{"id":321,"date":"2011-08-22T01:36:35","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T01:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelwagstaff.wordpress.com\/?p=321"},"modified":"2016-10-14T17:38:57","modified_gmt":"2016-10-14T17:38:57","slug":"my-initiation-into-fantasy-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/my-initiation-into-fantasy-football\/","title":{"rendered":"My Initiation Into Fantasy Football"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been more than two months since I’ve last written on this blog. A lot has happened. I’ve moved, twice. I’ve aged (by which I mean I celebrated my birthday). I’ve taught an 8-week composition course for incoming Freshman athletes (11 football players and 3 hockey players). And tonight, in about 30 minutes, I’m about to participate in my first ever fantasy football draft. My friend and old college roommate Dave invited me to join a small league with his dad and brothers and I told him yes, so as of tonight I will officially be [drum roll…] a fantasy football owner. I’ve avoided fantasy sports for years, not because I have any philosophical opposition to them, but because they seem like precisely the kind of thing that I would really love, so much so that I could see myself throwing away tons of time on roster management, scouring the waiver wires, proposing trades, etc. That feeling increased when I saw the very interesting ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Silly Little Game<\/a>, which explained the historical origin of today’s fantasy sports empire and offered a pretty good oral history of the invention of Rotisserie League Baseball (the brainchild of Dan Okrent, a historian and prominent news\/magazine editor).\u00a0I haven’t done anything to prepare for this year’s draft, I’m not entirely sure how the league is structured, and I’m not even clear on how points are awarded, so I feel like I’ve done a good job of avoiding the fantasy disease, but I hope I can maintain such relative sanity and balance once football season starts and players start recording statistics. Here’s my draft strategy–I feel duty bound to acquire at least one representative of the Steelers (my favorite team–largely because of my name) and Packers (since I’m a resident of Wisconsin), and I’m going to avoid players that I actively dislike, even if they’d be great for fantasy purposes. I’ll try to also take haircuts (including facial hair), colleges, and awesome names into consideration. Anything else I should know to prepare for a fantasy football season?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been more than two months since I’ve last written on this blog. A lot has happened. I’ve moved, twice. I’ve aged (by which I mean I celebrated my birthday). I’ve taught an 8-week composition course for incoming Freshman athletes (11 football players and 3 hockey players). And tonight, in about 30 minutes, I’m about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New post up on my blog: \"My Initiation Into Fantasy Football\":","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[70,34],"class_list":["post-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-from-tumblr","tag-fantasy-football","tag-sports"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Steel Wagstaff","author_link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/author\/steel\/"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","featured_image_src_square":null,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd6z5D-5b","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":162,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/eyewear-rec-specs-and-professional-athletes\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":0},"title":"Eyewear (Rec Specs) and Professional Athletes","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"May 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The weather has finally turned in Madison. It's still fairly cool here, but the snow is long gone and the grass is back, and the ground is hard enough for running and cutting and all the other things you need to do to play soccer outdoors. Finally. This week has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/ato_boldon1.jpg?fit=442%2C324&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4876,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/favorite-passages-jonathan-wilsons-inverting-pyramid-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":1},"title":"Favorite Passages from Jonathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"September 3, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In the past several years, I've become a full-fledged soccer fan. I've always followed (and played) sports, switching over the years from an interest in baseball to football to basketball and most recently, to soccer. It's now the sport that I follow most closely, play most regularly for recreation, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reading Notes"","block_context":{"text":"Reading Notes","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/reading-notes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pyramid.jpg?fit=800%2C600&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pyramid.jpg?fit=800%2C600&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pyramid.jpg?fit=800%2C600&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pyramid.jpg?fit=800%2C600&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":53,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/the-last-thing-to-go\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":2},"title":"The Last Thing To Go","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"April 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I play basketball on Wednesday nights. Pick-up games, at a church building in Madison, five on five, really nice courts. So it's on my mind today. I've played basketball ever since I was a kid. I've always been into sports, and have always liked playing them more than watching them.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog"","block_context":{"text":"Blog","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/category\/blog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/CHFight.jpg?fit=800%2C721&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/CHFight.jpg?fit=800%2C721&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/CHFight.jpg?fit=800%2C721&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/CHFight.jpg?fit=800%2C721&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4846,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/reading-recommendations-friends-september-2016\/","url_meta":{"origin":321,"position":3},"title":"Reading Recommendations from Friends [September 2016]","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"September 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been on a reading kick lately and I decided to crowdsource some recommendations to some friends on social media earlier this week. 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