Being a NY Jets fan, I've experienced quite a bit of ridiculousness in my years of following this team. If there is a Jets fan out there that is between the ages of 18 and under, then they have no idea what a true Jets fan has had to endure. Even I will admit that I haven't endured all that the long time fan has suffered.
About a year ago, I went out for pizza with a friend in Rock Hill, SC. The name of the pizza parlor was Empire Pizza. As an aside, their pizza is outstanding. Apparently, the owners are long time Jets fans. We went in to order and my friend, Becky, told them that I was a big Jets fan, as well. Their first question was surrounded around the length of time I've been a Jets fan. You see, many Jets fans haven't experienced the embarrassment and disappointment that the old time fans have.
There has never been a greater period of Jets prosperity than the previous 15 years. When the Jets won the Super Bowl, they had an additional 1 or 2 years where they were good, but otherwise they were mediocre to putrid. The entire decade of the 70s was a disaster. The 80s was hit or miss with 81-82 being good, 83-84 disappointing, 85-87 good, 88-89 a joke. The 90s were similar to the 70s in that the team was mostly underperfoming, outcoached, and they drafted as poorly as any other team. That changed once Bill Parcells marched into town in 1997.
From 1997-2011, a period spanning 15 seasons, the Jets have only had a losing record on 3 occasions. Their Win-Loss record during this time is a respectible 128-112, or a .533 winning percentage. They made the playoffs 7 times during this stretch. To consider that the team has only made the playoffs 14 times in its entire existence, this is a pretty impressive accomplishment.
That brings us to the present day. With Rex Ryan at the helm, the Jets have had their training camp in Cortland, NY over 3 of the past 4 seasons (including the current camp). Each year, there is some kind of fan fare. Year 1 was the welcoming of Ryan and Sanchez to right the ship. Year 2, the team was featured on HBO's Hard Knocks series. This year, it's Tebowmania. Tim Tebow, who was traded to the team in the offseason from Denver, has to be the most bally-hooed back up quarterback in the history of football. Every time he speaks, the sports writers listen as if they are at "The Last Supper" or something. Today, Tebow takes his shirt off at the end of a rain drenched practice and every writer in America caught a picture of it. Remarkably, the writers are so focused on Tebowmania that they aren't even paying attention to the starting quarterback, Mark Sanchez. One reporter even addressed Sanchez as "Tim", to which Sanchez replied, "I'm Mark."
Where does the acquisition of Tebow rank in terms of the Jets blunders and missteps? Time will tell on that one. It gives the opposition another dimension to prepare for, but is it worth the media circus that the team is going to have to endure?
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Pics of the Week - 07.24.12
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| Meet The Critters with my boss, Todd, and co-workers, Rachel and Anna. |
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| Blue Mews and Red Ruff with me at the Meet The Critters event. |
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| The Companion Animal team in front of the Executive tank. |
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| The view of the Pacific Ocean from the beach behind The Hotel Del Coronado. |
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| The Hotel Del Coronado from the water front. The hotel spreads out for what seems like an eternity. |
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| We were eating at a wonderful restaurant, named "C-Level", which is right on the bay. While we were eating, a pirate themed ship floated by with some actors on board doing a pirate chant. |
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Fantasy Football Live Auction Draft - Pitfalls
Auction drafts are an alternative to the more traditional snake style draft that many fantasy leagues employ. Whereas a snake draft slots everyone in numerical order (1, 2, 3, etc, for example) for the odd rounds (round 1, 3, 5, etc) and reverse numerical order (12, 11, 10, etc, for example) for the even rounds (round 2, 4, 6, etc). This is incredibly frustrating if you have the 1st pick. You know that everyone in the league is going to draft 2 players before you get a chance again. You're now looking at 45ish minutes of boredom. Or, if you have the last pick in the 1st round, then you watch all the players you covet come off the board, before you even get a chance to draft.
The biggest problem with a snake draft is that there is a lot of sitting on your hands. It's not very interactive and your league owners become increasingly frustrated with the amount of time the draft is taking.
An auction draft solves many of these problems. You give each league owner a set bank roll - depending on your league size, $200 works well. Then players get nominated one-by-one to be bid on. If a league owner has enough money in their bankroll, they are "in-play" on every player that is nominated. They must analyze, strategize, and remain engaged throughout. In an auction draft, if you want the 2 best players that are available at the start and have enough money to outbid everyone else then you can make it happen. Last year, I ended up with Drew Brees and Arian Foster. There is no chance that I would have gotten that combination in a 12-team snake draft.
