Choosing Up Sides

I’ve always been of the opinion that the NFL, and most other professional sporting leagues, is far superior to college football. In fact, one of the first articles I ever wrote for the Village Tavern was about this very subject. And I stand by this – as the Sports Guy pointed out a couple of weeks ago, 90% of the talk about college football involves some form of complaining about the system, the coaches, the media, the players, or the announcers. It’s quite possible that there’s no more corrupt industry in the United States than big-time college football. However, this year I actually got to go to one of Florida’s games (against South Carolina), and I have to admit, there’s very little in pro sports approaching that atmosphere. And I’ve decided that I might actually be missing something by not following college football at all. I’m not going to pick a team right now – since I may be going to grad school within the next 2-3 years, this would mean I’d either have to pick a school for its football team or become a sports bigamist – but I’ll at least pick a team to root for in each of the BCS Bowl games. So here it goes:

CONSOLATION GAME TO FINISH SOMEWHERE BETWEEN FOURTH AND EIGTH PLACE – BOISE STATE VS. OKLAHOMA:

Best reasons to root for Boise State: Although I hate gimmicky stuff in sports as a general, there’s something about that blue field that is just really cool, especially since it’s in Idaho and is therefore the coolest sports-related landmark in the state by default…underappreciated former Bears running back Brock Forsey went there (you remember him because he was briefly on the fantasy radar with a 150 yard, 3 TD game against the Cardinals, after Anthony Thomas and Thomas Jones both got hurt that year)…my ex-girlfriend is from Norman, and her parents are OU fans, so there's definite potential to root against Oklahoma out of spite…every year, there are 2-3 teams from crappy conferences that go undefeated or only take one loss, but get no championship consideration because of their schedule, and Boise State is one of these teams EVERY year – which completely shoots the “every game is a playoff game in college football” argument to hell – and if Boise State gets hammered, BCS apologists are going to get to maintain that smug, “see, I told you so, all of the non-BCS conferences are horrid” attitude…from what I know of myself I will definitely take Adrian Peterson three rounds too early in my fantasy draft next year if he has a remotely decent game while I’m watching.

Best reasons to root for Oklahoma: The coach apparently cut their stud quarterback for some kind of violation before the season, which is admirable, and they still made it into a BCS Bowl game…Tommie Harris went there, which would make more of a difference if he was going to be healthy for the playoffs…I always like Jason White for finishing college and predictably shredding his knees when he probably could have jumped early and been a first-day pick, and hardly anybody remembers how good he was in college now.

Pick: Boise State. Hopefully all of them are this easy.

CONSOLATION GAME TO FINISH SOMEWHERE BETWEEN FOURTH AND SEVENTH PLACE – LOUISVILLE VS. WAKE FOREST:

Best reasons to root for Louisville: Apparently Louisville has a ton of offensive firepower and does every year – now, I’m generally opposed to NFL teams that are constructed this way, but that’s because to win a championship in the NFL, you have to win three or four games against good teams in a row, at least one of which will probably be in a hailstorm, and it’s stupid to try to do this with offense (which is why nobody’s been able to since Dick Vermeil’s Rams, who were ridiculously loaded and got to have every playoff game in a dome) – in college, to win a championship, you have to be able to generate a ton of hype and beat every bad team you play by at least thirty points, so going with offense makes a lot more sense. Plus, most college football games are pretty much meaningless, so they might as well be entertaining…um, my mom worked around Louisville for awhile before I was born, and I’ve always thought it was a really cool-looking city when we drove through it…yeah, I really don’t know that much about either of these teams.

Best reasons to root for Wake Forest: Tim Duncan and Chris Paul always seemed like classy guys (and I still laugh every time I read this article about Tim Duncan), then again, so did all of the Wheaton basketball players I knew, and this didn’t carry over to the football team…Wake Forest apparently hasn’t had a remotely decent football team in forever, so it would be nice to see the one they have now finish well.

Pick: Louisville - I can only give a school's football program so much credit for producing two quality basketball players in fifteen years.

CONSOLATION GAME TO FINISH SOMEWHERE BETWEEN SECOND AND FIFTH PLACE – NOTRE DAME VS. LSU:

Best reasons to root for Notre Dame: Notre Dame is the closest consistently decent college football program to the Chicago area, and when they’re doing well, they’re treated like a borderline local team…even though Charlie Weiss probably has a lot of enemies between his Pats ties and his Notre Dame ties, he’s seemed likable every time I’ve heard or seen him interviewed…because of all of the older pro sports teams I’ve grown up with, I’ve always appreciated sports teams that had a lot of history...one of their backup defensive lineman from a few years ago helped Frodo and Gollum destroy the One Ring …former LSU star Michael Clayton was on my fantasy team this year.

