The Futility of It All: Reflection on Sure Things

On the Friday of nearly all fantasy football leagues’ championship weekend, the editor of this respective blog asked me to pick one must-play player for the week: that must-play was going to be LeSean McCoy. However, I wrote this crossing the state of Utah on the I-70 and observed out the window the magnificent red and yellow tones of our western landscape covered in snow. I could not focus on football; the NBA’s Jerry Sloan was on my mind.

I imagined Sloan wandering through the Utah wilderness that he called home for nearly two decades searching for that illusive title. He looked sad and defeated, like a bloated, old and decrepit dying calf. He was finally stalked by a wolfpack of iconic shooting guards who looked vaguely like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. They dragged him to their den and tore him to a bloody pulp.

Poor Sloan.

Not to minimize his plight, but my fantasy football season was just like his struggle to win an NBA title.

We both tried really hard.

Listen: I swung a block-buster trade to acquire Adrian Peterson in the middle of the season. One of the players I gave up was only a marijuana-loving wide receiver who played for the Cleveland Browns. Sounded like a positive urine test away from working at my favorite used-book store.

Plus, he played for the Cleveland Browns.

It turned out that marijuana-loving Cleveland Brown decided to be really good at football in the second half of the season.

The trade then went from bad to worse when I couldn’t even use Adrian Peterson in the semifinals because of a sprained foot.

I thought you were my personal Purple Jesus, AP. What happened?

After learning that Peterson was designated as “Questionable” for the semifinal game, I picked up Toby Gerhardt. When Gerhardt went down with a pulled hammy, there was no way I was picking up the third-stringer for Minnesota.

Instead, I decided to put the thinking cap on, and do some research.

What’s that football writer Robert Mays of Grantland? The Chicago Bears defense is really bad at defending the rush? And what is that respective fantasy football websites? Cleveland Browns runningback Willis McGahee is not going to play?

The logic syllogism went something like this: The Bears suck at defending the run; The Browns are playing the Bears; Therefore, whoever should receive the lion’s share of carries for the Browns will have a great game. That guy was supposed to be Chris Ogbonnaya.

What the logic syllogism failed to account for is that everyone who plays running back for the Browns is awful. Ogbonnaya scored a total of three points, all of which came from reception yards as it turned out he only received five rushing attempts.

That third-string Minnesota guy, Matt Asiata, ended up scoring three touchdowns.

I lost my semi-final game by 6.5 points, a spread that easily would have been covered if I just turned off the thinking cap and plugged in Asiata.

The hot take this week though was McCoy. He had a great game playing those same Chicago Bears: 133 yards and two touchdowns, plus 29 reception yards. He could have won me a championship.

But it doesn’t matter when you’re playing for third place, does it Jerry Sloan?