it's only fantasy if you aren't winning


my pointing out that i've now won five fantasy football titles in ten years isn't really bragging. it's just stating the fact of the matter.

however trivial you may think the world of fantasy sports is, let's face it. that just means you haven't played them. for years now, i have championed fantasy football as my true gateway into my love for the nfl. it really is kind of astounding to me that more of my friends won't follow along. everyone and their mother roots for a college football team, most of the folks i know being either alabama or auburn fans. and don't get me wrong. if you are going to have a rooting interest, you might as well pick one that has a legitimate shot at winning their championship, which both of those schools do. unless your rooting interest is, in fact, your alma mater, why one would torture themselves by rooting for a little sister of the poor is beyond me, but that probably only further indicts me as a fairweather fan, which i totally am. that being said, if you are going to pay attention to college football played at high levels, i don't understand neglecting the natural next step of watching professional football on sundays. every nfl team has 20-30 equivalents of your favorite college player. the game is faster, more efficient, more athletic and more powerful. and if you ever get a taste of it and like the flavor, there is nothing that would solidify your nfl fandom more than owning a fantasy team. on an average roster, you have 14-16 players representing almost as many teams, which means you'll be invested in more than 75 percent of every game that's played on a given nfl sunday. rooting for your players. rooting against the players on your opponent's teams. reconciling which you'd rather happen first. your fantasy team winning? or your real team (sorry falcons)?

fantasy football has given me a greater appreciation of the just-less-than gods that entertain me every nfl sunday. fantasy football has also given me a greater appreciation of how good i am at fantasy football.

two years ago, i did this.

this year, i won again.

while i ended up with two marks in the loss column in 2010, i don't know that i enjoyed a nfl season any more than i did this year, the main reason being one of my favorite football players of all time, mike vick, not only lead his real team to a division title, but he anchored the alabama asianmen all year, too. there is no sweeter feeling for this fan than when real life rooting interest also pays dividends on your fantasy roster. for having played as long as i have, it's really kind of a surprise it hasn't happened more often. i had rowdy roddy white for a couple years. i traded for michael turner last year. that's really the list. maybe subconsciously, during the draft, i avoid falcons because i know my heart would want to start them every week even if it wasn't the most sapient fantasy move (god help me when julio is on an nfl roster next year). probably an enlightened strategy. like most of my strategies.

let's break down the season. for the first time in the history of our league, we used the auction draft format, which means, in theory, every nfl player is available to each team in the league. the only factor is how much you want to pay for him. each team starts with a $200 budget with 16 players to draft. my first and most expensive pick ended up being the fourth best player on my team. not great, but not the worst money i could have spent. ray rice only single-handedly led me to one victory all year. it just so happened to be my playoff semifinal. i'll take it. my next three picks also ended up as major contributors to my cause and top four players at their respective positions (tom brady, greg jennings, jason witten). it may be just a coincidence that not one of the other nine teams in my league could make that claim. it's probably not. with the 84th (EIGHTY-FOUR) pick in the draft and my 8th selection, i stole the number one running back in fantasy and my mvp, arian foster. don't try to remember anything substantial he did at tennessee. he was a bust. don't worry about what round he was drafted in the real nfl draft. he wasn't. i paid $16 for him. including my own ray rice, 20 running backs were more expensive in our draft. it may be just a coincidence that i ended up with him. it's probably not. those five picks (out of 16) were the only five that started more than 8 games for my team. the other starters in my championship game came via our waiver wire, which means they had either been cast aside by one of the other nine teams after their draft or they were not taken among the 160 picks in our auction. of those types of players that ended up on my team (coincidence? probably not.), dwayne bowe ended the year as the 3rd best fantasy wide receiver. darren mcfadden was the sixth best running back. another player ended up as the 6th best player at his position, too.

mike vick.