This is my 7th year running a live Fantasy Football draft. Through the years, there have been several pitfalls. I'm going to discuss them here and how to avoid them. Some of these solutions are more closely related to Snake Drafts, some Auction Drafts, and some will work for both.
1. Draft Fouls - There is always someone at your draft that either picks someone that has already been selected, or who is injured/retired, etc. My first question is why are in a serious fantasy draft if you don't know which players are on an active roster? No matter what you do, there will always be "Drunk Guy" who isn't paying attention. We keep a big poster up with all of the player names on it by position. Once this person has been drafted, we cross his name out. Buy a pad of Self Stick Chart paper, or if you want to go cheap, buy a sheet of posterboard for each position and use some tape. It's much less expensive than trying to buy someone's program, or pre-printed labels to stick on a board.
http://www.amazon.com/Adams-Writen-Stick-Sheets-WSP20232/dp/B002568662/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1342990089&sr=8-5&keywords=self+stick+chart+paper
2. Crowd Control - One of the biggest problems with doing a live auction draft is that everyone wants to talk and have fun. This is problematic because no one can hear what is going on, or who has bid on what. We've solved that by having an "everyone's in" philosophy. The owner who is next will nominate a player to bid on. At that point, everyone is in. Each owner will have a placard or table tent in front of them. The owner nominating the player will control the bidding by calling out an opening bid that increases until the player has been selected by a team. Each owner will have a placard or table tent in front of them. When the bid reaches a point where they are no longer interested, they flip the placard/table tent over signifying that they are no longer bidding on this particular player. By having the owners rotate the nominations of players, the league commissioner is freed up to oversee everything. If someone isn't paying attention, then they may have just overbid on a player they don't want.
3. Owner Arrival - Always a concern when you are doing a live draft is everyone showing up on time. It will never happen. Let me repeat - NEVER! In the previous 6 years of doing this, there has never been a time where everyone shows up on time. To solve this, we start the draft earlier than normal and have the initial half hour or hour be a "meet and greet" type of scenario where everyone can get food/drinks, smack talk other league owners and look over stats and rule changes. Once everyone has arrived, you can start the draft without anyone being pissed, etc.
4. Cash Outlay - Our league is not the type where you send your money later. If you don't bring the cash, you aren't in the league. There is no scenario under which we are chasing people for money later. Throughout the years, we have never had someone fail to show up with the money. We put this on the league message board, email everyone, and text everyone prior to the draft so that there is no confusion. I literally put this in every communication that I send out. If need be, I have people at the ready as subs, but have never had to utilize this strategy - Knock on wood.
5. Overspending Auction Budget - Surprisingly, this was a big issue last year. I really thought that, having reached adulthood, most people would be able to count, etc. We have taken 2 steps to cut down on the confusion - we are going to post a spreadsheet showing how much everyone has spent, and if an owner overspends, they will receive a penalty against their auction budget and forfeit 2 in-season transactions (our league limits the number of waiver transactions you can make so this is a more severe penalty that you might think.) This limits someone bidding $20 for a player when they only have $18 left on their bank roll, which is a huge pain in the ass, because then you have to determine who had the last legit bid and then resume the bidding from that point. This puts everyone in check and, miraculously, everyone's math starts getting a lot more precise when they learn of the consequences.
6. The Limas Sweed Doctrine - One thing I noticed is that the last 2-3 position players selected are usually guys that don't contribute to a league owner's roster very much. We refer to this as the "Limas Sweed Doctrine" due to the selection of this Pittsburgh Steelers Wide Receiver in the last round of our fantasy draft one year. The room let out a collective "Who?" when Limas was drafted. To prevent valuable draft spots being occupied by players that are closer to insignificant than valuable starter, the Limas Sweed Doctrine calls for the draft to be over once each league owner has exactly 3 open spots on their roster. At any time following the waiver period after the draft, each league owner can pick up any undrafted player to fill these remaining 3 spots. The quality of players chosen post-draft has greatly increased and you don't have to sit around to watch meaningless selections being made for the last 3 rounds. Do the math - in a 12 team league, this equates to 36 picks. If you assume each player is taking a minute and a half to make their picks, you are shaving close to an hour off your draft time.
