Fantasy Etiquette: 5 Barroom Rules.

It's that time of year.  Football, and its fantasy counterpart, are officially underway, and thus begins another season of mostly reasonable people turning into obsessive sociopaths because Roddy White didn't get as many targets as they hoped last week.  There are a myriad of podcasts and message boards and the KSK mailbag just churning out an endless slew of fantasy advice.  Matthew Berry is ubiquitous, God help us all. 

This is all more or less fine by me.  Personally, I've never felt any urge whatsoever to engage in fantasy sports.  I'm perfectly content watching and analyzing the games on their intrinsic merits, and I don't want or need any additional context to clutter that experience.  Also, and I often wonder how people live with themselves in these cases, I don't ever want to be in the position of rooting for a player I hate simply because he was the best guy on the board when my pick came around in a fantasy draft.  Drew Brees is one of the three best QB's in football, but he also plays for the Saints, the Falcons' most bitter rivals and divisional foes.  If he's on the board while I'm drafting, I'm a certified idiot not to take him, right?  But here's the thing: I don't want Drew Brees to have a successful season.  Ever.  I want him and the Saints to falter and flail and be ultimately lousy, every year, forever, amen.  Fantasy poses the risk of conflicting with my sacred duty as a fan to despise all those opposed to my team; of diluting my inalienable hatred.  And lord knows we can't have that.  So yeah, no fantasy for me.  But I do understand and appreciate the appeal.  You get to play GM and muck around with rosters and, if everything goes right, pick up a heap of bragging rights and some cash to boot.  And it probably does lend a little gravitas to the random Vikings-Bucs game that no one outside of Minneapolis or Tampa Bay cares even an iota about if you have someone from either team on your roster.  I'm all for people enjoying anything having to do with football.  But.

BUT.

Fantasy owners of America, we need to have a little chat.  We need to establish some ground rules so that I can be around you, on gameday, in public, and not want to beat you senseless.  (Ed. Note: if you are someone who plays fantasy without going full-bore psycho about it, feel free to stop reading and go tinker with your starting roster for today.) 

Because every Sunday, Monday, and Thursday of the season, there are those among you who ruin sports bars across the land by insinuating a grating and wholly unnecessary dosage of fantasy into the proceedings.  Frankly, when your fake team's considerations become more meaningful and enjoyable than the actual games themselves, your priorities are way the hell out of whack.  Shady McCoy fumbles or the Colts' D gives up 4 touchdowns and it's a freaking zombie apocalypse for that drunk guy in the corner who is actually a Steelers fan.  People who have no connection whatsoever to the Ravens other than getting stuck with Joe Flacco as a fantasy quarterback suddenly become blithering, outraged idiots when Torrey Smith drops a pass.  The bar turns into a cacophony of cheers, profanities, and outright pandemonium as MJD saves one person's fantasy week, ruins someone else's, and the one Jags fan in the joint stares sullenly into his drink, contemplating the futility of existence.  I can't take it anymore.  Here are some fantasy-related behaviors that should be outlawed, in perpetuity, from occurring in bars. 

1. Laptop usage.  If you want to whip out your iPhone and check your stats for the day while a play is under review, or because you need to make a last-minute roster alteration, fine.  If, however, you spend more time glaring at your laptop and frantically refreshing the results of your nine leagues than you do watching actual, real, glorious football, you should be evicted from the premises immediately.  We are here to get gregariously drunk with friends and scream at 56" TV screens, not get antisocially drunk alone and stare at a 12" Dell Powerbook. It's a bar, not a f***** coffee shop.  Put the computers away.

2.  Appropriate Reactions and Decibel Levels.  Histrionics, be they celebratory or agonizing, are reserved for fans and their teams, not your handcuff fantasy back.  You know the axiom that nobody wants to hear about your fantasy team?  That's not just a gentle reminder not to bring it up in regular conversation; it applies to the barroom as well.  If your real, actual team blows a fourth-quarter lead in week 12 against a divisional opponent, you may pound your fist on the bar, scream obscenities, flip tables, smash glasses, immediately knock back five shots of vodka, or indulge in any other acceptable expression of grief and anger that occurs to you.  Likewise if they just broke off a 70-yard TD run, only, you know, you'll be much more gleeful while you break things.  Good on you.  HOWEVA, if you're wearing a Mark Sanchez jersey and a Jets cap, do not yell at the TV if Jay Cutler takes a sack.  Glower into your beer, mumble a silent curse to the gods, whatever, but keep your fantasy whining to yourself.  NO ONE CARES.