mike vick was my first true waiver claim of the year. i claimed him before week 2 after kevin kolb went down with a head injury in week 1. vick led the alabama asianmen to the first of his 8 (out of 14 team total) victories that week. asianmen went 8-1 in vick's 9 (brady went 6-0. brett favre went 0-1) starts this year, the only loss (one of only two during the entire campaign, remember) coming in week four when the redskins knocked him out during the first quarter. thanksgiving weekend, mike vick enacted his revenge on the redskins on a monday night when he turned in the third best performance in the history of fantasy football. after scoring 74 points for me that night, i blindly and unconditionally started and rode to victory vick the next four weeks even while tom brady outscored him sitting on my bench in the last three of those four. i benched vick in my playoff semifinal, going against my gut, and almost lost as he outscored brady by 30 points while sitting. i scraped by, started vick in the title game and ended up not needing him as my opponent's players were either hurt or didn't show up for the most important game of the fantasy season.

the most interesting part of the vick story, relative to my league, is this. vick got hurt week four and was out for a few games. brady had his bye week five. i needed a quarterback for week five, and i had three options. drop vick, pick up replacement. drop brady, pick up replacement. concede the loss and keep both. well, i don't really do "concede the loss", so i hedged my bet by dropping vick, knowing that if i did so with brady, some team in the league would swallow him up and away from me. i lost week five anyway (stupid favre!), but still sat at 3-2, nowhere near the bottom of the standings and nowhere near the top of the waiver wire. i dropped favre immediately and claimed vick. i opened up my league wednesday morning melancholy at the thought that someone would have gotten him ahead of me. but they didn't. i got him back. it may be just a coincidence that i didn't lose another game the rest of the way. it's probably not.

as cocky as this post sounds (and is), fantasy football is a fickle game. barring injury, you're likely (not promised) to get good production from your top three picks. everyone is. and so, a fantasy draft and season has nothing to do with the first three rounds. it's the middle 4-11. what rookies are going to get playing time? who will be the dark horses (foster, vick) in the age of fantasy sports where all the dark horses have already been identified by some fantasy "expert". how closely can you man the waiver wire in the first couple of months (mcfadden, then bowe) to find a producer on a bad team that might be turning into a good team where he'll produce even more? it's fickle. and it's trivial. but 50 million(-ish) people can't be totally wrong. and if i am going to do it, i might as well do it right, right?

so, i do.

war asianmen.

again.

hannah and caroline and me
(part forty-three)


it's christmas eve as i start banging away at what, according to current form, may end up being my last blog post of 2010. i hope not, but things have slowed down on HACAM in the last three months. Not intentionally, mind you, but life has happened, facebook continues to happen, and an alarming (-ly wonderful) lack of drama related to the church also continues to happen.

this will be the first time in six years that the blog's post count drops, and i am not sure how i feel about that. i suppose it was bound to happen. until the day comes when someone starts paying me to piss "you" off, i will have other things that must be prioritized over writing about my girls, my church, auburn's quarterback and julio jones. last year seemed to be the perfect storm of subject matter (for kevin o'kelley). in 2009, of course, the girls continued to grow, mature, annoy and fascinate. towards the end of last year, i started wrapping my head around the idea of having "had" cancer (note: started being the operative word. until i am proven wrong again ((please, lord, let me be proven wrong again)) in january, i am still worried constantly about bad cells growing into something badder inside my body. i wrapped my head around the idea long enough to start writing about it, which was cathartic. alabama football did their thing in the last third of the year. they performed above already high expectations, recaptured my imagination, and won a national championship. rolando mcclain won the butkus. mark ingram won the heisman. julio made it all possible. 2009 was a banner year for subject matter, yes it was. and then along came facebook.

if there is one thing above all others that has contributed to the post count dropping in 2010, it's got to be my more active involvement on THE social network. i stuck my toes in the water last year, just in time to reap the facebook birthday wishes benefits, but, this year, i just went ahead and dove on in. quick-hit topics or links that i may have given attention on the blog in 2009 went straight to facebook. it was easier that way to get a quick response and gain a conversation about those topics. one of the downfalls of the blog was/is that, in many instances, by the time a friend found their way to a post on HACAM, the subject was old news. with facebook, if something strikes my fancy and i want to talk about it, i link to the story and go. i had never experienced gratification so instantly, and it was terribly rewarding. at the same time, though the blog may have lost out in quantity, in my opinion, it's probably gained in quality. the posts that now make the cut have often festered for days to some degree, and some of the fat ends up being trimmed away. i am interested to see if this trend continues in 2011, or...

