Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Blizzard

Jason Cole ranks teams by quarterback (Yahoo!).

The Vikings' statement regarding the political lack of priority for a new stadium (Pioneer Press). If you must know, I have extremely mixed feelings about a public-funded Viking stadium, at both a rational and emotional level. I feel that every argument for either side has a quite reasonable counterargument.

Christopher Gates on how the Vikes could do starting the season without Pat and Kevin (Daily Norseman).

Really good comments from Ross Tucker on voluntary offseason workouts (SI).

Vic Carucci on David Garrard and the Jaguars (NFL.com).

Fantasy Heavy
Christopher Harris's top 200 (ESPN).

Matthew Berry's top 100 (ESPN).

Christopher Harris's mock draft (ESPN). Would you judge me harshly if I told you I've done many fantasy mock drafts in my day?

David Komer with a lot of good stuff (SI).

Jahvid Best (SI).

Adam Levitan on the Rotoworld/Beckett mock draft (Pancake Blocks). Here's what I don't get: when these magazines get a bunch of individuals together to do a "mock" draft, do they really just have a mock? Wouldn't they just go ahead and have a league, now that they've drafted teams? And if they do, then why still call it a mock?

The Steelers' fantasy prospects, from Hal Spivack (NFL Fanhouse). I would love to draft Mike Wallace, just so I can scream "Where's Wallace!?!" at the TV next fall.

Where do we go from here?
Since I had the sports fan equivalent of a nervous breakdown and basically avoided football for four months (I have a brief recollection that Ladanian Tomlinson was almost a Viking--that can't have been real, was it?), I feel a little behind. This summer, I plan on buying not only a fantasy football magazine or two (but not Fanball's mag: I'm looking for a change), but maybe one or two general NFL preview magazines. I know, the internet has mostly made such things pointless. But I remember loving such magazines as a kid, and I'll enjoy the thrill of sitting around flipping through a magazine (I freaking love magazines) more than I'll enjoy sitting with a sweaty hot laptop on my lap.

One thing I'll never again comment on here
There are some useful football column gimmicks. A mock draft isn't about being right: it's an easy, concise way to inform readers about the draft order, the top prospects, and team needs.

I might even come around to seeing that Power Rankings columns can serve a function. But there's one thing that's beyond pointless: responding to an individual football writer's Power Rankings with anger. First of all, who gives a shit? Second of all, who gives a shit? Third of all, why get worked up about what one person thinks? Fourth of all, what possible impact could one individual's power rankings have? And above all, don't actually respond to a football writer's Power Rankings: all you do is verify for him/her that he/she is important, make him/her feel edgy and controversial even when he/she is not, and you give him/her an easy next column, responding to the angry critics. Don't do it.

3 comments:

  1. Extremely good piece, I enjoyed reading through it. It had many amazing content. I’m bookmarking this web site. I invite you to see my post, I hope you will find interesting too.

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  2. Naturally, I suggest Beckett Media's Fantasy Football magazine. Not just because I work there, but -- OK, just because I work there.

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  3. I will look into the mag.

    ReplyDelete