3.  Discussion of stats shall be limited to real stats.  If you want to talk about how many rushing yards the Broncos' defense allowed last year or the Tom Brady's red zone completion percentage, by all means, let's nerd it out.  However, I don't care if a receiver's value is diminished because you are or are not in a PPR league.  Any fantasy statistic that has no relation (or only an oblique relation) to what actually transpires on the field is not fit for discussion.

4.  These players don't owe you jack.  Nor, for that matter, do their coaches.  If the Texans give Ben Tate a goal-line carry instead of Arian Foster, thereby costing you precious fantasy points, guess what?  THEY'RE PLAYING TO WIN THE GAME.  They are making what they think are the best tactical decisions for their teams.  (Note: questionable if Andy Reed or Norv Turner is involved.)  When MJD sat down on the goal line a few seasons ago to keep the clock running a seal a win for the Jags, he apologized to his fantasy owners.  This was endearing and funny and totally unnecessary.  He made a heads-up play and put his team in the best position to win.  That cost you fantasy points?  Boo freaking hoo.  They're trying to put real points on a real scoreboard and make sure they have more than the other team at the end of the day.  It's bad enough how pathologically attached and entitled we are over our hometown teams, I have to draw the line at pathological entitlement in fantasy.  It's ridiculous.

5.  When in doubt, shut up.  Self-explanatory, right?  Good.

Happy football!!!

Breaking: Dan Snyder Is Still A Jerk.

Dan Snyder.  Odds are, that name provokes a reaction in you that falls somewhere on a uniquely calibrated scale.  Unlike nearly every other mathematical expression of value, The Snyder Meter exists within two negative extremes: snickering derision and outright disgust.  This guy has taken one of the most storied franchises in the NFL and systematically turned it into a sad, awful punchline.  If half the stories of Snyder's shameless money-grubbing, furiously petty retributions, and complete disregard for Redskins employees and fans contained even a modicum of truth, it'd be solid grounds for declaring the guy a certified dick.  Unfortunately for football lovers in the greater D.C. area, pretty much none of these sordid tales are apocryphal.  And, because he's Dan Snyder, we've got another gem to add to his already bloated resume of pathetic asshole-itude. 

As you know, in one of the few semi-justifiable decisions since he began his reign of terror, Snyder approved trading several Redskins draft picks to grab QB Robert Griffin III with the second pick of this year's NFL draft, and the former Baylor signal caller projects to be a superstar in every sense of the word.  So then, it's smart, basic PR 101 to give your well-spoken, endearing, humble, tailor-made-to-be-adored-by-fans-around-the-league young stud gunslinger a big press event, right?  Let the kid introduce himself officially to the league as a part of your organization, flash a few smiles, make a few quips, and speak earnestly of his aspirations for himself and the Redskins for the upcoming season.  This isn't a head case apt to shoot his mouth off and say something stupid; you've basically been gifted a truckload of stellar free publicity just by putting the media in a room with the kid and letting things take their course.  What could possibly go wrong?

Oh right; the idiotic megalomaniac of an owner could decide to ruin the first truly positive thing that's happened to the team in years decades a really long freaking time by engaging in an utterly needless display of territorial dick-swinging.  Turns out that in addition to the Redskins, Dan Snyder also owns D.C. sports radio station ESPN 980 (WTEM, the irony of whose call letters should be noted.)  Anywho, last Wednesday, during this big-time media event that was being covered by a boatload of press organizations at both local and national levels, Snyder decided that rival Washington sports station WJFK (106.7 The Fan) would no-way, no-how be allowed to cover Griffin's presser.  Reportedly, the station's personnel were told that if they persisted in trying to broadcast the event, their media credentials and those of all WJFK staff would be pulled, possibly in perpetuity.  No coming in the stadium, no interviewing players, coaches, or other team staff, no access whatsoever.  Was the team within its rights?  Yup; exclusivity coverage rights can be granted by NFL teams at any time.  That doesn't change the fact that it was yet another supremely stupid, petty, and myopic move that will do nothing but incite the ire of fans and media; par for the course with Snyder and the Redskins.