will i start to tire of facebook? i don't know. it's a good question. i am still a relative facebook newbie, and i am still a huge fan of the footprint it's made on my life. i talk with people that i would never have more time for than to say "hi" or "bye" to. i can passively pay attention to long distance friends and relatives without intruding into their lives any more than "like"ing a status or telling them that their family is beautiful based on the pictures they post. i have fallen in love with the good-natured debate that i've found on topics that have reached some level of import in my life. on the other hand, i've found it interesting to observe those friends and "friends" that have started to fall out of love with facebook. they have claimed that it has taken up too much of their time, that they are too dependant on it. others have claimed to just plain hate it. others have remembered the "good ole days" when it didn't include status updates and wish for a facebook that is never coming back. a less commercial, a less farmville-y, a more innocent facebook. a boring facebook. those people that have given up on the facebook will likely claim that their life is a more fulfilling place without it. and it may be. for now. for ever. who knows. all i know is, right now, i like it. one of my 2011 resolutions will be to gauge, this time next year, if i still feel the same.

humc still gets it's share of love in the land of HACAM, but the lack of drama or controversy since bishop-gate has almost been unsettling. we are in a very serious and deserved phase of transition at this point, one that calls for less talk and more action. the natural church development process is hoping the third time ends up being the charm. the long-range planning committee still searches for our vision. and yet, something still feels...i don't know. i'll explore it more here after the new year. for now, we'll enjoy the relative peace and hope that's it the quiet before the storm of growth...if...that's even what is supposed to be happening.

it's been yet another quite a year. i'll inventory my 2010 resolutions soon and see how miserably i failed at them.

see you soon. i gotta go check facebook. (winking smiley)

"the cam newton situation is not isolated"


i spent the first four hours of our drive home today listening to sports talk radio. over the course of any given week, the more sports talk you listen to, the more nauseating it can be. however, monday mornings on the national shows are usually the exception to that rule. why? well, in the three hour slots the shows have to fill, they have to breakdown and analyze anything and everything important that happened in the world of sports since they signed off sometime friday before lunch. i flipped back and forth this morning between mike and mike and colin cowherd on espn and dan patrick's nationally syndicated show. between the sports talk and the girls being really, really good, the first two-thirds of the trip actually kind of zipped by.

the most interesting segment, to me, came from dan patrick. one of the many topics covered, naturally, was the heisman trophy presentation and the coronation of cam on saturday night. the fact that newton won the award wasn't what was interesting. if you'd been paying attention to heismanpundit.com since midseason, you'd have already known the result. what was interesting about the heisman segment was the story dan patrick told about a conversation he had saturday night with a college recruiter/coach from "outside the sec" that was also from a perennial top 25 program. patrick said they talked recruiting shop for close to an hour over dinner and the recruiter told him that once a "kid" was drawing interest from sec schools, his program then proceeded to back off from the recruit because they couldn't "compete with the sec when it came to "resources". the "resources" in question, patrick went on to explain, were not facilities or academics or even readying the athlete for the pros. the "resources", of course, was money. lots and lots of money. the coach told patrick that the sec is "on a different level" in a lot of ways. one of those ways, he suggested, was due to the fact that "the cam newton situation was not an isolated incident."

naw. you don't say?

make note, the conversation that patrick was retelling had nothing to do with cam newton, other than his was the situation that sparked the convo, but everything to do with the big business of college football.

it was pure coincidence, of course, that smu's story of fraud/exploitation/profiteering played immediately after the heisman ceremony on espn. the program had been scheduled for that saturday for months, i am sure. the irony was not lost, though. i noted back in my cam newton "to be or not to be" post that my favorite story of recruiting corruption came from that campus and eric dickerson's trans "A&M" (he showed up at smu with a trans am that he claimed his grandmother bought him. later it came out texas a&m boosters had purchased the car for him). you would have thought that a sexy, high profile football program being removed from the planet for several years would have served as a cautionary tale. it did not. all that happened is that it drove the crookedness further underground, where it then went on to include shady characters like logan young and kenny rogers and whatever name that runner for this guy that works for that agent goes by these days.

