Could You? (33)

"I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing, I think I thought I saw you try..., every whisper, of every waking hour, I'm, choosing my confessions, trying to keep an eye on you, like a hurt lost and blinded fool, fool..." -R.E.M.- (Losing My Religion)

"It takes some time..., God knows how long, I know that I can forget you, as soon as my heart stops breaking, anticipating, as soon as forever is through, I'll be over you..." -Toto- (I'll Be Over You)



Could you tell us about your new football season gameplan for the blog Coach?  Good afternoon everyone.  In light of the fact that I'm busier during the season (I LITERALLY tacked a sheet of paper to my wall that says "Weekly Football Checklist" today), I'm going to scale my posts back to three days a week (the football season just gets worse and worse, hey Miletus?)...  This means that my 'Could You?' posts will be here on Mondays (alas...), my 'I Remember The First Time' posts will appear on Wednesdays, and that Fridays will be devoted to football and football predictions...  Every other day with weekends off til at least the beginning of February folks (although you may find that random extra post here from time to time)...

Could you tell us about irony Coach?  I recently messaged my friend Jessica on facebook to ask her about being a celebrity expert here on a Friday in the near future.  In reference to the football predictions that I make here every Friday, Jess asked, "Isn't it scary to put yourself out there like that?"  The ironic part of that comment is that Jessica is a "former" model (former until someone shows her a big pile of cash I said)...  :D  To answer her question (in case y'all were wondering the same thing yourselves, in light of the fact that my '10 best bets' have gone 2-7 so far this week) I told Jess this:  "If I'm right, I look great, but I hate that I'm not in Vegas betting.  If I'm wrong, I look bad, but it didn't cost me anything..."

Could you tell us how bad you're going to look this week Coach?  To be honest, once I got off to the 1-7 start on Saturday, I thought that it would have been funny to go 1-9 for the week, just for the advertising value.  Have you ever heard those prognosticators who advertise, "I've been right on 71% of my selections" (or something to that effect)?  Wouldn't it have been great after Week 1 for me to roll out, "TEN PERCENT - you can count on me to get 1 out of every 10 games right.  Who else can promise you that?!"  :P  I actually got into a hole here early last season (I generally do much better after seeing the teams play), and we're looking for Florida State and Pittsburgh to combine for over 49 1/2 points tonight so that we'll be 3-7 for the first week...

Could you give some credit to those celebrity experts Coach?  Well, my celebrity experts went 21-1 picking the outcome of the Texas State (22-15 over Southern Mississippi) and Texas (56-7 over New Mexico State) games on Saturday (Alyssa and I also managed to pick the winners in these games also, which will be reflected here in the blog on Friday).  And YES, Alyssa was closer than I was on the score of BOTH GAMES - shut up people...  :)  No one picked the exact outcome of either matchup (which is extremely difficult to do), but we had some very impressive near-misses (especially considering that this was the first week of the season).  Daniel Guerrero (the Mayor of San Marcos) had the Bobcats winning 21-12, while Lauren "I don't know anything about no foosball" Meckel (Superfly's Lone Star Music Emporium/Texas State Alum) had the Cats 23-21 over the Golden Eagles.  As for the UT game, Hunter Harvin had Texas winning 54-10, while @NotUfatJesus had the Horns taking it 51-3.


Could you tell us how your fantasy football draft went yesterday Coach?  Well, this draft was for a 12-team league, and it was my first draft of the year (I may be in another league, if it gets squared away REALLY QUICK - the NFL kicks off its season on Thursday with the Ravens visiting Denver).  About an hour before the draft I found out that I had drawn the 10th pick (snake draft order), and these are the results of my draft:

10)  LeSean McCoy  15)  Drew Brees   34)  Wes Welker   39)  Larry Fitzgerald
58)  Jason Witten   63)  Ahmad Bradshaw   82)  Seahawks   87)  Texans
106)  Michael Vick   111)  Mark Ingram   130)  Alshon Jeffery   135)  Felix Jones
154)  Markus Wheaton  159)  Donald Brown  178)  Alex Henery  183)  Dexter McCluster

I like the first half of my draft, up through and including stealing Vick in the ninth-round.  Taking the defenses back-to-back where I did was an unorthodox move, but I took them before they appeared on the league's draft scroll.  Their schedules complement each other in that I will be facing very weak offenses for the majority of the season - Seattle gets Arizona and St. Louis twice, while Houston gets Jacksonville and Tennessee twice.  I stuck to the predictions entry that I wrote here when taking McCoy, Brees, Vick, and Henery.  The Eagles will run A LOT of plays this season, and Brees actually beat out Aaron Rodgers in points last year under the ESPN scoring system that our league is playing in (someone took Rodgers fifth overall in our draft).  I don't usually draft too many Steelers (my favorite team) to avoid bias, but I think that Jones and Wheaton have a lot of upside where I was able to pick them up.  Witten was the only tight end with over 1,000 receiving yards last season when I drafted him.  I thought that Welker and Fitzgerald had more upside where I got them than the running backs that were still available.  Although my backs aren't superior after McCoy, I have a good shot at having the Colts starter having both Bradshaw (foot injury currently) and Brown on my roster (the Colts have the 3rd-weakest schedule in the league again this season, starting with facing Jacksonville and Tennessee twice).  Ingram gets most of the carries for the Saints.  Alshon Jeffery - well, this is a funny story...  Although Jeffery is the Bears number two receiver, he only found a spot on my squad AFTER my 90-second clock RAN OUT, the only time that this has ever happened to me while drafting.  He was my autopick after I got caught up in switching back and forth between the WR and RB availability screens...  And McCluster is a wild card with a lot of speed for the Chiefs...

Could you give us your condensed fantasy baseball update Coach?  I'm almost out of time here, but my teams are currently in 6th, 5th, and 3rd place this week in my 3 leagues.  As the baseball season winds down, I'll be more specific as to which teams have which players when the money comes into play (the top two finishers in each league cash).

Well, that's it for today, but I'll see you again on Wednesday (and it won't be so sports-heavy then Miletus)...  :)  Have a great Labor Day everyone!