From commentor (& previous offender league-runner TimC/Parrotlover77):
Who is interested in some fantasy football?
We’ve done fantasy football on Balloon Juice in previous years and they are a ton of fun. If you’ve never played fantasy football before, this is a great group of people to play with and learn from. The leagues fill up quick so rather than having to email updates to a BJ front pager to post, I’ve created a single easy landing page on my website with information and links. To start, I’ve created a single H2H league. With any luck, more of you will set up your own leagues and I can add the links to that page and we’ll get a lot of participation this year. If you have any questions, post it in the comments on this thread. I’ll check in and answer what I can.
At the end of the season, maybe we can get Anne Laurie to post the results.
Sign up now, draft day is right around the corner!
Link here: http://www.avianwaves.com/BJFL.aspx
Richard Mayhew
I am in
FoxinSocks
I signed up! I’ve always wanted to join a Fantasy league but honestly, have no idea what I’m doing. Be gentle!
Arrik
Excuse my non sequitur, but this post does have the “open thread” tag. Is anyone else having trouble opening the Balloon Juice page using Chrome (on a Mac)? For the last week or so, the browser freezes whenever I open Balloon Juice, seemingly because of one of the banner ads. Firefox is fine. Anyway, just askin’.
Hunter Gathers
I’m in. And word to the wise: I make one really stupid trade a year. For 5 years running, the guy I trade for gets hurt in his first game in my starting lineup. So who gets to fleece me this year?
HoratiosGhost
Is it bad form to want to join if I’ve just been an avid reader (and lurker) for going on a decade or so?
PaulW
i might be interested only if you allow me to draft all my players from the Bucs. …I can’t help it, that’s my team…
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Hunter Gathers: Do not draft or trade for Aaron Rodgers (or any other Packer for that matter). I don’t care about fantasy football but if your personal curse messes up Green Bay’s season, I will hold you responsible
Mnemosyne
@Arrik:
Chrome is having issues all over the web, not just with this website. People I work with have been complaining about it when it come to our web-based apps. Not sure what Google did, but it broke Chrome.
Hunter Gathers
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): No worries. I never draft quarterbacks in the 1st round, and only an idiot would trade Rodgers. As a Bears fan, I’m supposed to have a deep hatred for the Packers, but unless Peyton Manning signs with them, I guess I’m not a true Bears fan.
Ricky
This shit gives me a fantasy headache. Isn’t there a concussion rule we can invoke?
John M. Burt
TimC, are half-orcs allowed in your game?
BGinCHI
I’m in if it’s association football.
Groucho48
I’m interested. I’d be happy to commish a league. I already am running two Yahoo leagues. What service will the BJ leagues use?
Suffern ACE
@BGinCHI: Its Canadian, if that makes a difference.
JayinCA
I’m in. Looking forward to it!
Roger Moore
@Arrik:
I’m having a problem with misbehaving script in Firefox, both on Linux and Windows. In Windows, I will get a popup complaining about the script, but with Linux it freezes the whole program to the point it can’t even ask me to kill the script.
Arrik
@Roger Moore: Is that with Balloon Juice specifically, or just in general? Firefox has been treating me well, compared to Chrome. I tend to think Mnemosyne is right about Google ruining a formerly good browser.
Dog On Porch
I waste enough time watching the real thing to get involved with fantasy football. I never took the time to understand how its played, but have a question to those who do: Many football people (John Madden, for one) claim these fantasy leagues potentially serve to undermine the NFL’s traditional relationship with its fan base (to the league’s detriment). As near as I can figure, their concern boils down to a worry that fans who do play will forsake their allegiances to individual teams, and instead root primarily for the make-believe rosters of their own construct. Is that understanding in the ballpark, or am I way off?
Roger Moore
@Arrik:
That’s the front page of Balloon-Juice specifically.
Suffern ACE
@Dog On Porch: That is correct. Having a fantasy team means rooting for players on different teams. It also means rooting for individuals over teams as a whole. But that means there are different kinds of fans. The ones who do this aren’t lesser fans.
MattR
@Dog On Porch: I think that is more or less it and I think it is mostly a stupid worry. They are not completely offbase – I used to do multiple leagues and at some point quit them all because I was annoyed that I was rooting for all these players, and not my favorite team. But I am back to doing one league a year and it really doesn’t present too much of a conflict. Similarly, I have watched people change allegiances over time because of the players on their fantasy teams – especially if it is a “dynasty” league where you keep players from year to year so if you have Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson on your team it is easy to find yourself becoming a Packers fan.
But what I think the league is missing is that the growth of fantasy football is driving hordes of new fans to the game, especially women. You have all sorts of casual or non-fans getting involved in leagues at the office or online which draws them in and hopefully hooks them on the game. Eventually these people will pick a favorite team as they follow the sport more and more. It may not be their “home” team so ticket sales could be a potential concern, but they will watch it on TV at home or in bars and will buy merchandise with their favorite player’s name on it even if they don’t have a favorite team.