what tickled my ear's fancy the most this morning was patrick saying, specifically, that the recruiter wasn't calling the sec's five star athletes out as sour grapes. he didn't see the athletes the sec schools could afford as athletes that weren't "good enough" or "a good fit" or "right" for his program. he just couldn't get them. he didn't have the "resources". so, he had to forget about them and move on to less expensive options. "it is what it is".

you can talk about what a "winner" or "fine young man" cam newton is all you want. me? i could wax rhapsodic for three more years about how julio jones changed my life. i am convinced he's most likely the best human ever. none of us really know otherwise, right? that's what i've been reminded of so many times with regards to the most recent scandal, hasn't it? "how do you know?" "where are your facts?" "who told you this?"

and "they" are right. i don't know much. about anything. but there are people that do. i listen to them.

can we all just admit, then, that conferences and schools that can afford to pay their assistants more than the average nfl coordinator (and that's not even mentioning the head coaches) probably share some of that cash with their recruits/players? is it a proportionate or even fair share? um, no. probably not. but it's something. whether it's literally or figuratively shoved underneath their dorm room door makes no difference in the least.

here's hoping that all of this noise that's made by concerned fans and alum advocating on behalf of athletes being paid above the table pays off somewhere down the road.

until then, i'll continue to bask in the awesomeness that is the sec. thank god i was born and raised an alabama fan. it must suck to root for teams without boosters with deep pockets.

january 18, 2010 seems like a long time ago


almost eleven months ago, 2010 resolution #7 was "see brian more...". it didn't really work out the way that i wanted it to. i could claim weak-ass excuses like "how time flies" or the girls or church or work or softball or the blog or too much time on facebook or too much time losing track of friends, but all of them would be just that. weak. and ass.

savannah is a long way away, even as the crow flies, sure. the sheer thought of the six to seven hours in the car with girls that are going to go apeshit halfway there has played a big part in my selfish ass presenting the "it's december. i work in retail. i gotta work." card year after year when sarah or sarah and hannah or sarah and hannah and caroline have made the trip for the last however long without me. believe me. it's been a long however long.

last year, brian was there and the girls got to see him without me. i had missed tons of time due to my surgery and there was no way i could get away. it made my heart warm, though, to know that hannah and caroline would get to hang out with him, and they did. i was jealous, but happy at the same time.

our relationship has never been the most functional even when it was our "normal". lord knows we weren't the only children of divorce in the world, but it felt like it a lot of the time. my friends, in particular, all were from families whose parents had stayed true to their vows. i don't know if that made them happy or not, but going to their houses to hang out had a very weird and comfortable vibe to it. going to my friends' houses felt, for me, like walking into a norman rockwell painting. i know that any of my childhood friends that might read this blog are rolling their eyes right now at the thought of their home being the picture of americana. whatareyougonnado? when you are child of divorce, you see, especially one that was old enough when their parents separated to know that divorce was some fucked up shit, you (i) find yourself pining for that societal feeling of "normal" for the rest of your (my) life. as you (i) get older, you (i) realize along the way a sad fact, that you're (i'm) searching for the pot at the end of the rainbow, but it doesn't stop you (me) from wanting it. badly. my friends had it. and i didn't. breakfast in the morning. dinner together around a table. family functions. both parents at open house. simple shit. shit that children of marriage take for granted. or maybe they don't. maybe they realize that kind of stuff is special. for a kid that started putting up barriers pretty young, i convinced myself that they took it for granted. and it gnawed at me for years. when i came home from a friend's house, nothing was "normal". my mom did everything in her power to make it feel that way, and for that i will be forever indebted, but it just...wasn't. not the "normal" that i told myself i wanted. when i was eight, nine, ten years old, i just wanted my parents to be back together again. i was eight when my parents divorced. brian was four. our relationship was never going to be functional. and the fucked up thing about it was that it had nothing to do with us.