On a related note, was Dan Snyder hired as a consultant when NBC and Twitter were planning their 2012 Olympics coverage?  What?  I'm just asking.

Wish List

We're through the doldrums now.  The Claret Jug has been awarded (congrats, Ernie!), the Olympics and the MLB trade deadline are coming down the pipe, and we're accelerating rapidly towards fall.  Ah, autumn.  The crisp, cool quality of the morning air.  The leaves in brilliant ocher, maize, and vermillion.  The shrill of a whistle and the bark of a snap count.

Football.  FOOTBALL!!! 

As we gear up for training camps, preseason prognostications, fantasy drafts, Red Zone purchasing, and all the other attendant trappings of another NFL season, every fan draws hope and optimism from the sacred reservoir of an 0-0 record.  A clean slate and limitless possibilities can do wonders for the constitution and attitude of even the most downtrodden fan base.  (Well, maybe not Jacksonville.)  Most fans though, if they're truly honest with themselves, acknowledge not only the glowing facets that could, with the right confluence of luck and circumstance, find their teams still active deep into January, but also the flaws that might prevent such bliss.  With New Orleans as (relatively) weakened as they'll ever be until Drew Brees retires, and the Bucs and Panthers still not complete enough to pose viable threats, 2012 will the Falcons' best shot at the NFC South in the immediate future.  Here are five things I wish Atlanta would fix sometime before the season starts at best and by the trade deadline at worst.

1. Better distribution of carries.  I've been griping about this for three seasons now, but it bears repeating: Michael Turner cannot handle the amount of touches the Falcons give him every year.  We've seen it time and time again.  Right around week 13, "Burner" starts looking not-quite-himself.  By the time the playoffs roll around, he's utterly spent, hitting the hole like a '73 Pinto instead of a Mack Truck, and his dilapidated abilities have a crippling effect on the rest of the offense.  I know Turner is a rhythm runner, and he needs his carries to get into the flow of a game, but Mike Mularkey habitually placed far too heavy a burden on him, and it killed Atlanta in key spots more often than not.  New OC Dirk Koetter will likely favor a more pass-oriented attack anyway, but let's hope he also has the good sense to look at the bench and say to himself "hey, I've got Jason Snelling and Jacquizz Rodgers over there, and those guys can play.  Maybe I should come up with some ways to use them more often so our primary back isn't dead on his feet by Christmas."  Just a thought.     

2. Linebacker depth.  That this hasn't traditionally been an outstanding element of the team hasn't hurt them too terribly, but with Curtis Lofton's departure and the recently-announced injury of Lofa Tatupu, the Falcons' best two linebackers are Sean Weatherspoon and, um ... Robert James, I guess?  Do those names strike fear in your heart?  (Sadly, Falcons fans are nodding for the wrong reasons.  Opponents, not so much.)  Before Tatupu went down, Atlanta would have been thin but functional at the position.  Now, bolstering the LB corps quickly is of paramount import.

3. Left Tackle.  Left Tackle.  Left Tackle.  Pray for a miracle emergence from draft pick Lamar Holmes in camp, but if it doesn't happen, do something. Trade, beg, barter, visit a crossroads at midnight, whatever.  Here's an incomplete list of possible starters at left tackle that would be better than Will Svitek and Sam Baker:

• A cow.  Preferably one of the Chick-fil-A mascots, as they'll feel comfortable Atlanta, can't accidentally eat the Georgia Dome's artificial turf, and appear to be bovines of above-average intelligence. 
• Former Falcons coach Dan Reeves.
• Russell Brand.  (Won't help protect Matt Ryan, but only good can come of having him repeatedly trampled into the turf.  I hate Russell Brand.)
• The Kia that Blake Griffin jumped over in the Slam Dunk Contest.  Uvo definitely plays funk better than Will Svitek, and might, in fact, play left tackle better too.  
• Blake Griffin.
• A Sam-Baker-shaped patch of air.  Roughly as effective as a patch of air actually occupied by Sam Baker, but with zero salary cap ramifications.
• Bartleby the Scrivener.  Sure, a fictional 19th-century longhand document copier won't do much good against NFL defensive ends, but at least he'll have a ready-made answer for every media question he's ever asked.  "Why didn't you block Da'Quan Bowers on 2nd and 8?"  "I preferred not to."    
• My 87-year old grandpa.
• You, if you're reading this ... unless you're Will Svitek or Sam Baker.                                                                        

