In the blur of the holidays, we finished out our regular season of fantasy football and started the playoff rounds. Great season, guys! I have to say that this has been the most entertaining season of fantasy football yet. Who would have thought that Homer (Tim) could write, much less write coherently?! And who would have predicted that the Happy Hopheads would stay relatively curse-free? With the 3rd lowest points in the league, he managed to wiggle his way to the top of the standings. Un-freakin’-believable! If I would have known that in order to get ahead you just have to be a foul-mouthed, alcoholic skeezer, I would have changed my ways a long time ago.
I’d like to say Thanks to the Brown County Blues, Nonads, Dallas Demons and Southern Molesters. Even though you didn’t make the playoffs, you made the season interesting and worthwhile. Heck, I’ve even gleaned an educational opportunity from the Southern Molesters. My daughter now understands NOT to approach any person or any vehicle offering free candy. The candy may be free, but the consequences are… well, let’s just not go there right now. On a more serious note, our condolences go out to the Nonads for the loss of his father last month. Though many of us don’t know you well or even know you personally, we can all certainly sympathize with you.
To address a different issue, I ran across an interesting article online in the realm of fantasy football. For those of you who read, and read books without pictures, there is an old book out there known as the Art of War by Sun Tzu. One sports writer used it as the basis for trade negotiations –
If you are in the right type of league, most of your “enemies” are already your friends, friends of friends, or other people with whom you are sufficiently well acquainted. Long gone is the moniker “rotisserie league” which connoted a tight group of friends who got together. It has since been replaced by the impersonal invention of Al Gore called “the Internet.” Modern technology has dispensed with human contact and many fantasy leagues are now comprised of autonomous individuals who may know only a couple of other people in their respective leagues.
Getting to know the people in your league will serve as the most lethal weapon in your trading arsenal. The more often you converse with other team managers, the better read you have on how they value players. In the Internet age, we rely far too much on sending a trade offer, often joined by a one sentence quip on how the trade would help the other team. That trade offer is then rejected by a simple push of a button, from which we learn nothing. Live communication is the most effective means in which we may ascertain whether the complexion of other managers is that of a risk taker, conservative, or even fearful of their own shadow.
Let me just stretch this a bit further and apply it to our league and how we interact with each other. Now, to be plain, I don’t know most of you, couldn’t identify you on the street, and wouldn’t know your voices if you called on the phone. (Somehow I’m convinced it would only be for a crank call and not to exchange cookie recipes!) And you all could probably say the same. Tim tries to convince me that the Texas Contingency is really a great bunch of guys, and he’s probably right. (Ha! And I’m the Queen of England!) That being said, there’s much that we miss, or cannot convey effectively, online. And there’s much that could be misunderstood. I’m not sure that any of you know what it’s like to be the only chic in a boy’s club. I’m not complaining, but I do have different boundaries than the rest of you, and I’m pretty sure that I’m sober A LOT MORE than most of you! WAY MORE. So, what’s the point here, you’re wondering. My point here is that it’s okay to encourage some live communication here. Wait! Don’t wince! I’m the chic in this league, remember? It’s my duty as a member of the female half of the species to encourage and open up communication. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt (much). And you might even come to like it. Things aren’t always done the Chicago way around here. What’s that? Let me quote the movie The Untouchables:
You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way! And that's how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that?
So, no grudges here. No hard feelings. The Commissioner’s Office is always open to phone calls, emails, faxes, large donations and friendly visits. And if you do have a good cookie recipe, I’m willing to exchange. In fact, I’m still looking for an authentic recipe for jambalaya. No heavy breathing on the phone, please. That’s old school!
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