The biggest problem with a snake draft is that there is a lot of sitting on your hands. It's not very interactive and your league owners become increasingly frustrated with the amount of time the draft is taking.
An auction draft solves many of these problems. You give each league owner a set bank roll - depending on your league size, $200 works well. Then players get nominated one-by-one to be bid on. If a league owner has enough money in their bankroll, they are "in-play" on every player that is nominated. They must analyze, strategize, and remain engaged throughout. In an auction draft, if you want the 2 best players that are available at the start and have enough money to outbid everyone else then you can make it happen. Last year, I ended up with Drew Brees and Arian Foster. There is no chance that I would have gotten that combination in a 12-team snake draft.
This is my 7th year running a live Fantasy Football draft. Through the years, there have been several pitfalls. I'm going to discuss them here and how to avoid them. Some of these solutions are more closely related to Snake Drafts, some Auction Drafts, and some will work for both.
1. Draft Fouls - There is always someone at your draft that either picks someone that has already been selected, or who is injured/retired, etc. My first question is why are in a serious fantasy draft if you don't know which players are on an active roster? No matter what you do, there will always be "Drunk Guy" who isn't paying attention. We keep a big poster up with all of the player names on it by position. Once this person has been drafted, we cross his name out. Buy a pad of Self Stick Chart paper, or if you want to go cheap, buy a sheet of posterboard for each position and use some tape. It's much less expensive than trying to buy someone's program, or pre-printed labels to stick on a board.
http://www.amazon.com/Adams-Writen-Stick-Sheets-WSP20232/dp/B002568662/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1342990089&sr=8-5&keywords=self+stick+chart+paper
2. Crowd Control - One of the biggest problems with doing a live auction draft is that everyone wants to talk and have fun. This is problematic because no one can hear what is going on, or who has bid on what. We've solved that by having an "everyone's in" philosophy. The owner who is next will nominate a player to bid on. At that point, everyone is in. Each owner will have a placard or table tent in front of them. The owner nominating the player will control the bidding by calling out an opening bid that increases until the player has been selected by a team. Each owner will have a placard or table tent in front of them. When the bid reaches a point where they are no longer interested, they flip the placard/table tent over signifying that they are no longer bidding on this particular player. By having the owners rotate the nominations of players, the league commissioner is freed up to oversee everything. If someone isn't paying attention, then they may have just overbid on a player they don't want.
3. Owner Arrival - Always a concern when you are doing a live draft is everyone showing up on time. It will never happen. Let me repeat - NEVER! In the previous 6 years of doing this, there has never been a time where everyone shows up on time. To solve this, we start the draft earlier than normal and have the initial half hour or hour be a "meet and greet" type of scenario where everyone can get food/drinks, smack talk other league owners and look over stats and rule changes. Once everyone has arrived, you can start the draft without anyone being pissed, etc.
4. Cash Outlay - Our league is not the type where you send your money later. If you don't bring the cash, you aren't in the league. There is no scenario under which we are chasing people for money later. Throughout the years, we have never had someone fail to show up with the money. We put this on the league message board, email everyone, and text everyone prior to the draft so that there is no confusion. I literally put this in every communication that I send out. If need be, I have people at the ready as subs, but have never had to utilize this strategy - Knock on wood.
5. Overspending Auction Budget - Surprisingly, this was a big issue last year. I really thought that, having reached adulthood, most people would be able to count, etc. We have taken 2 steps to cut down on the confusion - we are going to post a spreadsheet showing how much everyone has spent, and if an owner overspends, they will receive a penalty against their auction budget and forfeit 2 in-season transactions (our league limits the number of waiver transactions you can make so this is a more severe penalty that you might think.) This limits someone bidding $20 for a player when they only have $18 left on their bank roll, which is a huge pain in the ass, because then you have to determine who had the last legit bid and then resume the bidding from that point. This puts everyone in check and, miraculously, everyone's math starts getting a lot more precise when they learn of the consequences.
