TO MY NEMESES
Bench Bozos Slated to Take It All
I don’t know what rushing is
Bench Bozos are back, baby!
Yup. Too bad for you, trophy cravers. The Boze is going to own the title and pone you.
Not you, my lovely reader, but you, my nemeses.
You know who you are — the other eleven teams in our family’s fantasy football league. You think just because you’re all football die-hards and I’m the league’s lone football ignoramus, you’ve got me beat.
Yeah, no.
Who holds the league’s six-time regular-season top-team distinction?
The Boze.
Just because I remain a devout football know-nothing doesn’t mean you should mock my ‘luck’ six times in a row.
One word. You-wish-you-were-me.
How about you, ex-Penn State footballer? What do you have to say for yourself? Or you, lifelong Steelers fan who knows every player — mangled or whole— in the NFL? Why you so sucky? Or you, Browns fan who watches the TV all day on Sundays from September through January?
Why you guys giving up your Monday nights while I do crucial things like the dishes? I can’t imagine watching that much football. I’d rather watch worms sleep.
How can you explain it?
WHY IS MY TEAM SO GOOD??
I’ll tell you why. I like games. Not football games — goodness no. I like tactical games, riddles, and puzzles. I don’t want to reveal my secret, but that’s my secret. I like to figure stuff out. Plus, competition.
Build knowledge
To run a top fantasy team with no interest in football whatsoever you must enjoy looking for hidden clues. If this is you, the sky’s the limit on things to unravel about football. It’d be hard to list all I’ve learned, but not that hard.
For one, I’ve discovered that the NFL plays on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday. That’s it. Only three excruciating days. The rest of the week is soft and breezy, like butter, or a dream come true. Those days will not have your phone jangling incessantly with an unhinged family group text going berserk after every single bad play transpiring at football stadiums throughout the United States.
Stay with me here — this is important. This means Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday are when you can come out of hiding and spend uninterrupted time learning about football. Saturdays are iffy. They might generate a crazed text upheaval if there’s a college game that anyone in your league cares about. Be mindful.
Wise choices
Learning — so much to do, so little time. Choose wisely. For my purposes, I wanted to understand how a player’s name might affect their performance. Brilliant, I know. If your coach is yelling your name constantly from the sidelines, that’s some crazy subliminal messaging right there. Am I right? Slap me five.
For example, per the names this season, if you constantly hear, “Burrow! Burrow!” and you’re a quarterback, what will you do? I’m not looking to recruit groundhogs.
What about Hurts? “Hurts! Hurts!” Wouldn’t you think everything hurts and throw in the towel? I want one word for my team. GRIT.
For the running positions, there are Waddle, Chubb, Walker, and Moss. Moss? Do you know how slow-growing?
On the other hand, there are Chase, Swift, Hunt, and Gainwell. Bingo. Let’s hire those guys.
Then there are unrelated names. Homer — wrong sport. London — wrong country. Hill — wrong topography. Ham — for postgame only.
Don’t even get me started on McKitty, Tremble, and Pitts.
What I like most about this metric for recruitment is that I’m the only one in my league who uses it. I’m also the only one with a six-time season-best team. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Sage advice
Another strategy I’ve used to build the powerhouse Bozos is psychology. My number one policy is this. If you’ve been arrested in the past week for a violent offense, you’re sitting bench on Sunday. Other team owners might think this a Mickey Mouse strategy — for the birds — but tell me, who of you tremble when you face The Bozos on game day? That’s rhetorical, in case you fell asleep reading this. You should do like the Boze!
On the Bench Bozos’ bench are severely injured players and those with recent mugshots. Period. You’re still eligible to play if you’re having trouble with your wife or girlfriend. You’re certainly fine to play if your cognition is getting fuzzy. You can even play if you don’t understand how vaccines work. But a mugshot? Naw. I want focus out of you. How much focus can you muster when you’re regretting getting caught? Besides, I don’t want to deal with so much legal on the sidelines. I’d rather pick sand out of my teeth.
Countenance matters
My next criteria for recruitment, and whether you’re rostered with the Bozos, is the face. The face of a player is so crucial I can’t begin to tell you, but you know I’m going to tell you anyway.
When engaged in a pre-season fantasy draft, my nemeses are undoubtedly freaked out in front of scads of windows open on their bank of computer screens listing all the analytics on each player, injury reports, franchise news, coaching data, division updates, weather outlook, political influences, and fan theories.
Not me. All I look at is the face. It’s posted in a tiny thumbnail next to each player. I study each one. If the player is ranked very high — one of the best — but has a scowl or looks like he’s not paying attention, I press ‘reject’. This not only psyches out the other league owners — what the frig is she doing?? — but it apparently has also given me the edge for six straight seasons.
Have I mentioned I have a six-season winning streak yet?
Look, the Bozos are heavily invested in charity work in the off-season. We are clowns. Our uniform is of a clown. Our logo is a clown. We are the most sought-after entertainment franchise for children’s birthday parties in the U.S. I can’t have sketchy faces under those red curly wigs. Countenance matters.
Easy peasy
That sums up what I do to maintain extended dominance over my loser family nemeses in fantasy football. My approach will win you fame, respect, and awe within your family or at work, depending on where you do this time-devouring activity.
Of course, if you sign up for an autopilot service as I do, it will run the whole thing for you soup-to-nuts. This will give you the illusion of managing well and allow you to spout on about faces and names which have nothing to do with reality.
If you opt to do it all on your own, be my guest. That will mean lots of hours scrutinizing football on a tough weekly schedule for months. Go for it. Me? I’d rather watch commercials during halftime.
I got super lucky Andrew Rodwin edited this sporty expository. One, his ideas are what you wish you thought of first. Two, he knows FF.
In none of the following stories do I write about touchdowns.
