Coffee Klatch

Tonight is the season opener for NFL Football! It’s the Miami Dolphins at the Pittsburgh Steelers, but I’ll be missing the game because I’ve got handbell rehearsal tonight.

If you’re at all interested, there’s still time to join our Football Pick’em contest. It’s a simple contest where you pick the teams that you think will win. Click the link to find out more and/or to join our group. You can even join during this first week of the season without too much effect, but it would be best if you got in right from the start. It’s free and fun, so come join us!

Another popular football-related game is the Football Pick’em, also run by Yahoo!. This one is simpler than Fantasy Football, because here all you do is pick the teams you think will win each week. I’ve been running a pick’em game for ten years now! Wow!

Anyway, all you do in this game is pick teams and rank them. We use “Confidence Points” to help separate the leaders out and to build a little more excitement into the game. If there are 16 games being played on a weekend, you rank the games from 1 to 16, with 16 being the one you’re most confident about. If you get it right, you get 16 points. Pretty straightforward. We usually drop your one lowest scoring game. You can join the group whenever you like, but if you want a chance at winning, you’d better be signed up by the first or second week.

Email notifications are also built in, so you can configure your “Picks” to send you an email reminder every Thursday or Friday (or never). That helps you keep from forgetting until Sunday.
If you’d like to sign up for this one, we’ve got plenty of room. Just go to http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/pickem and click Create or Join Group. You’ll need a Yahoo! account to play, but those are free. Then select “Join Existing Group.” You’ll need to enter the group ID# and password.

Group ID#: 11909
Password: coffee

There you go! Hope to see on gridiron. So to speak.

Yes, it’s that time again. Time for NFL Football. Preseason games have already begun and the first regular season game is on Thursday, Sept. 7 (Miami at Pittsburgh).

It’s also the time for Fantasy Football. It’s lots of fun and it keeps you involved and interested a bit more during the season. I’ve set up my sixth annual Fantasy Football league using Yahoo! There is room for a total of 16 people in this league and anyone’s welcome until we’re full.

The league is called Coffee Klatch (go figure!).

In order to join the league, follow the link above or go to the game front page, click the “Sign Up Now” or “Get Another Team” button and follow the links to “Join a Custom League”. When prompted, enter the League ID# and password below.

League ID#: 367415
Password: football

We’ll be having a live draft on Wednesday, August 30 at 6:30pm Eastern Time. You don’t have to do the live draft, but you might want to pre-rank your players in the order you’d prefer. (The live draft IS more fun!)

If you have any questions about this league or about Fantasy Football in general, let me know.

Well, the Indianapolis Colts lost today, 21-18. I’m not a huge fan, but since I live here, it would have been nice to have them go farther. They had all kinds of bonuses today, like penalties not called and questionable reversals from replay reviews, but they just didn’t seem to PLAY today, except for the last couple of minutes of both halves. At the end, all Pittsburgh had to do was run out the clock for 1:50 and it was over, but since they were on the 2 yard line and Indy had all three timeouts, they tried to push it in for an extra 6/7 points. A forced fumble and a few good plays (again, too little too late) and it came down to a 46-yard field goal that would push the game into overtime. The “most accurate kicker in the NFL” (86%) missed by a HUGE margin and the game was over.

My big consolation (even more important to me than the Colts winning) was that the New England Patriots LOST last night! I’m so sick of hearing talk about dynasties and 10 consecutive playoff wins…. And they’re about as close to my favorites as the Dallas Cowboys are (which is bottom of the list). At least THAT’S over!!

By far the best football games are the playoffs. In part because they involve the teams that have played the best this year, but mostly because everything’s on the line. The team that loses is out until next year. That makes all the players really give it their all. Whoever wins, these end up being the best ball games. Too bad they only last a few weekends.

Who would have thought it? Today Doug Flutie executed the NFL’s first drop kick since the 1941 Championship Game (that’s what the Super Bowl was called before it was the Super Bowl). Talk about a surprise for the defense. It hasn’t been done, but it’s still been legal. Ever since they made the football more pointy in 1934, the number of drop kicks has faded away to none. That’s because the ball couldn’t bounce so predictably and because passes could be made much more precisely into the end zone.

For those of you unfamiliar with the drop kick, check out the article on the Football Hall of Fame’s website. As a brief overview, though, it’s where the kicker (or quarterback, if he’s going to kick it) drops the ball, lets it bounce off the ground, and then kicks it (hopefully) through the uprights like a field goal. When used as a field goal, it’s worth the same three points. As an extra point, it’s only worth one point. It was most often used as a surprise move to get three points when the defense wasn’t expecting it. Flutie’s kick was seen as a farewell gesture instead of a strategic move to score.

Note: I happened to check Wikipedia for information on the drop kick and it was already updated! Within just a couple hours of Doug Flutie pulling it off, somebody had updated Wikipedia to mention him as the last player to successfully pull it off. WOW!

Well, the Fantasy Football season has drawn to a close, and I’m delighted to say that, out of the THREE leagues I was in, I took First Place in one (out of 11), Fourth Place in another (out of 12), and am in First in the last one (out of 12, and which is based on points, not wins/losses, so goes through all 17 weeks, but I’ve got a healthy lead with just the one week left).

