Fantasy Football is Not a Game Played in Middle Earth

In August my brother-in-law got his dad to be in a Fantasy Football league with him. Then Dad decided he didn't have the time and asked me if I'd like to take his place in their league. I like football every now and then, but I've never been one to follow it closely. I played in a Fantasy Football league once before in college. I don't remember much about it. Regardless, I took the opportunity to do something new and hopefully fun. I figured it would at least make watching the games more interesting, and the CBS Sports web site for the league looked like it would make it all pretty simple for a newbie such as myself.

So the season started, we held our draft, I put a team together, and it's been a lot of fun.  For the uninitiated, here's a brief summary of how fantasy football works.  Everyone in the league picks players for their team from all of the players in the NFL. Each week you pit a team of miscellaneous players against another person's team and see who does better.  How well you do is dependent on how well all of our chosen players do in their actual games each week.  The idea is to get a team of elite players that will always perform well, giving you the best chance to win each week.  So premier quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers are highly valued, where as second string players are often left on the bench.

If you don't get it, don't worry about it.  It's hard to really understand unless you get involved with it, but the basic idea is that your score is based on the real life statistics of the people you have in your team. If you play people that score touchdowns and run a lot of yards, you'll be doing well.

Why am I talking about fantasy football though? Two reasons.  The first is that I'm surprised how quickly I've gotten into it. I check reports on the players, and read articles on CBS Sports about who to play, who to not play, who is a sleeper pick that people may not know about.  If you want to do well, you have to keep up on this stuff or else you'll end up playing people who may be injured or out of a game for some other reason giving you a big fat goose egg for your score that week. And because I've got some vested interest in how well these football players do, I've been watching more football on the weekends. Especially the games where I have someone on my team playing.

The second reason is that growing up I wasn't really into sports that much. I did play little league baseball, though not very well. I was a gamer through and through, and I didn't even let the two mix by playing sports video games. Well, I did have a baseball game, but there was a fantasy element to it in that you could super jump and stuff.  Anyway, not only was I a gamer, not a jock, but I played role playing games, or RPGs.  Fantasy RPGs like Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Lufia, Secret of Mana, Zelda, etc. And you know what most of those games had in them? A roster of people you had to select to create a team.  The team with the better stats would generally do better in the game.  If you look to pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons you can start to see an even greater correlation to fantasy football.  I never played Dungeons and Dragons, but I understand all of the concepts involved from the games I did play.

The point I'm getting at is that even though I've never been much of a sports person, fantasy football may not be as big of a jump in hobbies as I might have suspected.  Every week I'm looking at a roster of players and choosing those with the more desirable statistics. I'm analyzing their match ups against other teams like I might analyze which character class would be better against a certain boss. And just like in all RPGs, whether it's a computer or a dice roll, there's a large factor of what is known as the RNG, or Random Number Generator.  In a video game you might have a really strong character, but the RNG comes up low and all you get are misses instead of hits.  In fantasy football you might think your stud quarterback can't possibly let you down, but then he breaks his knee in the first quarter of the first game of the season, and suddenly you're scrounging for a replacement.  

In fact, I would say it's worse in football.  Capable players often have bad games, or they get double covered because of their value which makes them less likely to make plays.  You pretty much just have to go with the averages and your best guesses and hope for the best.  This makes it interesting, and frustrating.  Probably more of the latter.  Especially when someone who you have available to you, but you didn't play in particular week, decides to have a really great game. (I'm looking at you, Dwayne Bowe.) Overall though, it's been a great experience.  It gives me a lot to talk about with my brother-in-law and future sister-in-law. She's also in the league and actually was the winner from last year.  When I hear people talk about football statistics and players, I don't feel so out of the loop now because, well, I'm actually in the loop.  And because of the RPG connection, I don't necessarily feel like I have to give up any of my nerd or geek cred because I'm in a fantasy football league.

So how am I doing with my team? Glad you asked.  It started off rough, but I'm currently up seven wins to three losses.  Not bad for being relatively new to this whole fantasy football thing.  But then again, I may not be as inexperienced at this as I first thought.

