Fantasy season returns...

It's back! Thank god, too. There is absolutely nothing worse than baseball season. Unless of course one is a fan of watching moderately athletic guys stand around, chew tobacco, spit sunflower seeds and adjust their crotches waiting every so patiently for that 3-4 seconds of meaningful action that occurs about two times in any given game. And if you are a fan of that, you should look into real sports. They are more fun.

But bashing baseball, while easy, fun, and endlessly doable is only preventing us from realizing that the fantasy football season is again upon us, and with it, the return of the NFL. For quite some time I had lost interest in the NFL. This was around 1995 or so. I had gotten over my childhood "favorite team" affiliation (Redskins), my young adult "favorite team" affiliation (gambling on the Aikman-led Cowboys) and was mired in a late 90's funk of mild interest in our nation's premier sports league. And then I discovered fantasy football. In a flash, my adult "favorite team" was established, solidified and shall not be turned away like so many other fads. No, Fillmore Slim is unquestionably where my heart and loyalties lie.

Within the annually changing confines of my roster, you will find my favorite players, those I think likely to break out, a rookie or two, a typical dearth of quality wideouts spurned on draft day in favor of mid-tier running backs headed for an inevitable time share or torn ACL, a QB that everyone but me realizes sucks (hello, Brady Quinn!!!), and a defensive unit that I selected 2-3 rounds too early.

And you'll find those things as a result of my favorite thing in sports outside of watching my beloved Tar Heels whoop ass: the fantasy football draft. There is nothing like it. Grown men are reduced to a child-like state of anticipation (think a 7 year old on Christmas Eve) when faced with the opportunity to create their own war room and put together what they think is surely the team to beat this year. Some join to talk shit to their friends, some join for the love of competition, some see it as a money making venture... but me, I join it merely to crow about my untouchable, talented, deep and well balanced team. I will sing the song high and low. I will write a blog for the first time in weeks to tell the entire interweb how I am going to rule with an iron fist upon the masses of the lower level teams in my leagues.

And then I will over manage my team into missing the playoffs.

This is my fantasy reality. I am cursed. I will make inadvisable trades to attain players I don't need. I will bench players I don't like that are due for huge games. I'll overpay for a running back simply because he's over 225 lbs and I like big backs. I will convince myself that Tiki Barber is no competition for Ron Dayne despite all evidence to the contrary. And then, year after year after year of the same results....I'll do it all over again. And this is the glory of fantasy football. It's me being my own NFL GM. And I am Mike Brown.

This year, however, Fillmore Slim is off to some pretty decent starts. I won the draft lottery in a league where the entry fee is $50 and a fantastic bottle of wine. I went with the safe choice - Adrian Peterson - and built what I think is a team with relatively strong upside. The first pick, while vaunted, is not truly the best place to draft from in my opinion, and it was with some optimism that I entered my 2nd draft, with friends from the workplace, as the 6th slot out of 12. My bromance RB crush of the year, Matt Forte, fell to me at 6th after not having seen him go below 4 in a mock draft all year, and from there I did my best to build a RB-strong team with big names. I was able to, but have serious questions about my WR, which will come as no surprise to anyone that has ever been in a league with me. And lucky for me, Dennis Leary and LL Cool J have informed me that I no longer need cable and can watch any game I want, anywhere I want on my iPhone if I just order DirecTV. I am doing so. I suggest you do too.

And so I am 2 drafts in to the season. I have 4 drafts left. I draft 9th out of 10 in a keeper league, 9th out of 12 in the league I run (which of course holds the worst collection of finishes out of any league I participate in), and 2 unknown draft spots.

Look for an update late next week on 3 of the remaining 4 drafts.

Until then, prepare for the onslaught.

Free Mike Vick!!!

Okay, I realize that people are up in arms about Mike Vick's reinstatement to the NFL.

I just don't get why. Mike Vick fought dogs. Okay, got it. Not the best activity. Not really responsible. Apparently, illegal! However, like all things in life, there is a sliding scale to legality.

Dog fighting, as it stands, is pretty low on the list of things I get upset about.

I'm much more concerned with "murder" (see: Ray Lewis, Leonard Little - both longtime, protest-free NFL players), "girlfriend and baby killing" (see: Rae Carruth), "wife abuse" (see: too many citations to count or tally or reference here given my storage capacity limits from blogspot), etc... to get worked up about a guy who managed a dog fighting ring.

Know why? I've been to a dog fight. Its pretty intense, yes. But most of the owners I know truly love their dogs, and I haven't been to a ton of fights, but I have never seen a dog put down for losing. That's just hype. Fact of the matter is, dog fighting is actually fun to watch. Just like MMA. Or like that time we televised "Shock and Awe".

But that's just one component of the inanity of this latest craze. You know, we have guys here in the USA that breed human fighters. But they aren't labeled as criminals. They are our 5-star generals and our politicians who's policies can lead to the death of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of deaths. Why is this not a moral outrage. After all, we are expected to blindly "support our troops" despite evidence that would indicate we fight avoidable and often times useless wars, no? These are men who are celebrated and toasted nationwide.

But lets not expose the inherent lunatic hypocrisy in making daily headlines about how bad a guy Mike Vick really is by talking about things that matter, when we can merely trump it up like he's evil incarnate.

After all, some friends of his fought dogs in his yard at the house he didn't live in.

The horrors.