Fantasy Football

Last night commenced the fifth season of Phi Alpha Gamma Fantasy Football. We have expanded to ten teams this year, up from a paltry eight last season. We also upgraded this year to Stat Tracker and a trophy to the winner. The Blue Team is officially the unofficial home for all league commentary and analysis as of this point forward. League members, feel free to use the comments function on my blog to post your thoughts.

Our championship history is as follows:

2002 champ: Kev
2003 champ: Mean Steve
2004 champ: I was the blind squirrel who found the nut. Thanks Corey Dillon.
2005 champ: Mean Steve, now a two-time champion. I was the blind squirrel still searching for any kind of nut. Thanks Corey Dillon (he's starting this week...oh wait, just kidding), Fat Jamal Lewis, TO, Baltimore's D, Todd Heap of crap, and my number 2 & 3 WRs (I had none).

With that, Phi Alpha will have a four team playoff for the title this year in weeks 15 & 16. The early line is on Grandpa winning due to his aged wisdom. Over/under on number of times a reference to male sexuality is made on our league message board: 3,457,929. I'll take the over, thanks.

Now, since it is my blog, others can look at my team on here. I think it could be fun for casual readers to make fun of my team and its losing this year, so have at it.

Today is the morning after the draft. I feel like someone who went out last night, had a great time, got "totally wasted dude," and is now looking at the pictures from the previous evenings adventure. I have one of those, "man, why did I do that?" faces on right now. Last night's draft seemed ok about 10:30pm. Now, twelve hours later, it looks like I was drunk while drafting. Please people, don't drink and draft.

Without further adieu, the 2006 Hokie Thugs:

QBs: Culpepper, Plummer
RBs: LT, Reuben Droughns, Jamal Lewis
WRs: TO, Marvin Harrison, Javon Walker, David Givens, Eric Moulds
TE: Shockey
K: Shayne Graham
Def: Baltimore, Denver

Yikes. Draft notes:

• Larry Johnson went first overall to Bloman
• Reggie Bush went in the second round to Andizzle
• Mean Steve & Bloman already made 3,000 homo references or so. And we're off...
• Neil Rackers went in round 5 to NY Matt. Bloman almost jumped off a bridge.
• Carly Patterson re-entered our lives on Fox's new show "Celebrity Duets." Somehow, she advanced, even though she sings like a dying ostrich. Chris Jericho of wrestling and Fozzy fame was eliminated. What's that abooot? But Carly was looking strong as usual.
• Easy E's team is named "Reginald Vel Johnson." This is great because it simultaneously keeps alive Carl Winslow and Vel in our hearts. "Hey boooo"
• Both Zach Hilton (UNC alum) and Karl Hankton (Panthers' special teams ace) were drafted.

There you have it. I'll try and post league updates sporadically to keep everyone in the loop who is not in this league. As I stated, please feel free to post comments on the blog.

Nickelback's thought of the day: "I like your pants around your feet..."

Whew, let's roll

So when you sign up to work in the sports industry, you also sign up to move around frequently. But seriously, I had no idea it'd be like this. To summarize my last six weeks, I've:

• been offered jobs with two companies
• weighed possibilities at five different NCAA D-I institutions
• accepted a job with ISP Sports at Virginia Tech
• lived in a hotel for eight days
• worked approx 52.6 hours/week
  
• lived alone in a 4/5 bedroom house with no cable for four weeks
• watched my entire year's movie quota in two weeks (I think I've seen ten movies or so since moving to here, the best of which I had seen before," Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle"; lewd, perverse, full of mary jane, vulgar, and stupid. But daggum, I LOL watching that flick and I never LOL. I don't even use the acronym LOL, I hate it. )
  
• moved back to a hotel for three more days (M-W this week)
• lived with a co-worker for two days (Th-F this week)
• moved into a condo (Sat, August 19th, or else I may kill someone)

Other than that, nothing has been going on. So I live in Blacksburg, Virginia now, which is "near" Roanoke, VA. Quick thoughts on B-burg: decent weather right now, but it will be very cold in the winter b/c it is really in the mountains. The town is very collegiate, with restrictions on building heights and corporate stores (no Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot) & drive thrus. Christiansburg is an adjoining town with all the restaurant chains and shopping destinations. Blacksburg is incredibly hilly, which makes sense in the mountains, but makes jogging (soft J) quite difficult at times. The views around here of the Blue Ridge/Appalachian Mountains are found on post cards. The people are very friendly in general, the food is decent, the tea is still sweet, and the VT Hokies are THE attraction in the surrounding area. The only negative are 1) Bojangles is 30 minutes away; 2) There is not a hip-hop station, period. As in none. In Clemson, they had one, but white people ran it, so it sucked. But Blacksburg has none. Makes the name of the town kind of ironic, huh? 3) I get Comcast Sports out of DC/Maryland instead of Fox Sports South. No Turner South. So even when I get cable, it will not include much of the Atlanta Braves (good thing?). I'm also highly concerned about my NFL games in the fall. I'm afraid it'll be back to my childhood roots of seeing Redskins games...which means limited viewing of the Panthers. This could be catastrophic.

But enough about my life, seeing as I don't usually tell you, the reader, anything about me, the writer/rambler. The past six weeks in sports have been rather boring actually, and I have missed a great deal of it due to the lack of cable tv. Quick highlights: NBA Draft was fun; World Cup stunk for the US, but congrats to Italy;great pennant races in MLB, Braves notwithstanding; Maurice Clarett is officially the dumbest former marquee collegiate athlete/saddest story of the sports season; Floyd Landis won the Tour de France, but he cheated, but he claims not to have cheated, but he got fired anyway and got stripped of his title; Tiger Woods won another major, like that's surprising; and finally, NFL Training camps started.

My thoughts are as follows: the Braves have serious long-term problems still and this style of baseball (poor pitching, low on-base percentage, no speed) will be the doom of their success; Maurice Clarett's story is just really, really sad, and Rhino, you were always correct about Clarett being an idiot, even though he was pretty dang good at Ohio State and the Buckeyes still have a ring; Floyd Landis' doping allegations are a huge deal in the cycling world and further the negative stereotypes of American athletes around the world, as well as the negative image of the sport of cycling as a whole; Tiger Woods is the friggin' man and the story of him winning after his father's death, along with his emotion because of it, might be the best sports story of the summer; and finally, I could care less about NFL training camp/preseason football. Call me when the regular season starts.

Looking ahead, I see some writing about college football (shocking) and predictions for both the NFL and NCAA in the near future. I promise to be more diligent in posting until the college season begins. I know my time will be sparse, but I enjoy doing this blog thing, so I'll try to budget that at least once a week. Hope everyone out there is doing well. Shouts to BigBalla on his new j-o-b; the newest member of the Phi Alpha family: SPIT; and to the boo for helping me move seventeen times.

Ya'll behave. It ain't a hit 'til Nate Dogg spit...

I apologize

Sorry about not posting in over a month. Give me about one more week for things to settle down. We'll see about getting something up soon. Peace.