PLYMOUTH — It was another tension-filed draft for the Colonel’s Fantasy Football League.
All 12 franchise holders were in attendance and ready to select their teams for the season.
This can be a trying experience, since most of these Fantasy players know their stuff. Well, most bring the same cheat-sheets to the draft and go by the rankings.
But there are some mavericks who like to buck the trend and select players they think will have better seasons than all the experts predict.
One of those mavericks is Steve Andrejko, who is willing to change nearly all his players in one fell swoop. Steve likes to play the averages. He checks things like schedules and weather and injury reports.
He is a scholar of the Fantasy Football world. If they dolled out degrees for such study, Steve would have a PhD. Dr. Steve Andrejko would be his title.
The Colonel’s League is a quarterback-dominant league due to the unique scoring system devised by the Colonel himself. If he wasn’t already a colonel, The Colonel would be a doctor of Fantasy studies. He has managed to come up with a system that probably only he totally understands. Most of us franchise holders are at the mercy of The Colonel in tabulating our weekly scores.
But we know The Colonel would never manipulate the numbers to anyone’s advantage. So we travel to the Plymouth VFW Post 1425 every Thursday to review the standings, the results and to make changes, if we so desire. Dr. Steve is guaranteed to make at least one change, but more likely two or three.
For this year’s drat, I drew the ninth overall pick. That’s the bad news. The good news is there are three divisions — teams 1 through 4, then teams 5 through 8, and then teams 9 through 12. So I got the first pick in my division.
As expected, quarterbacks flew off the board in the first round: Luck, Rodgers, Wilson, P. Manning, Brady, Romo, Roethlisberger, Brees and then it fell to me. Took Matt Ryan of the Falcons. One the way back, as the 12th picker selects first in the second round, I got Philip Rivers of the Chargers. So Ryan and Rivers are not bad to have in this league.
I would have taken Dez Bryant and not Rivers, but Rickie “Pickles” McDaniels snared him right out from under me. Now there’s yet another Doctor of Fantasy Football — Pickles McDaniels. This guy is known for making his annual “Monster” pick. It usually comes in the later rounds, but this year, it was in the second round when he stole Dez from me.
So the night went pretty much as expected. There were a few surprises, like The Colonel taking Le’veon Bell in the second round even though he is suspended for two games.
All rosters look formidable. On paper, anyway. Now that the season has begun, the real test of our wisdom begins.
The truth is we never really know who will perform well and who won’t. Or who will get hurt. Or who will end up in the coach’s doghouse.
It’s pretty much a crap shoot.
But for these 11 guys and one gal, this league is the ultimate battlefield. Just like the old Shawnee Indians, it’s each team against the world. We all want to win and we want it bad.
But we laugh through it all. We accept the humbling embarrassments that happen every week when our sleeper picks fail us.
But sometimes it all falls together. Sometimes our team performs the way we expected. Sometimes Dr. Steve stands pat with his roster, but not often.
Fantasy Football is just that — a fantasy that creates a reality only the 12 franchise holders live in and where they control their individual teams.
Take no inference here, but it’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys and you know how funny monkeys can be.
