Today's topic will be incompetence. Actually, it's in defense of
incompetence. There is so much of it within our hobby, I think we
need to find ways to turn it to our advantage.
Maybe as a start, we ought to stop knocking it. Incompetence has
always had an undeserved bad name. People speak of it as though
they alone, in all of fantasy fandom, were free of it. In truth,
it is a god-given gift with which we are all endowed.
We have to realize that incompetency is already a major factor within
the National Football League. It is unrecorded in the box scores,
but certainly there is nothing else produced in such quality. Over
the past four seasons, twenty-one different teams have won twenty-four
division crowns. Fourteen different teams have played in eight conference
championships. Seven teams have reached the Super Bowl. And a majority
of the coaching staffs have been replaced. These are the guidelines
of football professionals.
If competency within fantasy football replaced the helter-skelter
team management we get now, there would be perfect 16-0 seasons,
playoff slots would be decided in October, and the online support
industry would shrink to nothing. If all the better owners were
good forecasters, good drafters, and good roster managers, it would
be dull. There would be no need for any Monday night excitement
and certainly no need for the entertaining interplay of a head-to-head
schedule.
And, if you'll forgive me saying so, some of my best friends are
incompetent. Who needs fantasy friends who make us look bad by going
around doing things right all the time? Certainly not you or me!
I have online friends whose incompetence is their most likeable
characteristic and I've had league commissioners who were so lacking
that they were laughably loved by all.
Need proof? Just this week, an experienced FFLer selected RB Lamer
Smith MIA as the sixth overall pick in a newsgroup-based early
bird mock draft with all NFL players available. Afterwards,
the owner justified his selection with... "If you don't
have a good RB in FFL, you will get KILLED. You have to have at
least ONE "go-to" RB... WRs, NEVER score as reliably as
a good RB. QBs are a dime a dozen. At this stage of the game...I
had to get an RB."
My My My. Did he think it was the sixth round instead
of the sixth pick? While my fantasy forecasting skills are
as limited as the next guy, I imagine that many of you would agree
to have considered a handful of players prior to Mr Smith. We would
also project that a majority of us would disagree with the general
wide receiver and quarterback comments. Following him, I quickly
giggled and grabbed QB Kurt Warner STL in a league that rewards
passers with 6 point TD passes. Incompetence benefited me.
We can also see recent evidence of the advantages of my own incompetence;
I drafted QB Daunte Culpepper as a backup player for the disappointing
Rob Johnson ~and~ my outright avoiding to draft every reasonable
Raider player. More than once, I've learned that a cactus makes
a poor whoopie cushion.
Fortunately, I don't think there is much chance that the level of
incompetence in our hobby will improve in the foreseeable future.
In the last four seasons, I've hosted more than 750 youth fantasy
owners in no cost youth-only leagues. Take my word for it, as an
incompetent teacher, I am turning out a large number of equally
incompetent students ready to take their rightful place in our bungling
hobby. Our future is very safe... and the Lions have a chance to
win a Super Bowl. Yeah. Sure they do. Everyone knows TC. He is entering his 16th
season as an active fantasy football participant and his seventh
season as a leading member of the online FF community. In addition
to hosting the popular YouthFantasyFootball and FanEx websites,
he is active in various other projects within our hobby. Specifically,
he has become a popular freelance writer whose work has been widely
published both online and in print. Yep, everyone knows TC... sooner
or later.
