I grew up in a central New York state town called Auburn, home of the Maroons. Yes, our nickname was a color (actually, I guess we were multiple kinds of that color). Auburn is famous for first using the electric chair as a prison execution device, and for having a larger population of crows than humans (30,000 residents). But why do I speak of this?
That is an affliction of those who come from small towns. We always have to regale you with stories of the unimpressive, the lame. But sometimes this practice can be useful. Take this [likely] example of two recent, female community college graduates meeting for the first time at their new job in New York City:
Small-town girl #1: Tila Tequila went to my high school.
Small-town girl #2: Oh snap! That’s sooo awesome. Did you know her?
Small-town girl #1: No…she is 5 years older than me.
Small-town girl #2: It’s still awesome. Do you want to be friends?
Small-town girl #1: Best.
So, in a way, being proud of your small town is important. Much in the same way, having pride in your favorite NFL team can be important when playing fantasy football. Let’s take our New York Giants as the example. What a great year to be a fan of a great Giants team, a team whose fantasy point value is expected to be high. So, to those Giants fans who regularly draft players from Big Blue (regardless of projected offensive season), this will be a prosperous year in the fantasy world. Hopefully, this will be true in the NFC East standings as well. The defense of the Giants is also looking at a dominating year, which is good to see from the real game perspective.
The challenge of having dedicated home-team fanaticism and managing fantasy teams is when your fantasy team is not comprised of Giants players. Rather, you may have other NFC East players that the actual Football Giants will play against twice during the season (e.g., Terrell Owens, Clinton Portis, Brian Westbrook). Or, your fantasy team may be matched up against a team carrying Eli Manning, Brandon Jacobs, or Plaxico Burress.
It can seem like a difficult week when your fantasy match appears at odds with the Giants’ game-winning potential. To me, however, the world of professional [American] football protocol requires cheering in the following order: 1) favorite NFL team (i.e., Giants), 2) fantasy team(s). This was my strategy last year, with the results of: a New York Giants’ Super Bowl Championship, and three fantasy championships.
Not bragging (much), but saying that these things tend to work themselves out in the long run because the fantasy season is so long. You can afford a fantasy loss, for a Giants victory, because you have many more weeks to get those fantasy ‘W’s. If you really need the fantasy win, enough to root against Giants players, then your fantasy team is terrible. Yea, there it is- reason enough to cheer for the G-Men.
This week’s game at home against the struggling Cincinnati Bengals should be booming for Giants fantasy owners and Giants football fans. The Bengals defense has given up 20.5 points per game and 203 rushing yards (or 29 elephants) per game - good for Jacobs and crew. The thriving Giants defense should be well-matched against a Cincinnati offense that has as much firepower as the Republican National Convention had non-whites. The Bengals are 31st in the league with only 184.5 yards per game (so much wasted talent).
Go Giants!
\m/
Keywords: fantasy football, giants, new york giants