Best reasons to root for LSU: Every team from the New Orleans area is still a little bit tough to root against, although I’m giving this trend a couple more weeks at best (I think I'll be completely fed up with it about a day before the NFC Championship game this year)…Brady Quinn has more than a little of the Derek Jeter/Tom Brady/Matt Leinert-pretty boy gene that makes you secretly hope they break their femur every time you see them play if they aren’t on your favorite team - it just hasn’t been fully realized because he hasn’t won a Championship in anything yet…the Freemasons, Illuminati, and/or five Jewish Bankers are apparently running a secret media campaign to make everyone forget that LSU won the BCS Title Game in 2003, so any major LSU win would be a serious blow to them.

Pick: Notre Dame, mostly because they feel too much like a local team to root against.

CONSOLATION GAME TO PROBABLY FINISH IN SECOND OR THIRD PLACE – MICHIGAN VS. USC:

Best reasons to root for Michigan: As hinted at earlier, USC backers routinely refer to their “National Championship” in 2003 without mentioning anything about LSU, which annoys me every time I hear it…Matt Leinert and Reggie Bush went to USC…The Trojans are slowly evolving into the Yankees of College Football, only it’s worse because being overhyped every year actually helps them compete for championships (if anything it seems to hurt the Yankees a little bit)…nobody will ever realize that the Pac-10 is not a great football conference if USC wins this game…Michigan got hosed by the BCS worse than anyone other than arguably Boise State this year – I mean, seriously, if you’re picking a one-loss team, how is any loss less significant than losing a relatively close road game to the best team in the country? Because it happened late in the season, or because people don’t want to see a rematch? Would it make sense to say that you don’t want to see the Bears and Patriots in the Super Bowl because they already played in the regular season, or if one of them loses in Week 17? Ugh.

Best reasons to root for USC: Carson Palmer (currently my fantasy team’s only real bright spot) and Troy Polomalu went there…David Terrell, Charles Rogers, and Tom Brady went to Michigan…my friend Beau goes to USC, and I usually pull for my buddies’ teams when they aren’t playing one of my teams and I don’t have substantial fantasy or standings-related reasons not too…having been raised as a Chicago sports fan, I instinctively hate all teams from Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin…if Michigan blows out USC and Florida wins a close one, we’re going to have a serious BCS mess on our hands.

Pick: Michigan, mostly because I want a serious BCS mess; it’s the only way things are ever going to get better.

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME – FLORIDA VS. OHIO STATE:

Best reasons to root for Florida: The Gators and Northwestern are the only D-I college football teams I’ve seen at home, and considering that Northwestern almost lost to Wheaton in hoops this year, I can’t count their game as a major athletic experience (the NU game I went to was after their peak in the 90s, and they really were never competing for a national championship even then)…it would be cool to be able to say that I saw the national champions play (and almost get beat) in person…my friend David Yates is going to Florida and was a huh-yuge Gators fan even before he did…the Bears have a ton of Florida guys right now, and a Gator win might be inspiring (quick aside on the Tank Johnson gun issue: I think it’s mostly a North-South cultural thing – up here in Chicago, if somebody owns three guns, it means that they’re probably either a criminal or a borderline psychopath, while in the South it just means that they don’t have enough free time or money to properly care for five guns. I also get the impression that Southerners aren't used to following every unneccesarily beauacratic and borderline unconstitutional law on the books unless they have personal enemies in local government or law enforcement.)…Florida’s one of those defensive teams that wins every close game but never really looks all that stylish, a lot like the Jim Miller-era Bears, and it’d be nice to see someone actually win a championship in something with a team like that…it would partly make up for all the recent years that the best team in the SEC got screwed out of a title shot (or actually won the game and was still not considered the champion), although college football has somehow managed to put what is probably the worst SEC champion this decade into the title game.