I’m also in two games that have you pick the teams you think will win each week, and I’m not nearly so good in those. Actually, I am. I just checked again and I’m in fourth place in one of them and am in third in the other. Wow!! That’s out of 13 players and 11 players respectively.

Pretty cool! Now, after this last week, the Playoff Version starts!! If you’d like to try your hand at Fantasy Football just for the playoffs (which is only a few weeks), visit SuperBowl.com and join my “buddies” group, so we can compare our progress throughout the playoffs. (It may not look like you’ve joined a group or anything if you do it this week, but I think everything shows up once the playoffs start.)

There are two primary types of games that people play related to NFL Football: Fantasy Football and some form of “Pick’em” game. I’ve already written about the latter, so here’s an invitation for you to join my Pick’em game.

This one’s much simpler than fantasy sports. You just pick the teams you think will win each week. I’ve been running some form of this game for 8 years now, starting with a handful of people who emailed me their picks which I posted on my office door. For the last few years, I’ve used Yahoo! and have been thoroughly satisified with how they run it and with how much work they save me.
There are only two things to do when playing this Pick’Em game. You are given a list of the games for the week and you pick the teams you think will win. Then you assign a confidence level to them. If there are 16 games that week, you rank them from 1 to 16. The game you’re most sure of gets a 16, and on down to 1. If you get the pick right, you get that many points. Pretty simple.

If you want to play, there’s TONS of room for people to join. Just visit Yahoo! and join the group #5852 with password library. It’s a lot of fun, gets you involved in following the teams a little bit, and doesn’t require much knowledge about them. Much lower-key than fantasy football, but just as fun. Come join us!

Current music: Winter Light, by Yanni

Yup, it’s that time of year again! NFL teams have begun preseason games. Fans are gearing up for the games, buying tickets and gear, and cheering/booing players. And thousands are getting into Fantasy Football. Including yours truly! I’ve been playing a variety of NFL-related games for 8 years now, and playing Fantasy Football for 3 or 4. Yahoo! offers one of the best free fantasy football systems out there. I’ve got one set up that still has some openings. If you’re interested in playing fantasy football this year, or even trying it out if you’ve never done it before, I’ve got a good group of people together who have fun without being overly competitive or talking smack too much. Just let me know if you want to join and I’ll give you the free signup information.

In the news, Brett Favre is looking as good as ever. He actually spent time in the off season with a strength-and-conditioning coach for the first time. He’s getting older, but he’s hanging tough (as always) and is still increasing his consecutive games started record, which is an amazing 189 games! (208 if you count playoff games) Plus, just last year he had over 4,000 passing yards and has had 30+ touchdown passes each season the last two years. He sure isn’t slowing down as he gets older! And he’s still representative of the life-blood of football for the entire state of Wisconsin.

On the opposite side of the fence is Terrell Owens. He’s good, no doubt, but I don’t think he’s good for a team, even if it is the Eagles. In and out of training camp, and more because of attitude than injury, with the capstone being sent home from the training camp this week for arguing with the coach. Plus he didn’t show up with his teammates to sign autographs this week “because of his injury” (which was to his GROIN! — THAT will certainly making signing your name difficult!). He’s gotten so full of himself that the good of the team comes second to his own good, as he perceives it. He just signed a deal last year when he moved to Philadelphia for about $49 million for 7 years. So he gets picked up by a really good team, gets to go to the Super Bowl, shows long term potential for contributing to the team’s success, and gets $7 million a year…. But that’s not good enough for T-O! He’s got to try to renegotiate his contract after one year there. Talk about ungrateful and unsportsmanlike!

A good site for NFL Sports News is Yahoo!’s NFL Site. Lots of great info, articles, schedules, stats, and help for fantasy players.
Current music: Fahrenheit, by Toto

While this refers particularly to NFL cheerleaders, I’m sure it can apply to those of many other sports.

Aren’t cheerleaders supposed to… well, LEAD CHEERS?? When was the last time that you saw a professional sports game that had cheerleaders who actually LED cheers? Sometimes you might see them doing some kind of cheer together, but they NEVER really lead the audience in cheering. They’re just eye candy for professional sports, doing sexually suggestive antics to titillate (love that word!) the guys that are watching the game.

Do professional sports teams figure that guys won’t watch them without having something to ogle? I suppose that women who like to watch football can occasionally get excited by the strength or testosterone being evidenced on the field, so maybe it’s only fitting that guys also get something “exciting” to watch. But isn’t the point of going to a sporting event, I don’t know… Watching the Game? Sports are supposed to be exciting to watch because of the competition, not because of the “exotic dancers” on the sidelines.

Do the women who participate in “leading cheers” somehow feel more ladylike or more like a woman because they know they’ve got guys staring and lusting after them while they dance? You KNOW that’s what happens! People are people and human, after all….

Or is it just a sign of the times and our culture? Something that shows just how far our society has sunk in its honor and value of people?

Food for thought….