Fantays football tip

The fantasy football season in most leagues is at the halfway point. As I look back at my season and stress over what I've done right and wrong there are some valuable lessons to be learned. I've struggled almost every week with making roster moves and starting the most effective people. Because of this agony I have developed the ultimate formula for whom to start on any given week.

The very first thing, before any kind of analysis can be done, you have to know how your league is scored. More specifically you need to know how your league scores receptions and yardage. For example, in my league we get 1 point for every catch (WR, RB, TE) and .1 points for every yard.

This single stat is huge for making a draft strategy and then again for whom to start.

The second most important stat is learning who gets the most attempts and then who gets the most attempts in the red zone. This allows for very specific analysis of your players in the most important game time situations.

Taking in these three stats will make sure you have the most effective team playing each week. Fantasy football is a game of numbers and intuition. We all know it is impossible to predict each week who is going to have the best game, but this formula makes sure you have the best chance at garnering big points.

World Series

I was listening to the disgusting babble on sports radio yesterday and there was an interesting tone considering the World Series. It was boring. No one was overly excited and the mindset was that the Yankees were going to win. Scott Van Pelt said that it's almost expected that the Yankees win the world series, and it is. They invested almost a half a billion dollars into that lineup last year; when a team makes a commitment like that what other kind of standard are you going to hold them to? There is nothing else like it in the sporting world. The Patriots don't really buy championships, they win them. The Celtics really paid a pretty penny for KG and Ray Allen, but this doesn't even come close to competing with what the Yankees do.

The best part of any championship match is the reaction of the winner. The Yankees looked more relieved than they did happy that they just won the World Series. It's a self induced pressure cooker that looks like anything but fun. This is supposed to be the American pastime, for the Yankees its a curse. The ghosts from seasons past creep up like a cold fog, always holding the franchise to an insurmountable legend. The Yankees take on a mythical like feel when discussed in the daily sports world. They are supposed to win. Tthey have no other choice but to play to a standard higher than everyone else, regardless of whom it is they play or to whom signs the next big contract.

Its the Yankee curse.

It's going to be another hotly contested week in the SEC, with The Crimson Tide duking it out against the Tigers of L.S.U. who are 7.5 point underdogs. At this stage in the season it is fair to say that Alabama is the team to beat and their current attack seems more balanced then ever. But, this game has more to do with the national title picture than conference standings. Presumably if the Tide wins they are more than likely going to face Florida in the conference championship baring anything drastic happening to either team. Thus, the winner of this presumed game is going to compete for the BCS championship. But, what if both of these teams have one loss and Boise State wins out, along with Cincy and Oregon wins the rest of their games? How many of us would like to see Boise State vs. Oregon in that final game of the 2009-2010 season?

The recipe for disaster always looms at large when dealing with college football. How many other times are you going to rely on 19, 20 year old kids to handle enormous amounts of pressure?