Best reasons to root for Ohio State: I’ve always kind of liked the Buckeyes since the title game against Miami, mostly because it was the prototypical example from that era of a deep, underrated Midwest team knocking off a ridiculously overhyped East Coast team that relied on five or six star players…they’re obviously the best team this year and therefore on some level deserve to win…my friend David Yates is going to Florida and was a huh-yuge Gators fan even before he did…Florida fans got a championship in basketball like, seriously, just last year…Mark might drive his car off of a cliff if Florida wins this game…although a lot of people are annoyed by it, I’ve actually always thought the “the” Ohio State Buckeyes thing was kind of endearing.

Pick: Florida, more for the BCS mess that will result than anything else.

Well, now I’ll know what to be watching for, even if I’m just watching the scores scroll by under a regular-season Bulls game. Happy New Year, everyone.

Losing Touch With Reality

Like most things that can be done for free on the internet, fantasy leagues, especially football, have seen a massive boom in popularity in the last five years or so. It’s gotten to the point where I’m a little bit hesitant to trust a male between 20 and 35 who doesn’t play fantasy sports, much like any guy under 30 who doesn’t play video games at all.

For the most part, this has helped to create a better, more educated fan. In the past, people really only followed the elite teams in the league, as well as their home team and division rivals, however, now each fan pays at least some attention to every team in the league. For example, right now if I had to write down the starting and backup Quarterback and halfback, top three receivers, and starting tight end for every team in the NFL, I’d probably get at least 85% of them right, and I doubt anyone in my league would do worse than 60%. This knowledge isn’t at all useful in any other area of life, and honestly it’s not even really that helpful in a fantasy league, but you just kind of absorb it. In addition, we now care about any development that might have the slightest impact on any individual player’s performance. However, I think that sometimes, we may be looking a little too closely and allowing our fantasy interests to influence our perceptions of the actual game. Some of these misconceptions are already starting to influence the actions of GMs and coaches in addition to fans. So, I’ve decided to take it upon myself to point out the five major misconceptions I’ve noticed, before things get too out of hand.

Misconception #1 - Yardage Makes the Team: This actually goes back to before fantasy football and has to do with the way that teams are ranked offensively and defensively, although FFL has definitely made things worse. Apparently at some point it was decided that total yardage should be used to rank offenses and defenses in the NFL, which is kind of like ranking baseball teams by the number of hits they get/allow, or NBA teams by the number of shot attempts. What was wrong with just ranking them by how many points they score/allow? I understand that people are trying to evaluate the offensive and defensive “units” of a team, but isn’t the best offensive team the one that can score the most points, even if they do it because they score with their special teams and defense and usually have good field position? The problem is that you can’t really separate a team’s offensive and defensive success in football any more than you can in basketball or soccer. Even though different players involved, each unit feeds off of (or is held back by) the other.

Misconception # 2 – A Great Offense Starts With a Great Running Back: While Mark may wish to dispute this, fantasy football teams are largely built around the running back position. What a lot of people forget is that the running back is the third or fourth most important player on most running plays (behind the blockers immediately involved), and is really only important on passing plays when the defense sends the house or the offensive line screws up. Because of this, on a real football team, the running back is like one of the regular employees at Target or Best Buy - it helps to have someone consistently great, and it hurts to have someone woefully incompetent, but very few people are good or bad enough to make a noticeable difference – right now in the NFL, Tomlinson is an all-time great, Alexander and LJ are good enough to make a difference, and that’s really about it. Just imagine, if there was a massive trade this summer where Fred Taylor, Cadillac Williams, Dominic Rhodes, the Jones Triplets, Reuben Droughns, Deuce McAllister, Willie Parker, Travis Henry, Willis McGahee, Tatum Bell, Chester Taylor, Rudi Johnson, Ronnie Brown, Frank Gore, Jamal Lewis, and Edgerrin James all changed teams…would anyone really get noticeably better or worse? Am I nuts for thinking that all of those guys are pretty much interchangeable? If anything, the teams getting the less established guys would benefit because of the cap space. By the way, that was more than half of the starting running backs in the NFL.

Misconception #3 – Running Back Committees are Killing the NFL: Let’s face the facts – Marion Barber III has 11 rushing TDs this year, third in the NFL. Brandon Jacobs has 8. Maurice Jones-Drew and Joseph Addai have 7. Cedric Benson and Mike Bell have 5. All six of those guys, by the way, have more touchdowns than the “starting” running backs on their respective teams, and Jacobs is the only one in the group that would be considered a goal-line back. Within the last few years, the Chiefs, Bears, Saints, and Patriots have all used first-round picks on running backs when they already had accomplished starters they weren’t planning to get rid of, which would have once been considered insanity. The running back by committee era has started, and it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. I wouldn’t even be shocked if, within ten years, running backs are on a “touch count,” like starting pitchers, and coaches won’t let them get the ball more than 20-25 times a game.

