Been a while since I commented. Still enjoying the content, and I will echo the sentiment of William in that is the most fascinating sports read today.
My 12 year old son Anthony is really starting to get into this shit, so on top of helping him start his first fantasy league with his friends, most of which are on the basketball team I coach, I paid for a 50 dollar entry for him into the survivor contest amongst my buddies (and subsequently forgot to enter myself.) It's a small contest, 42 entries this year, and he checked all the matchups and locked in on the Raiders rather quickly. I refused to "educate" him on why that's a bad pick in a small contest as the risk/reward just isn't there, because that lecture ALWAYS goes the way of whatever my advice was, as sure-fire losing, and the Raiders steamrolling, etc. So I kept quiet.
But then I decided to enter the Splash sports $100 3 mil gtd for myself. With 33,334 entries, this contest has double picks in weeks 3, 6, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 (!!!), before going back to single for weeks 17 and 18. That's a total of 26 selections if it goes the distance. with the help of AI, comparing it to Circa and the 20 selections and doing some rough estimates on past circa results, I figure this thing is probably going till at least week 16, and possibly the whole way, so using 24 to 26 teams, there is some merit to taking trash teams in good spots along the way.
So I'm hemming and hawing and playing with numbers, fretting who to pick, then it dawned on me, Hop on the Anthony Raiders bandwagon! Plus I'm thinking what are the chances I can survive this absurd contest, so sometimes it's more fun to just revert to hunches and karma with this shit. But thankfully it ended up being such an easy sweat.
Anyway, its's funny, It's the same way for me, with the waning interest. My heart just isn't in it anymore. It used to be SO into this shit. I was in a half-dozen leagues with my friends, and would do anywhere from 200 to 400 best ball drafts. On top of that, I would listen to tons of podcasts and SiriusXM Fantasy back in the day. This is the second year of not being in a home league, and I only did 3 best ball drafts. (I was just burned out and soured from the World Cup best ball draft where I drafted so much Argentina/Spain stacks, was 2x field on Messi, yet somehow failed to have even one team in the finals). All I have is the one survivor pool, an ATS pool, the 3 best ball drafts, and I'll probably donate 10 to 20 a week in DFS even though all the rake free contests that I used to get in are gone. Plus rooting for the Lions... Actually, detaching myself from all the other stuff makes rooting for them feel closer to what it used to be like.
Anyway, now Anthony is getting really into fantasy, it's sort of like a torch passing is in the midst. It was a lot of fun helping him set up the draft, which we had at our house. As an aside, it was the most ADHD draft I've ever been a part of: Three of the kids took our dog for a walk mid-draft, one kid lost his phone twice when he was on the clock, and a full pickup basketball game broke out mid-draft. But since the draft, he's been so into it, proposing trades, talking trash. I drive a few of the kids home from his football team and they're all in the league. They're all talking shit to each other in the car on the way home from practice, and it reminds me of how it used to be for me with my friends when it was just about the home league you were in, for bragging rights. It's almost more rewarding seeing his joy with it when most of mine has been sucked out by so much of the nonsense that my cynical mind can't get past; with the way the NFL operates and the way gambling is now.
I just hope I am not creating a degenerate, so I will definitely be mindful of that.
That's awesome your kid and his friends are into it. Good thing you let him keep the Raiders! I remember being nervous as hell for my draft in 1997 -- I really wanted to have a good team.
Great stuff, man. Your writing about the psychology behind NFL and MLB picks is just about the most fascinating sports read available today. You have a real talent for it.
Sorry, Liss! Your writing is excellent and you have a way of making the audience feel the pain right there with you. Are we sure Mike McDaniel is a good OC? He had two absolute freaks that year in Miami. Also, I have never been a fan of Chase Brown, but thought he had a little wiggle and juice yesterday. He reminds me of Matt Forte. He doesn’t have a lot of lateral ability, but seems to read the holes well and is decisive. Fantasy (and probably Survivor) = art…not science. I always feel like you end up regretting when you lean into the analytic mid wits, AI tools. Etc..
Thanks! I write about it to process it! And it's art/science, and the balance is always the rub. I've leaned too much on the art at times, but this was too much science.
Totally understood. Something like Survivor really depends on getting in sync with some sort of deep or alternate consciousness that can't really be explained. It's happened to me in a home Survivor contest where I just "knew" the right answer. However, I didn't end up winning just like you and Dalton. Somewhere along the line I was kicked out (or lost my way) of that reality.
Circa survivor is a joke with 10 entries. Literally steroid era baseball dynamic.
So glad your weekly NFL musings are back!
Really this is Jeff’s fault for trying to talk you into taking the Jags
real talk, that nutless monkey reverse psychologied me into it!
