To quote the fictional deadbeat Jim Anchower, it’s been a while since I rapped at you, but life changes and a cross-country move have given me a few more minutes (hours, days, weeks) to think about current news cycles, the concentration on GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her daughter’s baby-daddy, and my own personal news cycle, which is currently concentrated on my fantasy football team.
I recently moved from San Francisco — before anyone writes me off as a lefty, I did used to be a Republican (so now it’s just that I can’t make up my mind, right?) — forcing me to be the jerk in the fantasy football league who needs to IM/videochat/call in his picks. For those inexperienced in this kind of purgatory, you are a soul adrift: you don’t exist to all your league members getting drunk in someone’s living room as they try to set up a webcam so you can see them but not hear them. But you are not out of the league. So you’re part of the draft but not part of it, stewing in front of a computer 3,000 miles away and wondering whether anyone can hear you let alone thinks you snagging Cardinals WR Larry Fitzgerald with the 19th pick was too aggressive.
Let’s just say I should have been in a padded room.
The draft was Saturday night and when I woke up I needed a morning-after pill. My strategy of picking up running backs who catch a ton of passes quickly broke down after the first round when I took the 49ers RB Frank Gore. There was a run on wide receivers in the second round and I jumped up and grabbed Fitzgerald fulfilling a slight man-crush I’ve had on him since last season. But by now the video/audio chat was cutting out but I could still see my San Francisco friends giving me the finger and other forms of greeting.
That, coupled with some quick drinks, had me sufficiently distracted from whatever kind of game plan I had entering the evening (One could argue that I also began the evening distracted because The News Pony’s in-laws were having people over for Mexican food but I could not attend due to aforementioned draft).
The meltdown ensued.
The next thing I know I’m spending low draft picks — prime opportunities to take chances on little known players — on players that everyone knows suck. It was haphazard. I was attracted to them by what they accomplished in the National Football League years ago or by their names, which sounded cool. There appeared to be minimal thought to the chances I was taking. I couldn’t call them “guesstimates.” All I could call them were “splurges,” like a cupcake or the “Tom Hanks: Best of Saturday Night Live” DVD.
I did not sleep well.
Increasingly you may wonder why I’m thinking about this and Palin, but they are inextricably linked. John McCain picked her for his vice presidential candidate having met her once and spoken to her on the phone once, or thereabouts. She was undoubtedly vetted carefully by his campaign, and do not get me wrong I’m not arguing against the pick. But if what has been said publicly about his contact with her prior to her selection — I’ve had more contact with a girl who didn’t want to dance with me — is true then he appears to have made the choice on little more than why I chose recently-assaulted Raiders wide receiver Javon Walker in the 13th round.
She may go on to be the best pick since the court chose Kevin Federline and Javon Walker may lead the league in touchdowns (highly doubtful), but the choices appear to have been made quickly with little effort on the part of the ultimate decision maker. “Blink” author Malcolm Gladwell might argue that McCain and I would come to the same decisions on Palin and Walker after thorough research so we should trust our guts, but in these cases I would argue that at least the appearance of deliberation would benefit the campaign and my fantasy football team.
My team looks scrapped together and feels like it too. And having watched everything go down with Palin, I can’t help but have the same feeling about the McCain campaign. Now I’m going to rename my squad to try and rejigger the karma the team, but I don’t think there’s any “edit team settings” button for McCain.
Posted by dasmith15 