This has two obvious effects on fantasy football – one is that the “stud” running back is an endangered species, much like the manatee. In most years there have been 5 or 10 backs that could be counted on for 15-30 points every week, now there’s really just Tomlinson and Johnson (the Alexander and Portis injuries haven’t helped either). The other effect is that there are now 40-50 running backs who can be expected to at least get a few touches in every game, so you rarely have people being forced into starting Troy Hambrick or Zack Crockett, and both of these developments make fantasy football a lot less fun. But are they really bad for the NFL? Running backs should stay healthier and have longer careers, offenses have more different looks available, there’s more potential for locker room dissension and infighting, and there are that many more crazy personalities to follow…I don’t see any downside here. I don’t think people would even hate Shannahan if not for fantasy football, although I think he does this to the point that it’s detrimental to his team (especially if he’s going to do this with the quarterback, too).

Misconception #4 – Turnovers Don’t Matter: I don’t think that any football fans actually think this, at least not when watching a game they have a rooting interest in, but I do think that very few leagues penalize turnovers nearly enough, and that this has started to affect the way that people evaluate certain players and teams. I’m basing this off of two things – one, that everyone thought the Bengals were struggling early this season because Palmer wasn’t throwing for enough TDs and yards, when the real problem was that he was fumbling too much (which has improved along with the other #s - and no, I probably wouldn't have noticed this if he wasn't on my fantasy team), and two, that multiple people considered Daunte Culpepper to be one of the best QBs in the league in his prime, despite the fact that he was a mortal lock to average at least 1.5 turnovers per game.

Misconception #5 – Numbers Don’t Lie: You’d probably think I was crazy if I said that London Fletcher was the best defensive player in the league right now, wouldn’t you? Or that DeMeco Ryans and Kerry Rhodes were better than Brian Urlacher? Of course you would, even though both of those things are true in our fantasy league. Because you’re still used to evaluating defensive players by, of all things, watching football games that they play in. Unfortunately, average fans now have to be able to evaluate every offensive player, not just the Pro Bowlers and the ones on their favorite team. And since few people have the time or desire to watch every game in the league (and even if you do, a lot of the games happen at the same time), we now evaluate offensive players based almost exclusively on their statistics.

The problem is, statistics aren’t perfect. If Tony Romo bounces a pass off of a defensive back’s hands, and TO scores a touchdown, it looks exactly the same on your fantasy league page as it would if it was a perfect strike. If TO drops a pass, it looks the same as if Romo missed him by five yards (I’m using these two as examples since I’m watching the Cowboys-Saints game right now, and because neither of those players get nearly enough attention. As far as the game goes, let’s just say that the Saints are starting to scare me a little bit as a Bears fan, and the Cowboys scare me even less than they did before this week). The second-best receiver often outperforms the primary receiver on a team because of the way defenses cover them (Owens and Terry Glenn, TJ Houshmanzadeh and 85 in the first half of this season, Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce a few years ago, Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne – an up-and-coming Holt/Bruce situation btw, Marques Colston and Joe Horn, etc.). The #2 running back on a team always gets more yards per carry than the starter, even though they’re rarely actually better.

Or, for a historical example, look at Gayle Sayers – in his best season (1966), he had over 1600 combo yards and 10 TDs, which would make him a borderline fantasy stud. If you take his second-best season (1969), he would have had fewer fantasy points (in our league) through 14 games than, among others, Chester Taylor, Kevin Jones, Joseph Addai, Rudi Johnson, Marion Barber, Thomas Jones, and Reggie Bush. He’d be a #2 running back at best. Or, for a more recent example, look at John Elway’s 1998 season. You’d think that you’d take the 1998 John Elway over anyone in the league but Manning and maybe Palmer or Brady (who is an average fantasy quarterback). Not if you were starting a fantasy team. If you were doing that, you’d rather have Jon Kitna.

There are some things that could help a little with this. I think it’d be a good idea to penalize turnovers that lead to points more harshly, or give quarterbacks and defenses ten points for a win, or give points for getting first downs, but fantasy scoring is already too complicated for a lot of people. So all I’m asking is that you vt readers not be part of the problem. Just watch as many real games as fantasy ones for the rest of the season, and form your opinions based on the former.