Introduction
9/11/09
Every industry has experts; those sages that dispense wisdom
and truth from atop the mountain. In philosophy these learned men
wear long, flowing robes and an equally lengthy beard is required.
In fantasy football, a backwards ball cap, clipboard of notes, and
half empty bottle of Coors Light is more likely. But are these guys
truly experts? Do they know any better than the rest of us schmucks?
Each week Analyzing the Experts will take aim at one or more of
these so-called oracles and find out…
Welcome to a new year of our epic competition. I’d like to
start off with a little history for those of you new to FFToday
or still suffering from the overindulgences of last night. In 2007
we held the first Analyzing the Experts
competition. The concept of making fantasy football writers
accountable for their picks seemed to be a great idea for a series
of articles. From my research, many individuals did this for their
own teams, trying to get a bead on who was the best source for starting
lineup recommendations. However, next to nothing was done from a
more organized, unbiased point of view. So, the concept was decided
on and the first article went out the following day, with absolutely
no preparation and very little forethought. That all being said,
it worked out pretty well and we crowned RotoWorld the King of Experts
as they cruised to a well-deserved victory. Following the season,
readers suggested many improvements to the methodology of the contest
and requested the inclusion of additional experts in 2008. I carefully
kept all this information and catalogued the comments away for the
following year.
Unfortunately, the real world reared its ugly head as the 2008
season approached. When given the choice of either writing the
series again or earning a living, I had to go with the paycheck,
much to my wife’s relief. Although it is obvious FFToday
should pay all of us writers like Wall Street CEOs, the compensation
is a bit more meager. I still don’t have a single FFToday
stock option…Unless I wanted to go back to my college days
of Ramen Noodles and Keystone Light, a normal job was required
to supplement any writing ‘paycheck’. Luckily, things
have settled down in the boring world of 9 to 5, leaving an opportunity
to once again heckle and judge the Experts among us. With a vague
feeling of trepidation, I cracked open the dusty folder of reader
comments, threw away the ones calling me an idiot, imbecile, or
worse, and started pawing through the remains….
And now we have Analyzing the
Experts v2.0. The new setup will be bigger and better than
the initial incarnation. First, we’ll have more teams. In
2007, only five teams were included, mostly because I was too
lazy to research more each week. We’ll be playing with two
divisions of seven this year, totaling fourteen for those of you
struggling with the math. The identities of the participants will
remain a mystery until next week as I make the final selections.
Readers requested many new Experts for this season and I’ll
be doing my best to oblige, whether the expert wants to play or
not..
Scoring will be completely revamped as well. Each week will feature
a team sent in by a reader, giving our experts an opportunity
to show their brilliance by properly ranking the players in order
of best starter to bench fodder. I’ll compare the selected
fantasy team with the rankings published by each Expert and points
will be awarded for putting each potential starting player in
the proper order. This will allow for a variety of players to
be judged (minimizing some of the man-crushes Experts seem to
regularly develop) and provide for more decisions to be made by
the contestants, directly increasing the potential level of ridicule.
By the way, did I mention that our Experts will be going head-to-head
this year? Anyone interested in seeing the FFToday versus RotoWorld
matchup? So, send in
your fantasy team. Obviously, only sixteen will end up being
used and I reserve the right to select teams based on completely
arbitrary factors such as team name and level of hopelessness.
And don’t be offended if I tweak your team a bit to fit
the needs of our contest. We need to have a certain number of
possible picks in each position to make everything work.
So, fourteen teams divided into a couple divisions, playing head-to-head
each week based on a reader-submitted fantasy line up. What else
do we need? Sleazy women? Cheap alcohol? Well, yes, but I was
referring to the playoffs. Standard Week 14 bye for the division
winners while the division runner ups face off against a couple
of wild card teams. The winners from that week play the division
winners in Week 15 and our Analyzing the Experts Championship
Game will go down Week 16. A new champion will be crowned King
of the Experts, Ruler of All things Fantasy Football. That also
means someone will be last, which ought to be even more fun….
What does all this work get the winning Expert other than a crappy
title? Street cred? Cash? I am sorry to say that all I can award
is the title. If I set up a cash prize I wouldn’t be able
to afford the Ramen Noodles (the beer is not negotiable). What
do the readers get from this sixteen week ordeal? Some relevant
data about who actually knows what they are talking about and
who is wasting your time with poorly researched or cookie cutter
rankings. I know I’m often frustrated looking over a bunch
of different websites each week to figure out my starters, seeing
none of them agree and then, when they do, they are so often wrong.
Listen to the Experts? Which one? Flip a coin? Put the team roster
up on the dart board? We will once again get the chance to see
which Experts are worth listening to.
This season’s version is a bit more scientific too, opening
up the field to more Experts, each making many more picks and
based on a team that is completely different each week. As much
as I enjoyed spending 2007 picking on FFToday for its love of
Denver running backs and FoxSports constant selection of Dwayne
Bowe as a top receiver regardless of matchup, the ever changing
pool of players should minimize the effect of these quirks (or
flaws depending on your point of view). Some readers were hoping
for a more analytical approach with a very strong statistical
element. I agree that calculating out standard deviations and
confidence intervals would give us more accurate data, but most
importantly, it would be freaking boring. So, more scientific
– yes. Completely nerding out – no.
A last item I wanted to mention was the surprising distaste many
Experts have for the title of "Fantasy Football Expert".
A completely unauthorized snippet from an email exchange between
myself and one of 2007’s contestants sums up both sides
of the discussion:
Expert: I love reading your articles and
am on pins and needles every week waiting to see where we end
up. If I was a woman I would have your baby. I'd also like to
say that we never use the word expert with our football coverage
at ########## and have written about the subject a few times because
I hate the word expert.
Me: Whether you want to be or not, fantasy fans consider you an
expert (probably one of the biggest), so enjoy the Expert title.
I may have misremembered some of it, but the football
stuff is 99% accurate. When we mention ‘crooks’ everyone
knows we are talking about politicians. ‘Lazy bums’
are highway construction workers and ‘innocent young ladies’
gyrate against a pole on a dimly lit stage. So, regardless of
what fantasy football writers call themselves, the readers recognize
them as Experts, deservedly or not. This year we will continue
separating the football gurus from the unemployed strippers…
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