Armchair Thoughts

It has come to my attention that is a limited uprising in our league at the moment. It amazes me how everyone thinks they can do a better job than the guy who is already in the position of power. I had every intention of writing this before, but I sprained my ankle this week and so my attention has been elsewhere as my ankle started to look like that guys face at the end of Green Street Hooligans. This post will be to address the haters, questions, and concern of the members in our league.

Also, Jack gave me "a week or two", so I'm still within his timeline, and have not been ignoring him, just formulating my thoughts.

First off, I want to apologize for not posting Week Recaps for the majority of this season. Things have been busier than expected, but I will do my best to update you all every week from now on.

In reply to Mike's quest for current rebellion, here are the arguments you lay forth (some worthy, others not so much), and here are my rebuttals:

1. Stopped doing weekly reviews.
I fully acknowledge I have not done the week in reviews in many weeks. I do want to say however, that since when has this become a duty of the commissioner? This has always been Jack's thing that he does, and this summer I decided to try my hand at it since I was bored. Furthermore, everyone has the ability to write week in reviews, not just me and Jack. If you did them yourselves you would know how much time and effort it actually takes to write quality posts for this blog.

2. Not answering the questions in the reviews.
Here is my answer finally. And half the time, they're not questions. They're just constant insults directed towards me.

3. Mishandling of money.
Yes, the distribution of winnings has been a little rocky, but I have covered that with those who have won money in this league. Second, I had every intention of charging 20 dollars for the league this year, but that was when we were going to have an actual live draft. I see four of the member of the league frequently, and the others at random times. It would be virtually impossible to collect league fees when we don't all meet at one time, especially when people were leaving so early, and in some cases going abroad. I recognize I still owe money to some members, and I will make sure to get that money to them.

4. "Un-Goodell like" ruling
Mike, before you accused me of being too lenient and undecisive. Then I start making more strict rulings and everyone is up in arms about it. What do you want? You can't have it both ways.

5. The Request of a New Commissioner
Here's the deal: although I will step down if that's what the league decides, I do want to make the point that two of your nominations have already had the position of commissioner. Joe was the commissioner for baseball two years ago, and although there were no speedbumps, it had to be one of the most boring season of all our fantasy leagues. There was no interaction with the commissioner, no week recaps, no debates over what stats should and shouldn't be included, etc. Joe constantly changes the stats to whichever ones he wants, as is evidenced by his request every year to change the scoring for fantasy football (EVERY YEAR). Luke had attempted to organize a fantasy basketball league if I am not mistaken, and that had not gone so well. Jack is the only candidate who has yet to have the post, but if i had to guess I don't think he would enjoy it as much, because he would not have a higher power to constantly gripe about and argue with.

Now onto Mr. Ries's litany of inquiries:

1. Which stats to incorporate in non-Football (meaning baseball) leagues:
I have tried to comply with everyone's desires when it comes to stats in fantasy baseball. Admittedly, there have been some categories that should not be included (fielding percentage in particular), and I am of the opinion that less stats are better. If we include every statistic that everyone (by everyone I mean Joe) wants, than it tends to get ridiculous when it comes to trying to score matchups and such. Though I do appreciate that holds have put more emphasis on middle relievers, the holds stat is so fluky, it is virtually impossible to predict. Check the holds leaders for each year, they're never even close to the same guys. I have listened to and respected requests for the additions and subtractions of different categories, but most these requests come after we have already drafted or I have not had any input from others. I cannot add and subtract stats after the draft because that may completely change how some people draft.

2. How much each football stat is worth (leaving the big one until the end)
I have met Joe's EVERY request when it comes to changing how many points each stat gets. I am a man of the people in that regard (except for fractional points, which I will get to later). Joe has been the only one who has ever come to me to change the points system (minus Jack and fractional points), and I have changed them as requested.

3. How to order the draft and keeper leagues
I combined these two topics because they are similar in nature. Everyone agreed this year to a keeper league, and in my opinion I think it went very well and increased interest for the entire year, and allows us to make draft day trades (in which I was a part of). Also, in the case of keeper leagues, I think the system of having the draft order be the reverse of the final standings worked very well, as there has never been more parity in our league before. In the future, I would like to expand to three or possibly four keepers, as it brings more strategy into play when making trades both in and out of season.

