Fantasy Football Is Back With A Bang

For most sports fans, a fantasy version of their desired sport is available to play. Growing up I played fantasy cricket and soccerball with my dad. We used to pick our team in the paper and try to win money from The Sun or The Telegraph. Since moving to Uni I have been introduced into playing fantasy American football properly. Previously I had played on nfluk for free and had never taken it seriously. After playing in one league last year and getting to the semi - finals before getting screwed by Mike Vick I decided to join two leagues this year. Here's him depicted as a ginger to serve as an almighty fuck you. Yeah take that... grrr.
 
To select your teams in fantasy American football is a little different. You draft just like in madden or the nfl and each player gets a timed turn to pick somebody for their team. Last night I had both my drafts back to back. Fun but time consuming and a lot of concentration was needed to pick two good teams.

The first is a keeper league with Tarannau players both current and past. The first keeper draft was last night and it went fairly well. The keeper element means at the end of the year you have to keep three players to carry over into next years league. My team Fantasy A Bum is as follows:

QB: Tom Brady
RB1: Ryan Grant
RB2: Ryan Matthews
WR1: Roddy White
WR2: Mike Wallace
TE: Rob Gronkowski
K: Alex Henery
D: Patriots
WR/TE/RB: Mike Thomas
Bench: Mark Sanchez
Bench: Darren Sproles
Bench: Jonathen Stewart
Bench: Donald Driver
Bench: Lee Evans
Bench: Kyle Rudolph

My second league is the WAFFL and is run by this guy. It is 70 teams large and has a prize fund of 700 quid divided up into lots of interesting prizes. My first year in this league and I'm hoping to do some damage as my team Jay Cutler Kneeginas is as follows:

QB: Mike Vick
RB1: Ryan Matthews
RB2: Mark Ingram
WR1: Calvin Johnson
WR2: Julio Jones
TE: Jermichael Finley
K: Josh Brown
D: Detroit
WR/TE/RB: Lee Evans
Bench: LT
Bench: Donovan Mcnabb
Bench: Aaron Hernandez
                                                                                       Bench: Ed Dickson 

This team could be real good and with my jibe at Jay Cutler hoping to get me at least some recognition for the name game prize money. Even if I didn't get to draft him. He was stolen just before I was about to pick him!

Fantasy football is a lot of fun, and just like real football it is back! If you don't already play it, you should. That's my tip for the week. But whatever you do play it with your friends as drafts and leagues will get boring without piss taking. And watch out for slow ass player pickers in your draft. They deserve to die in a fire.

Chronicles of a Hangover - NCAA Football is Back Baby!

College football is back and here to stay until bowl season. Yeeeeha. To celebrate Mr Pettiford's end of resit exams and because it conveniently coincided with the NCAA season starting, I broke the bank Friday and drove to Aber for a night out. If you don't believe me about the breaking the bank bit, just imagine me walking up to town with 37 £1 bags of coppers and 7 £5 bags of silver to cash in at the bank. Thank god for my over sized whisky bottle savings jar. It allowed me to make good time and get to Aber to join some of the boys for a night out. Somebody told me cheap red wine was a good idea? My body didn't think so the day after. A summer of hardly drinking left me weak and battered on the living room sofa come Saturday. Looking a lovely shade of green and barely being able to eat I had a fun hangover day sitting watching the Baylor - TCU game with Steve and Barbie.

Now week one of college football is usually labelled cupcake week as most teams schedule weak warm up games to get themselves primed for the grind of the season. There were a couple of games between ranked opponents. Boise State brought the hammer and beat fellow ranked Georgia 35-21. Could this be a championship year for the broncos? Having seen LSU pound early BCS favourites Oregon in the Cowboy Classic, who knows? LSU proved once again that a tough and fast SEC defense can beat the speedy Duck's spread. With costly penalties and turnovers proving the main difference, a massive dent into Oregon's BCS hopes was dealt in week one. Both these games were fun watches, but the best game of the weekend also included the biggest upset.

Unranked Baylor entertained highly ranked and previous seasons Rose Bowl champs TCU. Lead by Robert Griffin III and Kendall Wright they stormed to a 50-48 win in what showed the true beauty of college football. Electrifying offense that was shown by RG3 throwing for 359 yards and 5 TD's, as well as making a crucial third down catch on a trick play. Wright had 189 yards and 2 TD catches on the day, as well as throwing a TD and completing the pass that Griffin caught. Running back Ganaway pounded his 240 pound frame into TCU's previously stud defense all afternoon for 120 yards. An almost heroic comeback from TCU gave them the lead with 4 minutes to go, but only for it to be snatched away as RG3 led Baylor back up the field for the game winning kick. A superb game, that really made my hangover day worthwhile. Even if i struggled well into Sunday to recover. A good weekend capitulated by the first super Sunday. Oregon losing was a bad point, but NCAA on the whole, roast beef and apple crumble cake made it all better. Roll on the rest of the season as the NFL starts next week.

Peace out, take it easy. My return to Aber is imminent.