Fantasy Football

Thanks for nothing, ESPN autopick draft

Up until Friday night, I had never encountered the horrors of fantasy sports autodrafts. 

In previous years, I had been lucky enough to have friends close by who could attend a draft party or to have created a four-team league by myself using different usernames I created.  I know; I need help. 

My newest league had no choice but being an autopick draft.  The ESPN servers were not free until Week 8 to do a live draft, and I wasn’t about to manually enter the results of our analog selections.  The only way out, then, was through an autodraft. 

At first, having someone else draft for me seemed like a good idea, and the format for the ESPN league was appealing.  ESPN really pushed the option to pre-rank your players, which gives users like me the faint hope that I have some control over who will be picked.  However, once I had pre-ranked every New England Patriot skill position player 1 through 10 overall, I realized that my pre-ranking was futile.  The entire autodraft was a gigantic guessing game. 

What’s more is that we wouldn’t know the draft order until one hour before live autodraft, which, coincidentally was at five a.m. eastern.  Armed with no idea how to ensure I get the players I want (other than overvaluing my faves to the point of screwing up my entire season), I crossed my fingers and hoped and prayed that the great minds behind ESPN’s fantasy draft computers would give me something to work with. 

They did no such thing. 

Checking my draft results the next day, I found that the apocalypse to end all apocalypses had happened.  My starting quarterback was Chad Pennington. 

As a person, I have no problem with Pennington.  A Rhodes scholar and a close personal friend of Randy Moss, he seems like a nice guy.  But I’m not going to get the requisite 10 fantasy points I need week in and week out from his community service at the elks lodge. 

Instead, Pennington’s 10 points may come cumulatively over a number of weeks because of his weak arm, vanilla style, and injury risk.  He plays for a team that does not score a great number of points as it is and that went out in the offseason and snagged a premier rushing threat. 

To make matters worse, ESPN in all its wisdom failed to draft me a backup quarterback. 

Thanks for nothing, hosers. 

My lineup behind Pennington was okay bordering on somewhat acceptable.  At running back, I had Joseph Addai, Ronnie Brown (who I actually wanted), and most certainly not a full season of Clinton Portis.  Wide receiver looked surprisingly good with Javon Walker and Andre Johnson.  My tight end was a Cleveland Brown (Kellen Winslow), and my defense just cut its leader and run stuffer (Philadelphia).  Discussing my bench right now might make me break down into tears. 

Having drafted on the Friday before opening week, I had little roster maneuverability.  Picking a quarterback off of waivers would have taken two days for him to clear.  My trade requests were being largely ignored.  Sunday was coming all too fast. 

But when it did, I was surprisingly alright.  It was as if the fantasy football gods looked down from their heavenly places and said, “We’ll spot you one this week, but oh the pain you will have the rest of the year.”  Pennington dinked his way to two TD tosses.  Andre Johnson lit up the Kansas City defense.  Clinton Portis had a whole touchdown.  Things could not have worked out better. 

In your face, ESPN autodraft. 

Of course, now it’s Week 2, Pennington hurt his ankle, none of my players are facing the Chiefs, and I have a headache. 

Oh well, at least fantasy football was fun for one week this year. 

© 2007 KevanLee.com.