For a few moments today it was very, very bad. It looked like the foundation of our beloved 9-year fantasy football league, POF (Professional Offensive Football) was teetering in the balance.
Today was draft day, with all the Virginia teams settled with pizza, cheat sheets, and Yahoo!, ready to go. So, I called my brother in North Carolina to confirm their teams were gathered at his computer. My sister-in-law answers the phone.
"Tammy, can we have about 20 minutes before we begin the draft?"
"What?"
"Can we have about 20 minutes to eat our pizza before starting the draft?"
"Today's NOT THE DRAFT!??!!?!"
....and the heart skipped two beats. What do we do? Trying to get three families in Virginia together in the summer on a weekend is tough enough, but now it seemed impossible. Other dates in the next two weekends were out for various people.
Great. No Paper Bowl IX. How could this be???
A long conversation commences with my sister-in-law and I (because, ironically, my brother was doing another fantasy draft live on AOL!!), and a solution comes up.
The Virginia teams can draft, one Witham team moves to North Carolina, each division has seven teams, and we'll play within our divisions (like the NFL and AFL of the 1960's), so the Paper Bowl is a true championship game; the only game where a Virginia Division team meets a Carolina Division team.
Great! For a brief time, it created a hole which one team could bow out, and one sadly did. We mourn the loss of the Despicable So-n-So's, Paper Bowl VI champs, but their owner is REALLY busy on the pastoral staff of his church (and that's a GOOD thing).
Well, about six rounds into the 16-round draft, the cell phone rings. It's my brother. The wise old sage informed me of one small problem. If you have seven teams in one division, all the teams can't play every week (odd number!) DUH! Now what?
Okay, I move back to Virginia, Uncle Frank has an opening down south, I hang up the phone, explain the situation, which they had already realized before I finished the phone call, and so, the Shish-Ka-Robs had six rounds to catch up on. :)
I honestly didn't mind; I got some good players and I'm ready to scrap on the virtual gridiron!
So, the Virginia draft is done, the Carolina draft is to come, and opening day is September 8th when Oakland comes to New England and has its head handed to them.
I'm a Raider fan (going back to the days of Ken Stabler, Cliff Branch, and George Blanda as kicker and backup QB). I was asked if I thought the Raiders would bounce back this year with Randy Moss, et al, joining the team.
Heck, no, I answered. If the offensive line doesn't block, the new running back won't get yards, and if they don't protect Kerry Collins, he can't get the ball to Randy Moss. And I certainly don't think they upgraded their defense much. For example, now we know why New England let Ted Washington sign with Oakland before last year. They knew his best work had already been done.
My other team, The Giants (football's the only sport where my heart lies in two places...), aren't ready either. Plaxico will be a bust at the #1 receiver spot (a la Pearless Price in Atlanta), Eli is in for another season of seasoning (2006 will be a better year for him, this year he'll still be learning), so I don't either of my teams winning more than five games this year.
Maybe I'll be wrong. And that'll be fine with me.
And thus ends the saga of the draft that almost didn't happen but eventually did take place. (That sounded like a Monty Python sketch title....)
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Finally, overdue for: "An Advertising Cliche from Hell".....
"....when it's gone, it's gone!"
I really don't need to explain this one.......
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Oh, a quick closing note: I did very well with grades in high school (finished fifth in my class), but only one six-week period did I get straight A's.
It finally dawned on me why it happened:
That was the short period in my life where I ingested anabolic steroids.
:)
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