I'm Going to Love ESPN360.com

I was looking at schedules for the upcoming games this Saturday on ESPN.com, when I discovered that Troy at LSU is playing on ESPN360.com. Thinking that this is a pay service, I hesitated to go there but my curiosity got the best of me. As it turns out, it is free to AT&T DSL customers, as AT&T pays for the service. (Of course, indirectly I pay for it, but since the cost is spread over all the customers, it is probably not much.) I get to see the game this Saturday. In fact, I could have seen the Arkansas State at Alabama game. The picture quality is actually pretty good too, even at full screen.

By the way, if you have Charter as your Internet Service Provier, you'll just have to go to ESPN360.com to see if it works for you. From what I've seen in searching the web, it appears that Charter only payed for ESPN360.com in the St. Louis and Los Angeles areas. If you're a Charter subscriber, comment and let everyone know if it works.

Shovel, Shuffle, or Shuttle

I heard an sportscaster—I think it was Brent Musberger—say "shuttle pass" tonight. I have heard over many different games, professional grown men, trained in sports announcing, say "shovel pass", "shuffle pass", and "shovel pass". Now I had to know. I did some research, and according to Merriam Webster it is "shovel pass". Maybe you knew this, or maybe you just slurred it together to sound like it could be interpreted as any of them...as I used to.

Fantasy Football

This is my second year to play Fantasy Football. I had avoided playing for several years because the only leagues I knew of were pay leagues, which were a form of gambling, and because I thought it would take too much time, a resource of which I don't have an abundant supply. Last year I joined a free league at work and found that it didn't take that much time at all. Since MNF is on right now and the game is one-sided, I figured this is a good time to talk about how Fantasy Football works. It is important to note that the rules are different for every league. This is how our leagure works.

The Players

The rules for every league are different. It first starts with the draft, which is probably the most critical aspect of the season. If you don't draft well you typically won't do well. You draft for the following positions:

• 1 Quarterback
• 2 Running Backs
• 2 Receivers
• 1 Tight End
• 1 Running Back or Receiver
• 1 Kicker
• 1 Defense
• 6 Bench Positions - These can be any of the above.
  

Every team in the NFL has a bye week so it is important to draft backups for your key positions. Since you don't have enough bench positions to back up everyone, you will end up dropping and adding players through the year. Because players get injured, you often have to replace them. Its important to draft well because the players remaining, the free agents, are typically not as good, but there often are surprises. Sometimes these surprises are rookies. Sometimes they are backups for an injured player.

The Scoring

Scoring is relatively simple and is based on how each player on your team does in real life that week. Every player gets 6 points for touchdowns. Outside of that, here are the other scoring rules:

• A player gets 1 point for every 20 yards of passing.
  
• A player gets 1 point for every 10 yards of rushing.
  
• A plap gets 1 point for every 10 yards of receiving.
• A kicker gets 1 point for every extra points, and 3, 4, or 5 points for a field goal, depending on the distance.
• A defense gets 15 points at the start of the game. This is reduced based on how much the offense playing against them scores. A defense also gets 2 points for each sack, fumble recovery, or interception.
• A player loses 2 points for throwing an interception.
• A player loses 2 points for fumbling.
  

The Time Investment

The biggest time investment is the draft, which lasts a little over an hour, if I remember correctly. We do it online at Yahoo! Everyone has 90 seconds to make a draft pick and there are 15 rounds, as you would expect. Then every week, I had to spend about 30 minutes--sometimes more but often less--making sure that I'm happy with my lineup of starters and making any trades.

Fantasy football used to take a lot of time because participants had to keep score themselves. Now the fantasy football providers such as Yahoo! or NFL.com, keep score online for you.

How I'm Doing

I haven't done so well the last couple of weeks. I'm now 3 - 4 and in fifth place out of 10 teams. My star player is Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, who is right now leading the league in passing. Last week he scored me 39 points but most of my other players scored in the single digits. This week Drew Brees scored only 9 points. My leading receiver, Anquan Boldin of the Arizona Cardinals, has been out the last few weeks. I made a big mistake in dropping the Pittsburgh defense on their bye week instead of holding on to them. They were picked up by someone else pretty quickly. I won't make the mistake of letting go of a good defense again.

Last year, my first year, I started out 1-7 but managed to finish 2nd. You never know how its really going to go. You try to draft wisely, pick up promising free agents before someone else does, and hope that your players play consistently.

Why I Play

Here is why I play:

• Strategy - Despite the fact that players have bad games and you have no control over that, there is still a lot of strategy involved. You choose who to play based on how a player is playing and what team he is playing against. For example, I might play one running back one week and replace him with another running back from the bench because the defense the second player is playing against defends poorly against the run. I enjoy finding that new rookie who ends up doing well also.
  
• Fun - I happen to love football and am going to watch some NFL games anyway. Having players that are on your fantasy team playing adds another fun element to the game.
  
• Relationship - It gives me something besides work to talk about with those I work with.
  

What Every Wide Receiver Wants

I just watched the Cincinnati-Marshall game. Marshall has a wide receiver named Passmore. No kidding.

Football: Gotta Love It

It's been a while since I've posted to the blog. I've wanted to but I've just been very busy. This weekend we've tried to get a little rest. It has been a big football weekend. Last night we went to the Briarwood game and watched them beat up on Moody. Neither Laura nor I have felt very well today so football has been on most of the day. I watched Alabama beat Arkansas (Roll Tide!) while listening to Troy get beat 28-10 by Ohio State on the radio.

The Troy game was much closer than the score indicated. In fact, the rest of the stats really show this:

	Troy	Ohio State
1st Downs	15	17
3rd down efficiency	5-15	3-11
4th down efficiency	0-0	0-1
Total Yards	315	309
Passing	218	139
Completed-Attempts	30-43	10-17
Yards per pass	5.1	8.2
Rushing	97	170
Rushing Attempts	23	42
Yards per rush	4.2	4.0
Penalties	8-80	6-46
Turnovers	2	1
Fumbles lost	0	0
Interceptions thrown	2	1
Possession	29:50	30:10

I just got through watching LSU beat Auburn (26-21) in an incredible game. Geaux Tigers.

Football in the Air

Laura copied down the Saints schedule into her Palm yesterday. I just got my e-mail invitation to the fantasy football league I played in last year with a bunch of guys from work. (That was actually a lot of fun and didn't take near as much time as I thought it would.) And we are counting down to only 3 days until the first NFL preseason game. Yep, football is in the air again.

In celebration of the upcoming season, here is an explanation of the new rules in NCAA football. It has accompanying video of some of the things that are now illegal. Warning: The videos are a little painful but you can skip playing them.

A Taste of Football

Tomorrow (at 2:00 PM CDT) is the NFL Draft, a small taste of football excitement in a time of the year when football is for the most part absent. This year they have a new format. They will only have the first and second rounds on Saturday, with the remaining rounds on Sunday. The first round will be 10 minutes between picks (instead of 15), the second round will only be 7 minutes between picks, and all subsequent rounds will only be 5 minutes between picks. I guess the NFL is trying to make it much more watchable.

As a New Orleans Saints fan, of course I'm very interested in their picks. They have the #10 pick in the second round. As a Troy University fan and alumnus, I'm excited to see maybe the second first round pick they've ever had in Leodis McKelvin. (The first was Demarcus Ware, drafted 11th in 2005. Osi Umenyiora was drafted in the second round in 2003.) In the best of all worlds, the Sporting News' annual correspondents mock draft had the Saints picking him at the number 10 position.

I'm looking forward to it. I'm also interested to see where McFadden and Dorsey land. With the exciting names and the faster format, this year's draft is going to be a good one.