4. Stance on which managers to allow in/out of leagues.
This issue actually came into play this year when Joe took it upon himself to give the league ID and password to Grimmer without my approval. Although it ended up working out OK because Danny was one of the more active members of the league, I do not think this can continue. I believe we have a strong core of guys to continue in this league, and any additions that might be made should be with a guy everyone is familiar with. The league is not as fun when there is someone we don't all know (for instance, the year we brought in the St. John's baseball player, Skluzchek or however you spell his name). I do think those that are in the league have an obligation to continue to check their lineups, unless you are Tony McDonald, because we all know we need one guy we can rip for being so inattentive that Chin-Ming Wang is still in his starting lineup.

5. Health Care (I mean fractional points)
Who knew this would be such a controversial topic. Before I address my objections for fractional points, I do want to state the fact that I did allow a vote on this premise for this season, not enough votes were cast, and thus it was not allowed. I refuse to change things when we don't get at least 8 votes cast out of the 10 members of the league. I don't think that's too much to ask. Now, my objections to fractional points are as follows:

a) It ruins part of the fun-Part of the fun of fantasy football is sitting there watching a game and yelling and screaming for your running back to get five more yards so you get that one extra point. Fractional points completely ruin this aspect of fantasy football (which I believe is why fantasy football is so addicting).
b) It ruins the ease of scoring- I enjoy being able to hear a guy's stats and being able to calculate his fantasy score on the spot. If someone has 92 yards rushing, I like being able to know he scored 4 points, not 4.6 points and trying to integrate that into my team's points for the week.
c) There are not fractional points in any other league-you don't get half a run if a guy reaches second base, or gets two thirds of a strikeout anytime a pitcher gets two strikes on a batter.
d) Ties are a part of football- The NFL has ties, and since fantasy football is supposed to (somewhat) imitate real-life football, why can't there be ties in our league? If there were someway to pick two players from your bench as tiebreakers, I would be all for that method, but Yahoo! doesn't allow for that. Fact is, ties happen, and it's part of sports.
e) We have already voted on it as a league- As I have already stated earlier in this column, we voted on it as a league, and not enough votes were cast. It's funny I get tarred and feathered for a taking a couple of weeks off of participating in this league, yet we couldn't even get 80% of our members to vote on something that some think is so crucial it needs to dethrone the leadership of the league. What is this, the French Revolution?

Well I think that is enough to chew on right now. I won't leave any media in this post, but I will make sure to do a Week Recap and post my thoughts and links for the week.

Until then, Viva la Armchair!!

I'm busy and I'm lazy. And I have nothing to argue with Dave about. So here are the stats:



Greek gods still hold the top spot despite being on a 3 game losing streak in the league standings. Again, these ratings are all in hindsight. So is Joe's team going to be the best for the rest of the season? Who knows? But all we know is that he should be in 1st place based on his past numbers.

Who's the most unlucky? Well that award goes to the Greek gods as well. Some crummy luck early on has hindered them, so I would expect his place in the league standings to rise. For instance, this past week he had the 3rd best score in the league but played the team who put up the 2nd best score. He would have beat 77% of all other teams but instead got 0 points in the standings. Behind Greek gods, The Moops are about a full win behind where they should be. They sit last in the league. No, they haven't put up great numbers but luck still hasn't help then with their schedule.

Who's the most lucky? That award still has my name on it. (Hey, at least I'm willing to admit it.) I'm in 1st in the league, riding a 3 game win streak, but have gotten lucky. Luckily, I put up the highest score this past week to help propel me higher in my Projected W%, but I'm still a little more than a win ahead of where I should be. Deep Throw It have improved their Projected W%, but are still riding the wave of their early season luck. They're about a win ahead of where they should be.

There's still quite a bit of parity in our league. I don't think we've really been able to separate the "bad" teams from the "good" teams yet.

MEDIA!

Who doesn't love themselves some Christopher Walken?:




And all I can say is FAIL to this guy:

Well we had ourselves a week that made us all regress to the mean. Seemingly bad teams were beaten by seemingly good teams. I don't know up from down anymore. Let's take a look.

To begin, TEAM RIHANNA had some metaphorical revenge on TEAM CHRIS BROWN. RIHANNA was ranked 9th out of 10 last week in terms of ProjW% with TEAM CHRIS BROWN in 4th. It was quite the opposite of any of us (even Tony) could have predicted.

