First and ten

I’m in two fantasy football leagues this year. After taking last year off from the fantasy football world — and as a result from football as a whole — I feel like I’m coming out of a football deep freeze. So many players I don’t know and coaches I don’t recognize. I’m not even sure I’ve seen these plays before.

The first league I’m in is the Pittsburgh Celebrity Bloggers Fantasy Football League, run by Jim Shireman of Sportsocracy. We drafted back in early August, and I was third in the draft, so I had the slightly risky choice of whether to draft Larry Johnson, who was then holding out. I took him without worry. He ended his holdout and is playing today, but so far hasn’t done much to justify my faith. I expect him to do more in the second half of today’s game.

Here’s my team:

M. Hasselbeck (QB – SEA)
S. Smith (WR-CAR)
T. Holt (WR-STL)
A. Boldin (WR-ARI)
L. Johnson (RB-KC)
C. Williams (RB – TB)
B. Watson (TE – NE)
J. Norwood (RB – ATL)
M. Schaub (QB – HOU)
M. Turner (RB – SD)
B. Marshall (WR – DEN)
J. Wilkins (K – STL)
J. Scobee (K – JAC)
San Diego Defense
Minnesota Defense

My celebrity blogger opponent this week is the redoubtable Mean Gene Bromberg, Pittsburgh’s premier poker blogger and all-around sports fanatic. He’s also a client of Big Big Design (my web design company), but I will not hesitate to crush him all the same.

My second fantasy league is the LFM Fantasy Football League, which is the league of my grad school program’s alumni Class of 1997. We started the league while we were in school, in 1995, and ran it for 10 years.

I was too busy last fall to bring it together, so we took a year off. This summer some of us talked about restarting but not enough people seemed to commit. And then, the day before the season started, there was a sudden buzz of enthusiasm. We got seven people to commit to doing it, figured we can give the seventh team to our classmate Kevin — he’s in the Air Force and stationed in Afghanistan, so in past season’s we’ve managed a team for him, and he checks in when he’s got Internet access to offer executive coaching direction and briefly join the fun.

I had the good fortune of drafting first in that league. Here’s my team:

M. Hasselbeck (QB-SEA)
C. Johnson (WR-CIN)
T. Owens (WR-DAL)
L. Tomlinson (RB – SD)
R. Brown (RB-MIA)
J. Shockey (TE-NYG)
J. Walker (WR-DEN)
H. Ward (WR-PIT)
J. Kitna (QB-DET)
J. Witten (TE-DAL)
T. Bell (RB-DET)
J. Wilkins (K-STL)
S. Graham (K-CIN)
Carolina Defense

So far this week I’m not doing well in this league, but my key players don’t start until this afternoon and evening or tomorrow night. So there’s a lot of playing yet to come.

Right now I’m more focused on how fun it has been to think about football again, and fantasy football in particular. FF gives one a different view of the NFL — all the games carry weight, not just the home team or the home team’s division, and every bit of yardage and sack and missed extra point can have impact.

Let’s play ball!

UPDATE: I won both my games this week.

In the Celebrity Bloggers League, MyBrilliantMistakes crushed The MeanGene Machine, 112.70 to 70.63.

And in the LFM league, Steely McBeam (yeah, I know, but I needed a team name and that seemed as ridiculous as any — alternative suggestions welcome in the comments) spanked Kevin (see? he doesn’t even have a team name), 109.46 to 70.66.

Dang, I love football.