4. Let it rip.  The NFL is a passing league, and the Falcons have the personnel to be highly effective in that vein.  (Entirely contingent upon successfully fulfilling wish # 3.)  You've got Roddy White and Julio Jones as elite vertical threats, an excellent-when-healthy (and woefully underutilized) slot receiver in Harry Douglas, intriguing young hybrid backfield player Jacquizz Rodgers, and Tony Gonzalez, who is only the best tight end of all time.  Matt Ryan will never be Tom Brady, but he's more than capable of maximizing the efficacy of all those weapons if given the opportunity.  Dirk Koetter needs to bring some of his fearless aerial creativity to bear this season.  I don't mean air it out all the time, but utilizing more spread formations and a complex screen game, mixed with Julio and Roddy's abilities to fly, should make Atlanta a dangerous proposition for opposing defenses.

5. Mike Smith needs electroshock therapy any time he even contemplates Turner-up-the-gut on 4th and short.  YOU DON'T HAVE OVIE MUGHELLI CLEARING HOLES ANYMORE MIKE!!!  THAT WON'T WORK!!!.  Ahem, sorry.  Bad memories.  Bad, bad memories.  /recalls O.T. against the Saints and playoff game against NY last season.  *cringes.*

There you go.  Five wee wishes.  A pentagram of paltry requests.  A quintet of quintessential queries. It's not too much to ask.  Right?

Square One: Penn State, College Ball, and Ourselves.

I spent the weekend away, celebrating the birthdays of two dear and wonderful friends.  And, because we are all more or less sports people, one albeit somewhat reluctantly, a few sports discussions naturally insinuated themselves into the fabric of our time together.  Eventually on Saturday night, the conversation turned to Penn State and what exactly ought to befall the university in light of the Freeh Report's findings.  I believe that the answer reached in the protracted debate that followed was a hardline, conclusive "I don't know."  And we don't, because nothing like this has ever happened in sports before.


O.J. Simpson and Michael Vick notwithstanding*, the vast majority of previous sports scandals have been, at their cores, precipitated by one of two factors.  There's the financially motivated stuff; throwing the World Series, point shaving, Tim Donaghy, etc.  And then there's your run-of-the-mill idiocy of DUI's, PED's, and stuffing loaded guns down the front of one's sweats before a night on the town.  This is most of what passes for "appalling" and "tragic" in sports, which is to say occurrences that aren't really either of those things in the grand scheme.  Those were acts of some impropriety or unlawfulness which were duly (and occasionally unduly) punished, and they frame much of our context for wrongdoing within the sphere of athletics.  Which is why everyone is having such a difficult time codifying our reactions, emotional, mental, and in the case of the NCAA, putative, to what happened in Happy Valley.  There is no precedent or reference point immense and awful enough to really calibrate a response beyond unutterable disgust and sadness.   

*It is not my intention to minimize the terrible nature of either of those stories, but they were the acts of disturbed individuals which, while monstrous, involved nothing approaching the willful and repeated institutional coverup of horrific crimes that Penn State engaged in from 1998 until last fall.   

So the question becomes: what happens now?  Whom to punish, how severely, and to what purpose?  And, perhaps equally important: who metes out that punishment?  I mentioned O.J. and Vick above, but those were fairly straightforward cases wherein the law took its prescribed course.  (Even though the conclusion was disgraceful in Simpson's case.)  O.J. went off the rails and wound up in jail anyway despite his acquittal.  Vick did his time and returned to playing football.  Cut and dried.

The waters which various authorities now have to navigate in Penn State's case are more than somewhat murkier.  Truth be told, they make the Hudson or the Charles look like clear mountain streams.  In the case of the primary actors as identified by the Freeh report, old age and the justice system have done or will do much of the heavy lifting.  Joe Paterno is dead, Jerry Sandusky is in jail, and Spainer, Schulz, and Curley are likely going to join him for a very long time.  Their lives are certifiably wrecked, which is as it should be.  Also, there is the legion of civil cases coming down the pipeline that is apt to significantly cripple Penn State fiscally, just as it has already been crippled in critical (if less tangible) areas like reputation and prestige by the exposure of this scandal.  But what further penalties can or should be enacted?

