The Ballad of Ricky-Bobby: We Both Like Fantasy Football

Fantasy football's pretty solid.

BOBBY: Sure, in a lot of ways, it's like major league baseball and college basketball: shitty, flawed, unfair, white people -- you know, the usual. But it's mostly pretty great. The old adage about how the NFL starts when training camp starts almost needs to be revised. It doesn't feel like football to me until I hear Simmons and Berry yappin' about sleepers and duds, and I find myself organizing or joining a few leagues.

I just started an office job a little over two months ago, and one of my key responsibilities has been organizing the office league. I'm legitimately excited. You spend so much time with the people you work with, so I'm really anticipating fantasy hitting a whole new level for me this year. It's almost like living in a dorm in college; you're around your co-workers all the time. Might as well make it a little more enjoyable by trying to beat the crap out of them in stupid fantasy football. Almost seems like a no-brainer.

But before I continue, a few gripes...
1) I've never, EVER, EVER had the first pick. Or the second pick. Or the third pick. It kinda sucks.

2) I've never had the last pick either. I really think I draft between seven and nine every single year. You don't get the top tier guys, and you don't get to make the sweet back-to-back picks when the draft snakes back around. Mega shitty.

3) I hate running backs. Running back is the worst position ever. I'm trying to think of the best fantasy running back I've ever owned, and not one name is coming into my head. The few times I've drafted ones in the first round, it's been guys like Larry Johnson or B. Jacobs, and it was always the season where they fell off the cliff. Because of this, I usually reach a few picks back and take an elite level QB. It's probably always a bad decision, but it's comfortable. I think I've had Brady as my fantasy quarterback, like, seven times. Running backs just aren't worth it to me. Just one bad hit, then BOOM, ACL tear.

(Did I own Brady the season he tore his ACL in the first half of the first game? Yes.)

4) I have never won a league, ever. I've been playing since prolly around 2002. I'll underestimate and say I've played in 15 total leagues. Despite missing playoffs once (twice, tops), I've yet to win a title. I've finished second at least three times. Just awful. At this point, I want to win for pride more than I want to win for money. I really think if I win a fantasy title, I'll either a) retire, or b) scale it down to just one league each year. Either way, something sorta drastic. Ah, dreams.

But yeah, fantasy football -- especially in the pre-season when your team hasn't sucked yet -- is in a pretty good place right now. This is the first NFL season I'll have a smart phone, and I imagine it's going to cocaine-ize the process. No more lame-ass print outs. No more having to guess who's on my .500 team I barely update. No more thinking I played a guy who did awesome only to find out I'd benched him an hour before the games started. Kick. Ass.

Questions: What's your fantasy history? Any hardware? ... Anything you care to hate on? ... Are you a 1st round RB guy? ... Any go-to drafting strategies/funny staples of Rickhouse fantasy football playing? ... Have you ever played in an auction league?

RICKY: I did a little LOL'ing over "white people" getting singled out so soon in this R-B. I mean, you know it's a lock to appear every time, but the question is WHEN? Today, you clocked in at just 19 words. Record time. SEC speed, even. If our commenters were cool, they'd set up some sort of over-under for the first time "white+people" appears in any edition of Ricky-Bobby and bet big money on it. This may have been the first time ever the 'under' would have won. Big day.

Naturally, I also have a personal connection when it comes to white people/fantasy football. They really are the PB and J of our generation.

-- Fantasy football actually helped lay the seeds for my anti-white people stance. True story.

I went to a Catholic high school in the suburbs that featured a lot of kids who aligned their tastes with cowboy hats, Kenny Chesney, and Confederate flag belt buckles. Spoiler alert: this wasn't a very diverse school. I remember there was a league maybe sophomore or junior year, and one of the kids only drafted white players. Like, Shockey in the first round, Joe Jurevicius in the second, and probably fucking Favre in the third. This actually happened: some unfortunate and confused 15-year old literally threw money away and sabotaged his teams chances just because he thought it'd be funny to only draft Caucasian players. Groundwork: LAID.

It's kind of funny that we're both in similar situations job-wise: I also just started a new office job, my first time ever doing the 9-5 thing. I work with about 50 people, and a good 85 percent of them are older women. All very nice, mind you, but it's not actually like I can talk to them about Wolf Parade or Jermichael Finley on our lunch break. One of my first thoughts after a couple days at this job was "man, I really wish someone here played fantasy football". 

Internet lore tells us that talking about fantasy football in public is adjacent to talking about your kids. No one cares how you got screwed into a loss last week, man. I think Drew has written about this a few times.  But isn't talking about fantasy football really nothing more than just talking about football? And isn't talking about football kind of great? I'm jealous that you're setting up an office league. I'd love to do something like that. 

I'm actually usually pretty good at fantasy football. Remember, I'm a former fantasy football blogger at a major newspaper! I absolutely forgot that ever happened.