growing up, most of my memories of brian and our time together have been appropriately revisioned or romanticized, because remembering the bad stuff is a fucking waste of time. we didn't have a ton in common and we held that against each other a lot. i've told the story before, but i will say that if you've never had a younger brother hurl a throwing star at you with ill-intentions, well, you haven't lived. thank god, by that standard, i have. our age difference and the fact that i was an asshole didn't help our cause as we got older. brian did his thing. i did mine. we enjoyed each other's company every now and again. played some video games. went to the movies. nothing crazy. we fought. a lot. never to the point of regret. i loved him. more than anything. i just didn't know how to do love right. probably still don't. in the midst of all sorts of chaos, though, i think about how much i must've let him down...

i figured out how much brian meant to me too late. he was already gone down a dark path that i couldn't save him from by the time i did. he would admit that. i tried a couple times. to save him. to save us. maybe more than a couple. i felt like i was doing him a favor. then i felt like i was enabling bad habits. we cut ties again and/or again. i said cliched bullshit like, "he's got to want to help himself". i prayed for him, not even knowing what that really means. a year would pass. i would call my mom and ask her about him. "he's doing okay." or "i haven't heard from him in a while." were the stock answers. occasionally, her voice would perk up a little and you could tell they had a really nice conversation. those were good days. more time passed. he did some more rehab. he tried to sort things out at our aunt's house. that didn't work. then he moved to florida. finally landed in savannah. i figured out how much brian meant to me too late once. it makes me happy that i learned from that mistake and made better efforts.

i think about him all the time. and i think back. i think about what a disservice i was to him as a big brother. how the same shit that i felt so sorry for myself about was ten times worse for him. i think about the little kid that was thrown out to pasture by people that should have loved him the most and i wish that i would have had the courage to make things better. to appear as the ghost of "what the fuck are you thinking???" to those that should've loved him most and allow them to see the error of their ways. but i didn't. or i couldn't. or i was too immature at the time to grasp what was happening.

after we reconnected a few years ago, it was how it always should have been. it took one conversation to hear in his voice what i hoped that he heard in mine. that i loved him. that i had always wished him well, just not always in very practical or helpful ways.

since then, we've been as functional as two brothers that are six hours apart can be i suppose. i think we miss each other. i know i miss him. the brian that i talk to now is the one that i took for granted growing up. smart. caring. tender. tough. when all the dcd shit hit the fan a couple years back, he was the one that i wished i had by my side, not to beat anyone up but to be the explicit voice of reason that only someone that cared about me but had also lived their life outside of the perverted walls of "the church" could be. when i found out i had something growing inside of me last summer that wasn't supposed to be there, i knew i needed him to be with me, feeling confident that just his presence alone would scare the surgeon into not fucking up when he cut me up and pulled things out.

i see me talking about him now and i realize how much of a selfish asshole i still am. i don't deserve his care or concern any more than anyone that ever hung him out to dry does, but, when i asked him to come, he came. that's who he is.

i've told him and i hope he knows that i would kick ass for him, too, if he needed it. i would even listen, too. i can't wait to listen to him this weekend. as much fun as i am sure our family will have, as much good as i know it will be for me to be with sarah and hannah and caroline with her dad's side of the family, seeing brian will be what i think about when the girls are going apeshit somewhere on the macon side of atlanta. i'll think of him chasing me around the house, throwing shit at me. i'll wish things weren't for him the way they were, because people i know who claim "i hit the bottom" haven't seen it. brian has. he has the scars, many of them self-inflicted, to prove it. once upon a time, if he ever stared at you really hard, you kind of wanted to pee your pants a little bit. he was that guy.

that stare is still there, i bet, if he needed it to be. i see a different look in his eyes now. a glimmer that personifies hope and the kind of person i want my girls to grow up to be. smart. self-sufficient. strong. and sweet.

see you in a couple days, dude. when i do, i hope time will move slowly.