Allow me one suggestion at the outset: take the statue of Joe Paterno down.  Do it right now.  Firstly because there ought not be bronze statues of shamefully heinous monsters standing anywhere in this country, no matter how many career wins they amassed or how many young men they helped graduate.  And secondly, because if the university does not remove it, it will assuredly be defaced, damaged, or destroyed by someone(s) very soon.  Then that person or group of people is going to have to go to trial and possibly jail for vandalism, and every possible measure to prevent one single additional human from suffering due to this already hulking tragedy should be taken.  (Update: as I was writing this, I refreshed Deadspin to discover that a plane is indeed circling above Penn State and trailing a banner that reads: "Take the statue down or we will."  So there's that.) 

Having gotten that out of the way, let's deal with the non-legal bodies who could hand down further punishment to Penn State.
 
Within its purview, the NCAA may impose sanctions up to and including the death penalty on Penn State's football program, and everything is on the table.  While I don't necessarily disagree with Penn State football ceasing operations for a season or two or ten or ever, here's what the NCAA should not do: they should not listen to the people I've heard over the past few days saying "if they gave it to SMU, then they must give the death penalty here."  There is a precedent there, but precedents are dangerous things to follow blindly and should therefore be thoroughly evaluated before doing so, as most past or present members of the Supreme Court would tell you.  I also believe that the NCAA must either enact the death penalty, or declare this outside of their ability to handle altogether and leave it to the courts.  Revoking scholarships or bowl eligibility, doing anything less than the maximum, will simply be one more failure.  It must be all or nothing.  The quagmire of imposing the death penalty is that every hotel, eatery, and bar in or near Happy Valley will suffer greatly without the revenue they derive from home games every fall.  Do the proprietors and employees of those places deserve to have their livelihoods jeopardized?  Hell, in the worst economic scenario, a football death penalty could decimate Happy Valley entirely.  This of course does not account for how many innocent students will lose their scholarships, athletic or otherwise, without the football program and its annual windfall of revenue.  Are these outcomes we can live with, simply because someone must pay? 

The rebuttal of course, is that SOMEONE MUST PAY.  Children were raped.  Lives were ruined.  Minds and bodies and souls were irrevocably damaged.  And every business and student and athlete and alum and townie involved with State College was, to a certain extent, complicit with that.  This is what happens when the type of monolithic godhead status ascribed to Joe Paterno and Penn State Football (and to the almighty dollar and college athletics in general) is allowed to reach a fever pitch of the starkest absurdity.  The people involved eventually believe that kind of power to be immutable, and that it must be used to protect itself and its wielders and their checkbooks at all costs.  It is a fair bet that the men in the Freeh report were not the only ones with ample opportunities to stop what was going on.  How many law enforcement officers simply chose not to ask the right (and I use that adjective in every sense) questions.  How many people, when they heard the whispers, and there surely must have been a few over these many sickening years, said "shhhhhh!  We don't talk about that."  The self-perpetuating construct of JoePa's irreproachable sainthood and the sheer reverential gravity of what he and that program meant to the university and the town collapsed, but only because the architects and builders refused to acknowledge the need for severe renovations.

To some extent, Most of those same difficulties lie at the feet of the state government of Pennsylvania as well.  Being a public university, I presume the state legislature can impose whatever sanctions it sees fit upon its institution, and they may enter this equation before all is said and done, asking themselves the same questions and weighing the same consequences.  

I have no idea what the correct course of action is regarding Penn State.  It is probably not my right, and thankfully not my responsibility, to determine how and when and on whom the ax should fall.  I do know that this is far from the only college in the country where football owns this kind of status.  We can hope that nothing so atrocious ever transpires again, but hoping is a poor substitute for critical evaluation.  The intricacies of execution will be difficult questions for another time, but college athletics need an overhaul that has nothing to do with students earning millions for their schools and getting a pittance in return.  This is about priorities and how warped they may become.  This is about our perceptions and our willingness to change them.  When "win at all costs" gets this insane, something has gone terribly wrong.  It's us.  It's them.  It's THE GAME.  Now we just have to figure out how to start making it "the game" again.  I'm open to suggestions.