I Borrowed a Guitar, and I Intend to Use it

Last weekend we were in Greensboro so Teresa could attend one of Catherine's bridal showers. I got to spend some time with the bro-in-law, David, and watched some college football, and our dog, Hannah. In one of our previous trips to Greensoboro I had noticed an acoustic guitar sitting in the corner of the downstairs family room looking sort of sad and lonely. I inquired to my in-laws about the ownership and purpose of the guitar, and I came to find out it was bought by my mother-in-law with the intent to learn it, but not the time. And thus it had been in that corner for quite awhile. Neglected. And did I mention sad and lonely?

Being the caring person that I am, I asked my wife's parents if I could borrow the guitar and put it to good use. They obliged, and I now have it at home in my music room. When I say music room, I mean the spare room where my keyboard is. I like to think of it as my room, though it has elements of things that are not mine, well, mine by marriage I guess. But I'm getting off the subject.

A short history of me and instruments. Growing up I took piano lessons. We had an upright piano in our home since before I can remember, and I practiced and took lessons for probably eight or so years off and on in between moving to central Oregon and then Alaska. I then played with the church worship team in high school, and with a ministry group in college, as well as my church during college. Needless to say, I put those years of piano lessons to good use I think. Where guitars come into this is that all that time playing piano, I was nearly always in the presence of a guitar as well, but never really learned to play one.

My mother played guitar. From what I heard, she taught herself how to play by secluding herself in her bedroom and listening to John Denver records. I haven't verified that, but I know I heard it from someone. Either my mom or her parents at one point. In worship bands the worship leader is almost always a guitar player. That was the case in both the youth group, and the college ministry team.

I had numerous guitar playing roommates in college. There was J.P. the rocker, who played electric guitar and often liked to comment, in reference to watching guitarists in music videos, that, "Any newborn fetus could play that." Though technically a newborn is no longer a fetus, I never really felt the need to argue the point with him. And there was Justin, who was a phenomenal acoustic guitar player. We were roommates around the time Shane and Shane were becoming popular, and Justin would figure out all of their songs and play them on his guitar. Paul and Bud were both guitar players from that ministry group I keep mentioning. Pioneers for Christ in case you were curious. I was roommates with both of them, though not a the same time.

Anyway, I think you get the picture. I learned music, music theory, how to read it, how to play in a band, etc. all from my piano training. But being in the environment that I was in, I also picked up some guitar chords here and there, and a rudimentary understanding of strumming. Enough to where I could play a three or four chord song. As long as it didn't include an F chord. But having never owned a guitar, or spending any amount of time learning basic guitar techniques, I never really felt like I could call myself a guitar player.

But I had a lot of interest in learning more because guitars are premier instruments. It's hard to find bands out there with lead pianists, though they exist. The simple truth is that almost all modern bands have guitar leads. The primary instrument for the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games is the guitar, though, side note, Rock Band 3 is out now with a keyboard instrument. Do want. And guitar players are cool people. At least, all of the guitar players I knew were. And guitars are so easy to take with you to play anywhere. After several years of lugging an 88 key KORG keyboard around, you start to look at the guitar players and get a little jealous.

So now I find myself in the possession of an actual guitar. It's not mine, but I have it on loan for as long as I need it. And now that I have one, I want to learn how to use it. More than just the few chords I already know. This week I've been thinking about the best way to do that. I don't really have the time, or money, to take private lessons like I did when I learned the piano, and I feel like I at least have a leg up on the the music theory part. I can read chords and stuff like that. What I don't have is the dexterity, or the familiarity with the guitar to really play it well. Even if I know how to play a G chord and a C chord, moving between them is a pain. I don't strum well because I have the habit of wanting to hit all six strings, even for chords where you're only supposed to play the bottom four or five. How do you not hit all the strings? They're so close together!

Last night I did a search on you tube and Google for beginner guitar lessons. Lo and behold there are quite a few free resources out there for learning the guitar, complete with instructional videos, chord charts, and step by step instructions on how to strum correctly. I just learned how to hold a guitar pick for the first time. So the only thing I need to do now is be consistent about practicing. And patient. I have a tendency to gloss over stuff if I feel like I already know it, like scales. But I've been reading that doing scales is important to training your fingers correctly, stretching them out and building the flexibility to play all those guitar chords. Even that dreaded F chord. This is starting to remind me a lot about learning to play the piano. Scales were always boring, but you have to know those by heart before you can play the fun stuff.

So hopefully, with some time and patience, I'll be able to teach myself to play guitar like my mom did, only instead of listening to John Denver, I'll be trying to play Jonathan Coulton songs.