hannah and caroline and me
(part forty-two)
((my first real mistake as a parent))


mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys...

or football fans.

i was having a conversation a couple days ago with a buddy about how i loved a (good-) spirited debate. surprising, right? my definition of debate, though, especially in the realm of this blog or on facebook must be naive or misshapen or skewed or something. if i've learned anything from HACAM and facebook over the past five years, it's that i am "dangerous", "stupid", "sexist", a "bammer", a "mind-reader", "cold-hearted", "mean", "bad for my church", "tactless", among other qualifiers, most of these from people that i've enjoyed, at some point in my life, fraternizing with. it's hard to argue with any of them i guess. mainly, because if i do, people will call me names again.

i imagine these, my most glowing qualities, come out and to the surface while i am watching an alabama football game. since hannah was born, absolutely nothing has changed with my attitude or the way i comport myself during these games, at least the ones that mean something to the greater "process" and the ultimate end of a conference and/or national title. i clap and yell with glorious support when the team executes a play to perfection. i flail and moan and kick and scream and hurl venom towards the field or television when something goes wrong.

all the while, hannah (and now caroline) are somewhere in the vicinity of the game, too, taking it all in.

readers of this blog that don't use the word "fuck", don't worry (yet). neither of the girls have taken to the interwebs with their own journals contributing to the downfall of civilization by using their own variations on their daddy's "dirty words". that'll come, though. don't you worry.

when we got in the car after the game last friday, though, indisputable evidence of my (and her mommy's) influence poured out of the first baby girl. as we pulled away from rebecca's, hannah started crying. soon, her crying turned to bawling and within a few seconds, she was inconsolable. after letting her cry it out for a few minutes, i asked why she was so upset. it was because she was worried that a friend, whose parents root for auburn, would brag and make fun of her the next time they saw each other. damn.

was she upset that alabama lost the game? maybe, but not so much in the literal outcome of the literal game. she was upset that her friends who had chosen to root for auburn would have something on her the next time they got together. i resemble this sentiment, wholeheartedly.

i love a spirited debate, mainly because, removed from the subject in question, whether that be a football team or lunch at krystal, i pride myself on being able to separate the sinner from the sin, if you will. if you don't like alabama as much as i do, that's fine. if you think a whopper is tastier than my little piece of heaven, that's fine, too. i'll argue why i think i am right, or feel right. i might even argue why i think you are wrong. i am not going to call you a douchebag, even if i think you are being one. that's just the way it is.

kids, specifically my first grader, can't be this rational. not yet. kids are the worst trash-talkers, because it's all emotion that's vomiting from their mouth. they don't care about making good points. they just "nanny, nanny, poo-poo" all over their classmates faces with no regard for the emotional trainwrecks they are leaving in their wake. i know this because i was the worst at it. i can specifically remember an instance from my childhood when i lost a friend for over a month because i kicked his ass in tecmo bowl and wouldn't stop talking about it for a week. it was "mean". "tactless". "stupid". all of those. i suppose i knew better. my mom would've kicked my ass had she known about it. but i didn't go to school with my mom. and hannah doesn't go to school with hers. or her dad. we can't protect her from kids being cruel. we just get to pick up the pieces after someone's broken her heart.

the sad part about that meltdown in the car after the iron bowl was how predictable it was. by my injecting her, week after week, year after year, season after season with the idea that football and alabama football is worth giving your friends a hard time about, i let the meltdown happen. i produced it. it was my creation.

as i said, i know kids are mean. that part i can't change. they are all emotion. it's part of their charm and part of the reason i want to stick my head through a glass door half the time.

i also know kids are impressionable. and i've impressed upon my child that she should give a shit when a friend of hers who has parents that have impressed upon them to be an auburn fan comes bragging about a victory in a football game. because i've done this, i've given her a reason to worry about something that she didn't ask for.

that kind of sucks.

as she gets older, i'll have to make sure she is able and trained to respond to others with something more substantial than tears. i'll have to impress upon her the value in (good-) spirited debate.

then she won't have any friends either.