Boston TD Party (3rd) lost to the only team without a win. Although don't blame it on them, Bulldogs (10th) would have beaten everyone except TEAM RIHANNA if the schedule were different.

Duke Football (7th) found a vaccination for The Moops (6th). (There's a little Dave humour there for ya)

Super Consistency (5th) and Primus Inter Pares (2nd) had their own problems this week, coming in 9th and 10th in terms of points production.

And the Greek gods (1st) took out Deep Throw It (8th) to continue his clear domination. (Not to brag, but the only reason Joe's W isn't 1.000 is his Week 1 tie to yours truly. But then again, he would have a loss if we used fractional points.)

Let's take a look after Week 4:



Things have started to balance out a little bit. Boston TD Party is now the most underrated team instead of Primus Inter Pares. After my very very lucky win this week, my luck has just about balanced out.

Deep Throw It is still the most overrated team, even despite his loss to Joe. Granted though, he significantly reduced the difference between what his W% and what his W% should be. But we still get to bag on them for another week.

And I'll let Dave recap on our amazing Minnesota sports weekend. If only those gophs won ....

Until next week .

Week 3 in the books. Week 2 showed us that our team was pretty equally matched with only 2 teams without a win. Now this week, teams are starting to break out and play like they should, while some still have had some scheduling luck ...

On to the rankings:


As we can see. Joe has avoided a loss in these first three weeks (Although I'm still bitter about Week 1). On the other end, the Bulldogs can't find a win. Only TEAM RIHANNA scored more points than them this past week. But alas, the odds are they'll get a win sooner or later.

So let's look at what stands out. Well for starters, Primer Inter Pares has scored a whopping 192 points (2nd in the league by 2 points, with TEAM CHRIS BROWN in 3rd with 166) yet sits tied for 5th in the league. All things being equal, hopefully they'll see an increase in the league standings.
Also, you know I can't go a week without talking about the luck of Deep Throw It. They somehow sit tied for 2nd in the league in W% (4th if we count Pts). So let's ask what are the odds that he has put up these numbers and has escaped 2-1-0? Let's do the math.

Odds that Deep Throw It goes 2-1-0 after 3 weeks:
Possible scenarios: 1) W, W, L --- 2) W, L, W --- 3) L, W, W
Odds that Deep Throw It had a win in Week 1 based on the scores of the other teams = 4/9 = 44%
Odds of Week 1 loss = 5/9 = 55%
Odds of Week 2 win = 2/9 = 22%
Odds of Week 2 loss = 7/9 = 77%
Odds of Week 3 win = 4/9 = 44%
Odds of Week 3 loss = 5/9 = 55%

1) W, W, L = 44% * 22% * 55% = 5.5%
2) W, L, W = 44% * 77% * 44% = 15.3%
3) L, W, W = 55% * 22% * 44% = 5.5%
Total = 5.5% + 15.3% + 5.5% = 26.3%

So Deep Throw It has defied the odds by quite a bit. There was only a 26.3% chance that he'd escape these 3 weeks with exactly 2-1 record. In fact, he had a 24% chance of being 0-3-0:
55% * 77% * 55% = 24.0%

Yet he sits at 2-1-0.

Some matchups I'm keen on observing next week:

Boston TD Party vs Bulldogs
This one should be the "Toyota Biggest Fantasy Blowout".

TEAM RIHANNA vs TEAM CHRIS BROWN
The battle of the ALL CAPS teams. And there's also some history between the two.
I expect this week's matchup to end in the same results.

Deep Throw It vs Greek gods
I think I'm going to enjoy watching this one.

Chao all.

And Dave, maybe for our sake, could you tell us WHY exactly you're so against fractional points?

My, oh my, Jack, you sure didn't cut me any slack this week that's for sure. Like I already told you earlier, this reminds me of our good old locker-sharing days freshmen year when we would constantly argue about something, and race to our lockers so we could get there first. And of course, there was always Schneider standing there in the locker next to us laughing and mocking us. It seems to continue on now, somewhere reading this, Andy is probably still snickering at us. As you well pointed out, it seems my rankings did fall very similarly to you, and so my reasoning probably isn't too far off. In my rankings, I more or less ranked teams both based on what happened in the first week, but also through the history and tendency of each manager, and how they finished last year. Now, without any dominant team after the second week, I find myself with a little bit more work to do. In my rankings this week, I will do things a little differently, including taking head-to-head matchups into account. So for this week, for example, I will have to find some way to rank Super Consistency above Duke Football. This will be quite the challenge considering virtually everything I said last week went the complete opposite in week 2. So Mr. Ries, I offer you a cease-fire at the moment, and I hope our respective posts can coexist peacefully.

