LittleWyvern.com

I want to start by saying that this comic is pretty good, but for the record I was there first.

The next important thing I have to say is this: In this world of the future two-knob faucets are antiquated and stupid. Oh look! This knob brings hot water and this other, entirely separate knob brings cold water!! Superb. Now let me just spend the next five minutes discovering the perfect blend of Scalding and Freezing that will produce Warm…

Fuck that.

Seriously, we have the technology to allow for a one-knob universe. Let the second knob go the way of polio. Eradicated!!

Finally, this weekend I won my playoff battle against Matt “Westbrook is my whole team” Zurek. The win has vaulted me to the league championship and one step closer to destiny. But let’s go back…

I began the season knowing relatively (no… not ‘relatively’), ABSOLUTELY nothing about football. I think that these guys invited me into their league mostly as a joke. I didn’t really mind. For my part the league was merely a way to distract myself on Sundays and perhaps create some sense of interest in a man-defining sport that I really didn’t give a shit about. This would be the fourth consecutive year that these same guys had participated in the league, each year raising the entry fee and with it the level of competition. They all studied rosters in the off-season and with few exceptions they could each name the starters and backups for every key position on every team in the entire league. When I signed up I could honestly not even remember the names of some of the teams.

I didn’t bother with any pre-draft strategizing, but instead relied on the analysis of people who knew much more about it than I did. I caught a lot of shit for simply going with what the experts said, but at the same time I don’t know why anyone would expect me to be able to second-guess an ESPN analyst. Of course I fucking listened to what they said.

With no insight of my own, my draft was largely a matter of selecting the best available player. My only particular divergence from the typical strategy here was the result of some mathematical theory that, to be honest, seemed completely obvious. Because I didn’t have any actual sports knowledge (I had never even heard of a lot of these players), I decided to focus on the math of the game. Basically, instead of automatically choosing the highest rated player I made an effort to look for the player with the largest advantage relative to their position. For instance, imagine that there were ten running backs that averaged 30 points per game while the next best ten only averaged 25. Then, for example, imagine that there were two tight ends who averaged 25 points per game while the third tight end averaged only 15. Greed would say to take the the running back (30 points for the RB vs 25 for the TE), but my strategy was to take the tight end in that spot. Since everyone needed a tight end eventually I would be able to pick up a large positional advantage over the other players for the tight end slot. I would take a top TE and a second tier-RB, and my +10 ppg TE advantage would combine with my -5 ppg RB disadvantage to give me a +5 positive point advantage overall.

As a result my drafted team ended up featuring middle-of-the-road running backs, a very good wide receiver corps, two elite tight ends, and the #1 projected quarterback. When all was said and done on draft day a number of players made the comment that my team “somehow” ended up pretty good. The general consensus was to chalk it up to pure luck.

And then I won seven games in a row.

I obviously got lucky in a number of places, winning two of the seven games by one point or less, but four of the remaining five were won by double digits and two of those were complete blowouts. No matter how many games in a row I won the general agreement was invariably little more than “Luck.” Every week I was predicted to lose.

And then finally I did.

In week eight I suffered my first loss, and to the worst team in the division, too. That seemed only fitting. My team massively underperformed, his team overperformed, but even still I could have and should have won. A late night, last minute substitution on my part cost me the victory. Tired of playing with my head I took a chance and played with my heart, putting in a player for sentimental, not strategic reasons. He predictably sucked it up and my perfect season was over.

And then I lost four more games in a row.

I finished the regular season in a massive slump, losing five straight games. To be fair the second half of my season was much more difficult than the first half, but what kills me (even now) is that of my five losses, only one of them was unavoidable. Only once was my team actually outscored. Instead, each of those four weeks I made a SINGLE management mistake, each of which, looking back, was completely obvious and wrong. I very easily could have finished my season with a record of 11-1, but instead managed a very mediocre 7-5. My first seven wins were enough to mathematically guarantee a playoff spot, though, so two weeks ago I entered the playoffs not as the massive favorite I had expected to be, but instead as the very bottom seed.

As the lowest rated team I was slated to play against the highest rated team, conveniently managed by my roommate Matt. I had played Matt in the last game of the regular season, the weekend before the start of the playoffs, and suffered a heart-breaking six-point loss. Because each round of the playoffs in our league lasts two weeks (to help counteract one-week fluke performances), I would be playing against Matt for three weeks in a row. He won our first battle, but I was determined to not let him win the second.

The battle was fierce, but this Sunday I emerged victorious. Not only did I outscore him in the first week of our matchup, but I outscored him in the second week as well. There was obviously a lot of pride on the line, but when I won I tried to keep the taunting to a minimum. Matt was obviously depressed. It’s possible that he quite literally lives for fantasy football, and losing to a rookie couldn’t have been easy. And because that rookie was me… well… maybe someone should take away his shoelaces.

I won by a healthy margin, but the other championship-related matchup was much closer than it should have been. In a battle that raged late into the fourth quarter of Monday night, my previous roommate Lukas escaped with a narrow victory over a late-surging Corey.

So now the championship match is set. How fitting that my final opponent will be my greatest nemesis. We will once again join battle; not for the first time and certainly not for the last. One of us will be left in ruin, our pride hurt worst of all.

Were my opponent anyone else I could feel proud and content with even reaching this, the biggest of dances. Second place would have been beyond the realm of probability only 14 weeks ago. The prospect of a playoff berth alone would have been cause for my fellow league members to laugh. And yet now here I sit, poised before the altar of Greatness, and anything less than total victory will be a failure. To become the best I must now beat the best.

** Lukas’s team features both the #1 and #2 ranked quarterbacks in the entire league: Tom Brady and Tony Romo.

** Lukas’s team features the #2 and #3 ranked running backs in the entire league: LaDainian Tomlinson and Adrian Peterson

** Lukas’s team has scored the most points of any team in our league, over 100 points more than the second place team (the average team score in our league for an entire week is about 110). In comparison, my team has scored 240 points less than his, the point equivalent of two full weeks.

** Oh, and over the next two weeks Tom Brady gets to play against the Jets and the Dolphins. Does the NFL have a slaughter rule?

My team does not hold up to his, but I am not exactly bringing a group of scrubs.

** I have the #2 tight end (T-Gonz), #3 quarterback (Peyton Manning), #3 kicker (Mason Crosby), #2 defense (Vikings), the #5 running back (Willis McGahee) and three of the top thirteen wide receivers (Larry Fitzgerald, Joey Galloway, and Plaxico Burress). Plus I have another receiver who is rated in the top ten overall when he is healthy (Deion Branch) – which he is now.

When both of our teams are playing at their best I lose to Lukas; his potential point production is simply too high. However, my X-factor can’t be ignored.

** My team has had the second fewest points scored against it in the entire league. It really isn’t even close either. A lot of people might see that stat and think, “God you are lucky.” But they would be wrong. It is one of my greatest, most intangible skills that I am able to force my opponent to play badly against me. You can’t teach that kind of thing. Some of us are just born good. There is an almost supernatural tendency for my opponents’ best players to suffer injuries during the weeks that they play me. Short of injuries they might find that a superstar player massively and “inexplicably” under-performs that week. I have also been known, particularly in Lukas’s case, to force bad management decisions as well. Of course, they all call it Luck.

I call it Advanced Strategy.

Just the same…

Lukas, you might want to buy a rabbit’s foot and a tin-foil hat. Prepare yourself for a war my friend, only one of us will be getting out of this alive!!

(**note** hopefully neither of us will actually die, but I expect that the loser will want the winner to suffer some kind of horrible, but temporary, disfigurement and pain).