The Knute Rockne of fantasy football

“[Fantasy] football in America is a special game, a unique game. Played no where else on earth—it is a rare game. The men who play it make it so.”

The guys at work and I are in a fantasy football league together. I’ve never done fantasy football before, in fact, I’ve always considered it a pretty nerdy thing to do, but the more involved I get in the league, the more I enjoy it—and the older I get, the more I realize that I am a nerd.

The way fantasy football works is this… you put together a roster of players from various teams around the NFL. Each player is awarded so many points for his weekly performance—touchdowns, interceptions, fumble recoveries, and offensive yards are all ways in which a player can earn points. The league will match my team up with the team of a co-worker and whoever’s team has the most cumulative points that week, wins the game.

“Benny, why'd you bring that kid?”
“Because he makes nine of us.”
“Yeah yeah, so does my sister, but I didn't bring her along!”

The season begins with a draft. Everyone in the league (about 8-10 guys) log onto the internet at a specified time on a specified day and one by one, each guy picks an NFL player to be on his team. Just like picking teams at grade-school recess, all the best players go first. Once you get down to your last several picks, you’re pretty much just looking for either the best of the worst players or the worst of the best players—either way, it’s the guys you don’t plan on ever playing unless your star players get injured (each team gets 16 picks, but only 10 of them actually count toward your weekly score (it’s up to you which ten) the other six just ride the bench.

My favorite NFL team is the Seattle Seahawks. I love a chance to watch them play and I’m always checking their website Monday mornings to check the score if I missed a game. But I don’t really pay a lot of attention to the rest of the NFL. In order to put a good team together, you’ve got to know the league pretty well. Years of playing fantasy football will do that for you.

Enter account manager Kelly Conroy:

“With any luck, he's got the grail already”

Every story has an antagonist. Every schoolyard has a bully. And every fantasy football league has a ringer. Conroy is ours. He’s been doing this for years. He knows the height and weight of every player in the NFL. He knows their yards gained, their touchdowns scored, their shoe size and their mothers’ maiden names.

“Your friends up there on the Sanctuary Moon are walking into a trap. As is your Rebel fleet! It was I who allowed the Alliance to know the location of the shield generator. It is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops awaits them.”

It was Kelly’s idea we start up this league. It was Kelly who everybody went to for advice on which players to pick and how to manage their team. It was Kelly who we believe sabotaged the rest of us, because it is Kelly who’s got the only undefeated team and a cushy 48 point lead.

“Show me a good and gracious loser, and I'll show you a failure.”

I’ve lost once already this season, and I don’t plan on losing again. Only problem is that my Randy Dragons haven’t even faced off yet against Kelly’s TurboLax Attack. The one game I’ve lost so far was a close one (75-67 against Jeff’s Noonan), but looking forward to next week’s match up (Randy Dragons vs. TurboLax Attack) I’m a 24-point underdog.

“We’re gonna beat the army, Gus.”

“Oh, Rock…”

“No. We’re gonna beat ‘em. I got an idea. You see, all the eastern teams, like the Army, they’re all power—knock you down, run over you like a steam roller. All right—if you can’t go around the steam roller, you go over it.

No team has ever used the forward pass as the major threat of its offense; consequently, no team has ever had a good defense against it. Gus, we’re pass the Army—we’re gonna pass ‘em dizzy. Gimme that ball.”

“Rock! If that works, it’ll make history!”

Without a doubt, Kelly’s got the best team and the best players, and he’s been doing this for long enough that he knows the system backwards and forwards. But every giant has a weakness. With every game or sport, when you take a second to think of the freedoms allowed by the rules, instead of the restrictions imposed by them, you will discover new strategies, an unorthodox plan of attack.

“I saw something tonight—got the idea of a lifetime. Of a lifetime! Professor, Doc, I saw a show tonight in Chicago—chorus girls, a whole row of ‘em. What rhythm! It was like poetry just watching them move. Beautiful. Effortless. Effortless! Get the idea?”

“Chorus girls?”

“At your age, Rock?”

“No, no, no. But they gave me the idea for a new backfield shift. And, gentlemen, it will revolutionize the game—revolutionize it! No lost motion. No wasted momentum. Split second timing. I can see it now. And the public—the public will love it: it’s new, it’s colorful—great showmanship. And it’s new! IT’S NEW!”

For Knute Rockne and Notre Dame it was the forward pass and backfield motion. For me and the Randy Dragons it’s player selection. The nature of the fantasy football draft exhausts the league of the best players—ranked so by their passing, rushing, or receiving touchdowns and such. Consequentally, those are the first players to go, but there aren’t enough of them to go around to fill your entire roster, so you’ve got to fill some positions with a few players who maybe first string in that position on the team they play for, but as far as fantasy point production—they’re at the bottom of the totem pole.

“But now is the time to work and strain at a sport that tests the spirit and challenges the brain.”

But what if I could find a group of players that weren’t highly ranked (it’s usually the rank that people look at when selecting a player), but that could produce the points that a ranked player would? Well, I found the way.

“I found the clues that will safely take us through, in the chronicles of St. Anselm.”

The secret is in kick returners—especially those who play for really lousy teams. Your average kick will be returned to the 20 yard line (and in our league kick returners get 1 point per 10 yards). Say he plays for a team with a crumby defense, he’s going to be returning maybe 5 kicks per game (not including punts), that’s about 10 points per game—the best of my worst players before I made these moves was struggling to score 5 points per game. And if my kick returners play in a shut-out game where no scoring leads to no kick offs, they’ll score their points returning punts.

“The game is wide open. Nothing gets by. X’s and O’s on a blackboard are translated into imagination on the field. It can be one man rising above the obscurity of the grim, no-glory duty of special teams.”

And now I have a team full of stars (my first draft picks) and productive kick returners. No more are the days of team members who don’t score points. Now I’ve got a team full of guys who average at least 10 points a game!

“They can’t do that!”
“They just did—for 45 yards. That’ll revolutionize football!”

I’m going to beat Kelly’s TurboLax Attack. I’m going to beat him in a way he never saw coming. My team will score 100 points per game, and I’m going to do it with all the players you’ve never heard of.

“Alright, boys. The Army’s got us thirteen to nothing, and they’ve earned it—played us off our feet. Right off our feet! We’re not gonna win the second half… unless we have team work!That’s what this game needs is team work. We’re gonna send ourselves out as a unit. If we do that we’ve got nothing to worry about. We’re gonna go back in that second half and when we receive the kick off, I want you to use those heads all the time—I want you to be smart! I want the men in that back field to hit that line: right side, left side. Right side, Left side. Right, Left! RIGHT, LEFT all the time! Get ‘em on the run. Go on down that field—right down that field, over that old goal line with the [Randy Dragon] spirit!”