A Letter to the No Balls Assocation

Please excuse my rant about a league that does not exist.

I realize that we are elbows deep in the NFL season and approaching what should be the climax of the MLB season, but as an NBA season ticket holder, I’ve got some griping to do.

And no, this isn’t another “how to solve the lock-out” article, because I’ve resigned to the fact that these millionaires and multi-billionaires have no interest in working out a deal and that I won’t be witnessing a professional basketball game this season. This is, instead, an article about how the owners are literally robbing season ticket holders blind, and that there’s nothing we can do about it.

Week 3: Who to Play? Who to Bench?

We’re only 11.8% of the way through the regular season, but if I asked you to pick out 7 teams from each conference that you think have no chance of making the playoffs – ignoring the fact that an archaic rule exists by which someone has to represent the NFC West in January – I feel like we would agree on at least 13 of those 14 teams, with the margin of error accounting for the impartial votes of fans of those 14 otherwise hopeless teams.

On the flip side of that coin, if I asked you to pick out the 7 best teams from each conference, I think it’s safe to assume that our answers would only differ by how much you’re drinking the Bills and/or Redskins kool-aid. That leaves us with all of 2 teams from each conference (Buffalo, Tennessee, Tampa Bay, and Washington, from which you can probably infer my 14 in each of the other groups) that are somewhere in between the group of teams that could potentially make the playoffs and the group of teams that you hope and pray you never have to rely upon in your suicide pool.

Learning From Week 1 (Part 4 of 4)

If you missed any of the previous sections of this 4-part article, you can find them here:

Part 1: http://www.senditinjerome.com/2011/09/learning-from-week-1-part-1-of-4.html

Part 2: http://www.senditinjerome.com/2011/09/learning-from-week-1-part-2-of-4.html

Part 3: http://www.senditinjerome.com/2011/09/learning-from-week-1-part-3-of-4.html

Hopefully you’ve learned as much about these teams as I have. Before we dive into the final 8 teams, let’s make sure you have my Eliminator suggestions, as well as my upset pick of the week. Usually, more words will go into explaining these individual picks, but I feel the past 10,000 words should suffice:

Learning From Week 1 (Part 3 of 4)

If you missed either of the other parts, you can find them here:

Part 1 – http://www.senditinjerome.com/2011/09/learning-from-week-1-part-1-of-4.html

Part 2 – http://www.senditinjerome.com/2011/09/learning-from-week-1-part-2-of-4.html

In a nutshell, we’re looking back on the games from Week 1 in an attempt to learn from them without overreacting to them. The four games on the slate for today are New Orleans @ Green Bay, Buffalo @ Kansas City, Detroit @ Tampa Bay, and Minnesota @ San Diego. 

Learning From Week 1 (Part 2 of 4)

If you missed Part 1 of this 4 part series, you can find it here: http://www.senditinjerome.com/2011/09/learning-from-week-1-part-1-of-4.html

Today, we’ll see what we can learn from the Week 1 matchups of Atlanta @ Chicago, Cincinnati @ Cleveland, Dallas @ New York Jets, and New York Giants @ Washington.

Learning From Week 1 (Part 1 of 4)

It’s a long season.

Whether you won or lost last week, keep in mind that it takes more than one win to make the playoffs and more than one loss to miss out on the postseason. That isn’t to say that every week isn’t important, but you can’t overreact in either direction.

If you’re anything like me, you probably spent more than an hour or six mentally assembling your team in preparation for draft day; yet the amateur temptation is to throw caution to the wind and take a flyer on guys like Randall Cobb, Eric Decker, and Scott Chandler, even though you never once considered using a draft pick on them, and as recently as 6 days ago almost certainly couldn’t have even told me who they played for.

2011 Pre-Season Fantasy Preview

A little preface to this absurdly long article: Every year for the past 5 years, I’ve written a 10,000+ word post previewing my fantasy league’s season after our draft. Even though I don’t suspect anyone outside of our league will read the whole thing, I wanted to put it on this site anyway, since I devoted at least 12 hours to it.

As a bonus for reading the whole thing, you can find my NFL Season predictions at the bottom, as well as my top 5 suggested for week 1 if you’re in an eliminator/suicide pool. I’ve been doing the eliminator challenge for half a dozen years, and I have yet to lose in the first 7 weeks of the season. I have also yet to make it beyond week 10, so hopefully I can help you out in the early going and then you can avoid my pitfalls in the middle of the season.

I also make an Upset Pick of the Week in which I pick a team that’s at least a 3.5 point underdog to win outright. I started doing it mid-season last year and ended up going 7-4 outright and 10-1 against the spread.