As far as money goes, I was planning on doing 20 dollars per person, but seeing as we didn't have the draft in person, it makes it tough to get the money. I will try to collect the money from everyone, and yes Joe, you don't need to pay me anything since you had some winnings last year.

Greek gods 67, Bulldogs 41
Instead of taking the time to praise Joe's team, which I have done plenty of in our leagues, I want to take this time to congratulate Mike Cafferty on taking down Goliath. This proves that no matter how much time you spend on your team, fantasy sports can still be a crapshoot, particularly in the playoffs. Congrats Mike...P.S. are you going to making a trek to the hallowed halls of TCF Bank Stadium in two weeks?

Team Rihanna 67, Deep Throw It 48
Of course, it only fits that my team would be destroyed by the team I mocked heavily in last week's recap. I have changed my mind about Tony Mac's team a little bit after this week's shellacking. With two of the top three WR's and one of the up-and-coming quarterbacks, Team Rihanna could be a solid force in the league. Tony could stand to benefit the most from the change this year of keeping three players instead of two. But I do still have to draw attention to the fact that Michael Crabtree is still on his team. Same old Tmac.

Super Consistency 63, Duke Football 39
The result of this matchup is further proof I have absolutely no idea of what I am doing when I comment on teams in our league. After I said last week that Team Oatmeal didn't have much depth, Chris Johnson went off for the highest point total for a single player yet. With this being said, I still am not completely sold on his team yet. I would also like to thank Luke for completely taking away any credibility I have in ranking teams by getting destroyed a week after I ranked his team #1. I should have known better to have faith in a team with Brett Favre on it.

Team Chirs Brown 61, Primus Inter Pares 49
Team Wife-Beater had a solid showing from everyone on his team besides Randy Moss, showing off the depth he has at pretty much every position. PIP had a relatively decent week, but the LT injury does concern me. I think he may be halfway down the downside of his career, and so we'll see how that trades pays off for Jack the rest of the way. Finally, for anyone interested in what Jack's new name refers to, I looked it up. In other words, here's what Wikipedia has to say.

Boston TD Party 51, The Moops 51
Alas, another tie in the ACFL! Tom Brady laid an egg against the Jets and that's what really hurt JP's team in the battle of former roommates. The lack of a second receiver for Team Seinfeld hurt the team this week, and might do so for the rest of the year.

Transaction of the Week
No significant transactions that affected this past week, and so I'll just keep trade of the one trade that has happened so far this year.

Deep Throw It through Week 2--Drew Brees 47+Ray Rice 8+Brandon Marshall 2=57 points

Primus Inter Pares through Week 2--LaDanian Tomlinson 6+Dwayne Bowe 16+Vincent Jackson 21=43 points

Numbers speak for themselves so far...

Oly's Rankings
1. Greek gods
2. The Moops
3. Team Chris Brown
4.Boston TD Party
5. Super Consistency
6. Duke Football
7. Primus Inter Pares
8. Team Rihanna
9. Deep Throw It
10. Bulldogs


Da Commish's Hot Clicks of the Week

I wish I had this athletic ability...

How'd he get up there?


May I introduce you all to the postgame tailgate....make sure you listen at the end for Lou Holtz's part.




If only Tebow used his celebrity status for good...looks like he'd have plenty of followers, including this female.


I wish the Wolves would do this ever since they traded KG.

Man Packers fans have got so much class...



Some people take their college football a little too seriously. I love how Fowler can't even talk about it on the air with a straight face.



Finally, here is our song of the day, courtesy of Mr. Riley Becker, Young Forever by Jay Z

1. I had not yet started my pilgrimage to Santiago
   
2. I had recently developed ASS 2.0
3. The Twins were 3.0 GB the Tigers, but their record was 32-33
4. The NBA Finals had just finished

If all we did were take the scores from last week and see what our record would be against the entire league, we are completely ignoring the fact that scores and points from players can change so dramatically from week to week.