitable breakdown coming, and you keep waiting for the guillotine to drop, and you just know it's coming -- you know it -- and when it finally comes, you're angry that it happened and you're angry at yourself for contributing to the debilitating karma. And you wonder why the hell you play fantasy football at all, don’t you Clark? Still, our hats are off to the man who had the guts to draft Eli. And had the faith to risk 25 points on his bench for a wimp who he believed was a "Giant of a man" (not to be confused with Jay)...who’s vastly improved over the past two years, by the way...which is to say, he's now molded himself into an average NFL quarterback. I don't understand how Eli winning a Super Bowl validates his existence when it did nothing for Brad Johnson, Trent Dilfer or Mark Rypien. And don't feed me that crap about his magical escape on the Tyree catch. That was piss-poor tackling and a miracle catch. Giving Eli credit for that is like giving LBNL credit for the Giants winning the Superbowl. Piss poor, I tell you, our ability to pick games is piss poor: league votes 2-4 and the Greek 2-4…

And sticking with the theme of hopelessness for all you managers who are about to be shut out of the playoffs I leave you with a bit of wisdom. "On a traffic light green means go and yellow means yield, but on a banana it's just the opposite. Green means hold on, yellow means go ahead . . . and red means where the hell did you get that damn banana?"