6. The Limas Sweed Doctrine - One thing I noticed is that the last 2-3 position players selected are usually guys that don't contribute to a league owner's roster very much. We refer to this as the "Limas Sweed Doctrine" due to the selection of this Pittsburgh Steelers Wide Receiver in the last round of our fantasy draft one year. The room let out a collective "Who?" when Limas was drafted. To prevent valuable draft spots being occupied by players that are closer to insignificant than valuable starter, the Limas Sweed Doctrine calls for the draft to be over once each league owner has exactly 3 open spots on their roster. At any time following the waiver period after the draft, each league owner can pick up any undrafted player to fill these remaining 3 spots. The quality of players chosen post-draft has greatly increased and you don't have to sit around to watch meaningless selections being made for the last 3 rounds. Do the math - in a 12 team league, this equates to 36 picks. If you assume each player is taking a minute and a half to make their picks, you are shaving close to an hour off your draft time.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Birthday Gifts and Grant Hill
It's that time of year again when the birthday gifts start to come in. I've already received one of the coolest things I've ever seen - and probably never thought I'd see --> A St. Bonaventure Bonnies Atlantic 10 Men's Basketball T-Shirt. Being an adult fan, I've really adjusted my view of being a fan. I'm not the type that is into autographs, or things of that nature. I prefer to have experiences, or in this case artifacts from an experience that signify the event, such as this T-shirt. The best ones are the most spontaneous. I never thought the Bonnies had a chance because of their history to win this tournament, but I enjoyed the ride they were on, hoping that they could prove me wrong. At the end of the day, the very thing I least expected occurred. When you don't know what's going to happen, you can sometimes be in store for a treat. In fact, one of the coolest experiences that I've had in my life happened by total accident.
I had a doctor's appointment one day, so I was home from work in the afternoon. I went to the doctor and afterwards walked over to Border's to look at some books and CD's. I spent a few minutes browsing and looked up to see Grant Hill from the Detriot Pistons reading a magazine. He had his foot on a bench and his elbow on his knee, flipping through the magazine. Under his arm was the board game, Duke-opoly. Grant Hill is from Duke University. I walked over and said hi to him, shook his hand and wished him well. At this point, he was out with an injury so I told him that I hoped he recovered very soon. He appreciated it and then I left him in peace to read his magazine. There was no fan fare, no photo-op, no autograph request. The incredible experience for me was exchanging a few words with a tremendous athlete. He was very gracious with me. That image won't soon leave my mind.
I had a doctor's appointment one day, so I was home from work in the afternoon. I went to the doctor and afterwards walked over to Border's to look at some books and CD's. I spent a few minutes browsing and looked up to see Grant Hill from the Detriot Pistons reading a magazine. He had his foot on a bench and his elbow on his knee, flipping through the magazine. Under his arm was the board game, Duke-opoly. Grant Hill is from Duke University. I walked over and said hi to him, shook his hand and wished him well. At this point, he was out with an injury so I told him that I hoped he recovered very soon. He appreciated it and then I left him in peace to read his magazine. There was no fan fare, no photo-op, no autograph request. The incredible experience for me was exchanging a few words with a tremendous athlete. He was very gracious with me. That image won't soon leave my mind.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Pics of the Week 07.09.12
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| Las Vegas, in front of Paris. |
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| Las Vegas brings out everyone. Here is Pete Rose signing autographs. |
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| Just as we were finished gawking at Pete Rose, we turn the corner and there is Tony Dorsett signing autographs in an art gallery. 2 stars in one day...not too shabby! |
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| Jill and I, in front of the Hard Rock Cafe. Our friend, Margaret got a terrific shot here! |
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| Marcy Playground performing at Mandalay Bay in Vegas to lead off the Summerland Concert. |
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| Mark McGrath and Sugar Ray performing at Mandalay Bay as part of the Summerland Concert. |
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| Sammie at top of the hill outside of my office. You can see for miles up here as our building is actually down in the canyon. This picture was taken from outside building 3. |
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| The stage at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in San Diego for the Summerland Concert. |
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| Rachel, Jeff, and Jill at the Summerland Concert in San Diego. |
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| Backstage at the Summerland Concert in San Diego with Sean Winchester (Everclear's drummer), Jill, Rachel, Josh Crawley (Everclear's keyboardist), and Jeff |
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| Jeff and Sammie on the couch. She's not spoiled or anything! |
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| We went to Carlsbad to hang out with our friend, Jeff H. I couldn't tell whether these people should be collecting garbage on the side of the highway or what? |
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