Been a while since I commented. Still enjoying the content, and I will echo the sentiment of William in that is the most fascinating sports read today.
My 12 year old son Anthony is really starting to get into this shit, so on top of helping him start his first fantasy league with his friends, most of which are on the basketball team I coach, I paid for a 50 dollar entry for him into the survivor contest amongst my buddies (and subsequently forgot to enter myself.) It's a small contest, 42 entries this year, and he checked all the matchups and locked in on the Raiders rather quickly. I refused to "educate" him on why that's a bad pick in a small contest as the risk/reward just isn't there, because that lecture ALWAYS goes the way of whatever my advice was, as sure-fire losing, and the Raiders steamrolling, etc. So I kept quiet.
But then I decided to enter the Splash sports $100 3 mil gtd for myself. With 33,334 entries, this contest has double picks in weeks 3, 6, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 (!!!), before going back to single for weeks 17 and 18. That's a total of 26 selections if it goes the distance. with the help of AI, comparing it to Circa and the 20 selections and doing some rough estimates on past circa results, I figure this thing is probably going till at least week 16, and possibly the whole way, so using 24 to 26 teams, there is some merit to taking trash teams in good spots along the way.
So I'm hemming and hawing and playing with numbers, fretting who to pick, then it dawned on me, Hop on the Anthony Raiders bandwagon! Plus I'm thinking what are the chances I can survive this absurd contest, so sometimes it's more fun to just revert to hunches and karma with this shit. But thankfully it ended up being such an easy sweat.
Anyway, its's funny, It's the same way for me, with the waning interest. My heart just isn't in it anymore. It used to be SO into this shit. I was in a half-dozen leagues with my friends, and would do anywhere from 200 to 400 best ball drafts. On top of that, I would listen to tons of podcasts and SiriusXM Fantasy back in the day. This is the second year of not being in a home league, and I only did 3 best ball drafts. (I was just burned out and soured from the World Cup best ball draft where I drafted so much Argentina/Spain stacks, was 2x field on Messi, yet somehow failed to have even one team in the finals). All I have is the one survivor pool, an ATS pool, the 3 best ball drafts, and I'll probably donate 10 to 20 a week in DFS even though all the rake free contests that I used to get in are gone. Plus rooting for the Lions... Actually, detaching myself from all the other stuff makes rooting for them feel closer to what it used to be like.
Anyway, now Anthony is getting really into fantasy, it's sort of like a torch passing is in the midst. It was a lot of fun helping him set up the draft, which we had at our house. As an aside, it was the most ADHD draft I've ever been a part of: Three of the kids took our dog for a walk mid-draft, one kid lost his phone twice when he was on the clock, and a full pickup basketball game broke out mid-draft. But since the draft, he's been so into it, proposing trades, talking trash. I drive a few of the kids home from his football team and they're all in the league. They're all talking shit to each other in the car on the way home from practice, and it reminds me of how it used to be for me with my friends when it was just about the home league you were in, for bragging rights. It's almost more rewarding seeing his joy with it when most of mine has been sucked out by so much of the nonsense that my cynical mind can't get past; with the way the NFL operates and the way gambling is now.
I just hope I am not creating a degenerate, so I will definitely be mindful of that.
That's awesome your kid and his friends are into it. Good thing you let him keep the Raiders! I remember being nervous as hell for my draft in 1997 -- I really wanted to have a good team.
Great stuff, man. Your writing about the psychology behind NFL and MLB picks is just about the most fascinating sports read available today. You have a real talent for it.
thanks William -- appreciate it!
Sorry, Liss! Your writing is excellent and you have a way of making the audience feel the pain right there with you. Are we sure Mike McDaniel is a good OC? He had two absolute freaks that year in Miami. Also, I have never been a fan of Chase Brown, but thought he had a little wiggle and juice yesterday. He reminds me of Matt Forte. He doesn’t have a lot of lateral ability, but seems to read the holes well and is decisive. Fantasy (and probably Survivor) = art…not science. I always feel like you end up regretting when you lean into the analytic mid wits, AI tools. Etc..
Thanks! I write about it to process it! And it's art/science, and the balance is always the rub. I've leaned too much on the art at times, but this was too much science.
Totally understood. Something like Survivor really depends on getting in sync with some sort of deep or alternate consciousness that can't really be explained. It's happened to me in a home Survivor contest where I just "knew" the right answer. However, I didn't end up winning just like you and Dalton. Somewhere along the line I was kicked out (or lost my way) of that reality.
Sorry to hear you got bounced. Fucking Chargers have always been jagoffs you can't count on. But you can always count on the Browns to suck.
"...fumbled like a retard." 🤣