ultimate matchup

arizona vs oklahoma for the bcs championship next year.

nearly impossible, but one can wish

there's a playoff team here somewhere

four of my five teams made the playoffs, and in the two leagues with 4-team formats i am in the championship. one has a two-week playoff system, with semifinals from wk 14-15 and finals from wk 16-17. Personally, I could see some value in completing all playoff games by week 15.

The other two leagues offer a ridiculous format in which 8 of 10 teams made the playoffs. One of these was edited by the commissioner late in the season, with no warning. Confusing that league with the other 8 playoff team league, I initially thought I was misreading things and that the playoff format had not actually changed. Thus, I kept quiet, as no one else said anything. That is shocking to me; most of these guys know each other, from what I understand. I started playing with them last year via a friend who knew last year's commish. Maybe they were all as confused as I was. My 3rd-seeded team made the semifinal round, but if that hadn't happened, how lame would it have been? Playing a #6 team that shouldn't have been in the playoffs at all and losing? Wow.

The other thing that bothers me is divisions in fantasy leagues. If there are divisions, which serve absolutely no justifiable purpose, the playoffs should be straight seeded tournaments. We hear sports pundits talking about seeding as the best way to do real sports playoffs. However, in the real sports world you have some great geographic rivalries preserved and fostered by divisional groupings. Taking away the division champions' automatic playoff bid would take some of the fun out of those rivalries. Is there any reason at all to grant automatic playoff bids to division champions in fantasy? No, especially not in a public standard configuration league where you're playing with strangers and the arrangement is certain to be a one-year thing. The problems grow with the size of the league, a real tragedy since larger fantasy leagues are more challenging. How would you like to miss out on the playoffs despite having one of the best records in your hyper-competitive tough league just because you're unluckily in the strongest division? That just shouldn't happen.

keep it irrelevant

you gotta hate thursday games when your opponent puts up 101 points on you thanksgiving day and still has 2 WRs, an RB, and his TE going. that's right, i have the privilege of playing this week against someone who had westbrook and also got 41 points out of Bironas and the Tennessee defense. usually, i have no idea what happened with my fantasy teams until i wake up monday morning. it's a lot worse having to thing about the fact that you'll need to score a hundred thirty points or so in order to win. i've already lost twice in a row and fallen from first to third in the past two weeks; i'll be fourth if this guy beats me. i'll have a lot more time to wish that wasn't inevitable thanks to those thursday games.

roscoe

a guy i play with in several leagues added roscoe parrish for this weekend's game. this is in a twelve team league where we play 3 receivers. i feel like he just pulled this move out of nowhere, which seems to make little sense. it's impressive though, just because no one would really think of doing it. it's like when i made some trade for hunter pence early in the baseball season, and people in my league thought i was just throwing in the towel or something. i gave up greinke and hawpe, having picked hawpe up off of waivers. one guy was a little heated and posted a note to the entire league complaining that i was apparently giving up. hunter pence was ranked in the top 50 players going into the season; he never performed at that level, but this was too early to give up on that. i figured greinke was overachieving; he was, but not as much as i'd thought. hawpe really isn't that great in a 10 team league, and i just loved the power/speed/average of...hunter pence. a coworker in that league was annoyed but more taciturn on the subject of the trade. he just didn't understand the logic behind a trade involving three players he considered irrelevant. picking up roscoe parrish feels like that. it just doesn't seem like there's a reason to do it.

the pats defense erased my ipod

a couple of awful things happened in the past 24 hours. the ipod touch died on the way to work, preventing me from reading up on fantasy football. all the music disappeared this afternoon. oh, and the patriots defense tried repeatedly to give away the game at home against the jets, only succeeding in overtime.

clue me in

some kids on the street called me steve kerr last night. steve kerr? really? that would have been more relevant 10 years ago, or maybe there's a reason it's relevant now and i don't even know. i look nothing like steve kerr.

i finally traded for a tight end in that league where i have cutler and brees. of course i didn't give up one of those guys. i traded my 4th wr (chambers) and 4th rb (graham) for him, which was certainly too much, but when you're getting a starter, dealing some bench guys doesn't hurt. i've got ray rice now, for whatever that's worth. graham's biggest problem seems to have been the time share with dunn, but at least he gets consistent time. rice is a mystery. chambers was hurt so long no one seemed to think he had value; i have anthony gonzalez as my 4th wr now. considering wayne is in my starting lineup, i really like having gonzalez around. maybe i should get brandon stokely just in case...is that really going to happen? no.

the problem with this team, really, is that brandon marshall and reggie wayne have been disappointing. last week, i scored less than 70, and 35 of those points were from cutler, my defense, and my kicker. this team should be fine in the playoffs if i can still make it. seriously, with steven jackson hurt now, it's anyone's guess whether i can get that far. such a good team on paper.

convergence

i supppose this is what i get for detailing the successes of my 'best' team. all of a sudden, i wake up and realize that roster has only exceeded 85 points once in the past 5 weeks. the dreadfully embarrassing team in the work league has exceeded 85 points once in the past 5 weeks. granted, that was the first time that team made it even as high as 85 all year long, and i'm not getting 21 points out of dallas clark every week. still, this is the moment in the season when i look at everything and realize i'm a lot more vulnerable than i'd thought, even where there's the perception of strength. another big surprise has been the emergence of valuable depth on the team that drafted 8 backup qbs in the auto-draft. at the time, my starting lineup looked fine and i had no bench at all. in this league, with some odd qb scoring, ppr, and 7 pts per touchdown (including passing), my bench now consists of:

rb - chris johnson, steve slaton, dominic rhodes

wr - desean jackson, devin hester

qb - kurt warner

truthfully, some of those guys are not 'bench' guys; i sat adrian peterson one week, which is easier to do in a ppr format. rhodes' value may have dipped significantly already, but the lesson here is that need can create some interesting opportunities. warner wasn't necessarily being touted as arizona's potential starter by aug 21, when our autodraft was held, and he didn't even make it to my first round of waiver picks. this is one league where i hated waiting for the post-draft waiver period to end. thanks to that weird autodraft glitch, i had jim sorgi and billy volek, among many others, sitting on my bench. most of my first round of pickups didn't yield long-term or even short-term results, but i knew i was vulnerable and i kept looking. to some extent, i was lucky; the bench guys i picked up here are better than people i start in that work league. such a sad statement. still, i think i might break 90 another couple times with that awful team, and i could even get back over 100 one week. i've got donnie avery now, darn it.