Introduction

Hello and welcome to The Yardstick.  Seeing as this is my first post, I figured I would start by explaining what this blog is all about.

First of all, this is a blog about fantasy football.  Now, I am by no means an expert on that subject, but hopefully that will be what makes this blog both unique and worth an occassional look-see.  While I am not an expert, I am a fan, and I have been participating in fantasy football leagues since 2005.  This blog will hopefully give the "average player's" perspective on things.  The expert opinions are certainly valuable (I follow a few fantasy "experts" myself to try to keep myself educated), but sometimes it feels like those guys are seeing things in some kind of ordered fantasy football vacuum where things happen more or less by the book.  I'm not saying that the experts don't get things like the fact that football players get injured from time to time, rather that their advice is usually based on the principle that everyone else in your fantasy league will no what he or she (probably he) should be doing.  This isn't the case in the average fantasy league.

For example, in my fantasy draft this year, Andre Johnson was picked first overall, Aaron Rodgers was drafted in the late second round, and a kicker was taken in the fourth round (this is a twelve team standard league, by the way).  If the experts are playing in fantasy leagues exclusively with other experts, then how can they know what it's like for those of us out there who not only don't really know what they're doing, but are playing with other people who don't really know what they're doing?  That fact can really make this game we play significantly more complicated at times.  It's like playing poker with that chump who throws all his chips in on a bluff--you read it perfectly, and the guy had a winning hand the whole time without realizing it!  Playing with people who are unpredictable can make a fantasy draft much more erratic than the example drafts the experts have.  This is just one of the ways I think the experts' opinions can be be misleading at times.

To get right down to it, I would like to try to do three basic things with this blog:

1) Write my own opinions and advice about what's going on in the NFL and how it effects the "fantasy world."  In theory, the thoughts of a mere enthusiast will be a fresh take on how to manage a fantasy football team.

2) Report updates on injuries, suspensions, trades, trends, you name it.  This will mostly entail rehashing what I hear in football news and by the fantasy experts, but as I work hard to stay in the know, it will all be here in one place.  Maybe I'll pick up on some curiosities that aren't widely known too...

3) Use my own fantasy football team to serve as a sort of example.  While it may or may not be interesting to people to know who I'm starting in a given week, who I have benched, what trades I'm considering, etc., I hope that what I do may help steer other fantasy managers in the right direction either because I did something truly clever that a reader may not otherwise have thought of doing, or because I did something that was so stupid that a reader would be wise to learn from my mistake.

The other thing I want to say about this blog is that I want to really encourage comments.  As I am just a guy who plays fantasy football and not an expert, my opinion is worth no more than yours.  Please feel free to disagree with what I say and open my posts up for discussion (always in a civil manner, of course).  While I cannot say that my thoughts will always be worth much, I will try to always explain the reasoning that brought me to my opinion so you'll always know where I'm coming from, and hopefully any insights I have will be of some value to you.

Looking forward to discussing fantasy football with you this year!  Stay tuned.

<a href="http://www.blogtopsites.com/sports/"><img style="border:none;" src="http://www.blogtopsites.com/v_61564.gif" alt="Sports Blogs" /></a><br /><a target="_blank" href="http://www.blogtopsites.com/sports/" style="font-size:10px;">sports</span></a>

Technorati Confirm Code: EN8PUMF9GZ4U
TOMORROW'S POST: Fantasy Football Draft Advice