One of my Fantasy Football leagues kicks off play at 1pm today. It’s a Fantasy Football league that couldn’t get its act together soon enough to get drafted and ready for a Week 1 start. It’s understandable – two of our long time participants are about to become first-time dads, so they’re a bit distracted.
Truth be told, I don’t mind the delayed start. I was able to approach the draft and subsequent roster moves with the feeling of being over-prepared for a test. On the plus side, I could see who had potential beyond their draft ranking. I could see what teams’ defense are weak and will allow for offensive players to rack up the points on them.
But, much like being over-prepared for a test, I went into drafts and lineups over-confident on picking upon Week 1 performances that may not end up indicating a darn thing. I picked up Buffalo Bills’ tight end Scott Chandler as my backup TE after his stellar performance against the Kansas City Chiefs, but he’s somewhat of an unknown quantity. Will that pick turn out to be a good one, or was I too motivated upon a performance that may be an anomaly?
The other plus to a late starting fantasy football league? A second chance. I started 0-1 in my other league, which is not quite the end of the world. But when you’re playing only 12 of those 16 weeks of the regular season, it can seem like it. Starting off another team in another league renews your enthusiasm.
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I hope the Buffalo Bills defeat the Oakland Raiders this afternoon for a very selfish reason. My high school’s colors were black and silver, and our uniforms always looked especially Raider like. The Raiders were the second biggest NFL team among the kids in my neighborhood on Rochester’s East side, where I grew up, so my classmates and neighbors coveted Raiders memorabilia.
One fall, my parents’ dryer was broken and they couldn’t afford to replace it right away. All of our clothes were hung on the clothes line in the side yard – including my sister’s modified soccer jersey, a black and silver long sleeve with a giant silver number on the back. The jersey had been on the line all of four minutes when we saw a flash of a boy run through the side yard, grab the jersey and run. He thought he had snagged a Raiders jersey, but he would soon find out he had grabbed a girls modified soccer jersey.
So in a bit of revenge for all of the School of the Arts jerseys mistaken for Raiders jerseys and stolen over the years, I hope the Bills beat the Raiders.