My resume: I had Shaun Alexander his record-breaking year, and Tomlinson for his. Of course, I also had Brady the year he got Pollard'd, but I feel like my luck usually sides with "good". Last season I had a powerhouse team captained by MJD and Ray Rice -- your consensus 3-4 picks in the first round this year. I lost in the championship. Even still, I've won a league or two in my career. I don't think I've ever actually gotten paid though, which I blame on being short.

How are you feeling about fantasy football this year? My draft is a week from Wednesday. Got any cool sleepers? Still going to reach for a QB? Do you feel the need to legitimize your NFL knowledge by showing the office who's boss? Let's talk about football. 

BOBBY: Ah yes, MJD. I think I may have owned him during one of his stellar seasons. It's good to know that it's happened once.

I'm one draft down, probably two more to go. I used to hate having more than one team because of the whole 'players you own conflicting with other players you own' thing, but I stopped caring about that a while ago. For one, if one of your teams sucks, you've got an immediate insurance plan. For two, it's the NFL: it's always going to be awesome. The more horses I have in the race, the better -- even if they conflict with each other.

My absolute favorite part about fantasy football -- and I mean it, I love this part more than all other parts of fantasy times five -- is checking out the box score of a current game the Monday morning after and figuring out who has who and who needs what going into Monday Night Football. I'd almost rather be losing the game with the potential of a few guys winning it for me than winning the game going against two guys potentially overtaking me. The MNF experience is a microcosm of fantasy: you've got players and teams you may not necessarily have cared about before suddenly meaning everything. It really works. You just have to be careful to not get wrapped into the "well, the Bears won, but my fantasy team lost wahhh" sad sack mentality. You can't win in everything every time. Expecting that to happen is just nuts.

I have no cool sleepers. I usually never do. I was on the Welker bandwagon the year he blew up. And I really do think we can expect big things from Brady this year. Aside from Moss and Welker, Edelman and Brandon Tate have looked great in the pre-season, and both rookie TEs have looked spectacular. But can you really call Brady a "sleeper" and call yourself a person? I say no. So my answer is... no one. I'd love to see big things from Arian Foster, though. /fingers crossed

Do you remember when leagues didn't have live scoring? It's easy to say it totally sucked, but it was kind of cool having to add up your stuff and guessing what it would be. I remember waking up and having to refresh the browser every Monday waiting for it to update. For someone as bad at math as I am, the results were exciting. The downside is I remember once or twice paying X amount of money for the live-scoring upgrade, which seems downright stupid and laughable now. Ah well.

In summary, I will probably always, always reach for a QB. It's just who I am. I don't think winning or losing to my co-workers would prove or disprove my NFL knowledge. Well, unless I went undefeated and just destroyed everyone. I think you'd need to do something extreme like that to get some respect.

Lastly, screw Shaun Alexander. Maybe my least favorite running back of all-time. So overrated it hurts.

RICKY: I'm with you on conflict being stupid. I also play in a big money A.L.-only fantasy baseball league (nerd alert) with my buddy Phil. There was a point when Phil was hesitant to do this because he never wanted to be put in a situation where his beloved White Sox would be facing one of his fantasy team guys. "Who would I root for!!!???," Phil probably said, with just as many exclamation points and question marks in his voice. My take: who cares. Root for the White Sox, if it works out both ways somehow, that's just gravy. I think people forget sometimes that their rooting interests actually have zero impact on the results of a professional sports game.

I'll one-up you on the live scoring: when I was in grade school (can't pinpoint the exact year), my dad and I ran a fantasy football league SANS INTERNET. Oh yeah, exciting times. I remember every team was given an index card that had their team on it and they'd have to turn it in to my old man or I after every week. Results were added up through, get this, box scores we found in the newspaper. So old school. I think Emmitt was the first pick that year.

I handle fantasy football research much like I handle March Madness research: I don't know anything -- literally nothing -- until about 36 hours before the draft. Then: cram. It actually has pretty good results so I don't think I'm going to switch it up. Besides, procrastination is kind of awesome. As such, I also really have nothing to add expertise-wise for FF2K10. Get back to me Tuesday and I should be good to go.

I always assumed one of the best parts about having a favorite college football team (you do, I don't), or having two favorite NFL teams (you do, I don't), is that if the Bears suck (probability of this ranges from likely to definite), maybe some of the burn would be taken away if your college/other team was good. I actually started adopting this mentality with my fantasy team last year. The Bears sucked, my fantasy team was in first, second, or third the whole year. I really felt like it made football season much more enjoyable. It's because football is so great, but it's also over before you know it. You can't let the crappy Bears ruin something that should be wholly enjoyable, you know? Really, any time you can mitigate the Bears' importance on your daily life, it's probably a good thing.