Friday, June 27, 2008

Fantasy Football "Silly Season" Approaches

The NFL Draft is ancient history, mini-camps have just completed and training camp is fast approaching. Fantasy football "silly season" is here! On email inboxes, websites and magazine shelves, you are beginning to see ads and mags claiming Dominate Your League...#1 Draft Guide...BE a Fantasy GOD, ad nauseum.

All these entities claiming:
  • Superior knowledge - don't listen to those dummies, subscribe to my service!!!
  • Superior content - rankings and projections for 4,576,394,109.62 players!!!
  • Superior accuracy - buy me now even if your draft isn't until September - it's all good!!!

Being a bit facetious, but we've all seen these kind of claims. You know what I haven't seen? I haven't seen a publication that evaluates itself honestly and publishes how accurate its previous year's projections were. Wouldn't it be refreshing to read an ad stating that "our projections on average were only 35% off from reality?" Of course, that might not generate much in buying enthusiasm. They would be more likely to claim their competitors are evil incarnate before they would actually do a bit of public self-reflection.

Many of these folks compensate by having "expert" rankings of the top ten or so at each position and have "consensus" picks. Gee, do I really have to spend $7.95 to find out LaDanian Tomlinson, Tom Brady and Terrell Owens are good? If the experts wanted to provide some real value, how about having those people accurately rank #20 through #50 at each position? Also, is having the average opinion of six people that really don't know any more than anyone else that valuable?

Of course if there was someone that could predict player stats either weekly or seasonally within 5%, they wouldn't be selling that information to us, they'd be in Vegas making a killing. I guess that in itself may be the best barometer of what "silly season" materials are worth.

Scour the web for free info and if you buy a magazine that has some info you can use and perhaps a page to fill out your roster and scratch off who has been chosen, maybe that's the best use of your $7.95. If your league stakes are low, and you're really in it to have fun, make your own estimates and have fun! That is what fantasy football is about anyway.

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