Fantasy Football Librarian

As I think every FFLibrarian regular might notice, I've played around with the colors and layout on the blog. After hearing a few comments from all of you, I decided that perhaps the dark background and light text just wasn't doing it for most of you. So I thought I'd play around with the colors (sorry for those of you who have been on the site this morning and seen several iterations of the new background) and I'd like to get some feedback from you all - if you have feelings on this extremely important topic, either leave me a comment or respond this week in the poll to the left side. Onto football... Rotoworld takes a look at whether or not you might be headed to a FF championship if you draft Randy Moss in the first round in Rating Randy . A bunch of you have asked for resources on auction style drafts - Football Jabber does a great job of putting together articles on tips, strategies and suggestions for auction drafting . The best link on here though might be Fanta...

So it turns out that I'm really competitive. I probably could have figured this out many years ago as I was taking every grade I got on middle school tests to heart (yup, I said middle school, I was that much of a grade nerd), but somehow I've ignored the presence of this wicked competitive streak I have...until lately. Fantasy football really brings it out in me; during fantasy season I find myself ready to compete against anyone at anytime. For example, it's relatively common to find me gunning it on the road to beat out the loser who got in the right lane that ends in 50 yards, and then cackling with delight when I pull ahead and narrowly avoid a collision with said driver, regardless of the fact that it's a 70-year-old woman who probably can't see that well to begin with. I just get overly eager to win at everything; not my best trait. I'm guessing that a sizable chunk of people who play fantasy football fall into this highly competitive category, too. So I ...

I filled in at the last minute for a mock draft last Thursday night with the FFToday staff - it ended up being only an okay draft for me, but it was excellent prep for 2008. And though my team/draft got no love at all from the FFToday guys (as evidenced in the votes for best draft on this Team by Team Recap ), I still enjoyed getting a chance to draft with real live people this early in the season. Check out the Round by Round recap of the mock draft - it was a 10-team, serpentine draft with 16 rounds to field a 1 QB/ 2 RB/ 3 WR/ 1 TE/ 1 K/ 1 DEF lineup and the scoring system is noted on the recap page. Fortunately I´ll have a chance to redeem myself later this week with a mock draft via email with West Coast Nonsense and his crew of football bloggers. I´ll keep you posted on how that mock draft goes... Okay, I've been chugging my coffee like a Maxwell House pledge this morning, so I'm feeling a bit overly caffeinated. Let's dive into the football links for today: Is Gr...

I spent part of my weekend in my local Barnes & Noble perusing the various fantasy football magazines available. I got a little bit sidetracked while reading the prognosis for my Northwestern Wildcats in some of the college football mags, but I walked out of the bookstore with three fantasy football magazines (and don't worry, a book of fiction, for those concerned about a librarian who only reads fantasy football materials). While I plan on spending blog time later comparing some of the magazines, I would like to note that of the 4 fantasy magazines I now own, Adrian Peterson is on the cover of 3; and those 3 also use a bright yellowish shade in the title. Did market research show that fantasy footballers are drawn to yellow headlines or is this just a function of matching AP's Vikings jersey? More actual comparisons beyond cover preferences to come...but in the meantime, there are headlines and articles to read! FFToday's Weekly Gut Check column brings us the 2008 Bre...

If my post a few weeks ago about assessing how fantasy experts' preseason rankings panned out by the end of the season left you wanting more, well then look no further than RotoSource's 2007 Fantasy Football Player Projection Competition . They looked it things a little bit differently, hence why they have different results than I did - the primary difference being that they looked at actual projections rather than rankings. I like that idea, I think it's great and has a ton of merit since as they state "rankings and cheat sheets are difficult to evaluate" - however, with rankings and cheat sheets used so often (and I'd argue, projections are used less often than rankings by your average fantasy footballer), I wish there was an easier way to assess rankings. I wish I could see a little bit more detail on how exactly they did the scoring, but here's a link to their scoring system explanation . Enjoy!

When I got married a few years ago, the weeks leading up to the wedding were laden with gift giving. I would come home from work, walk up our front porch and BAM, four boxes emblazoned with the Crate & Barrel logo were waiting for me. Sidebar that has nothing to do with football : let's not talk about how much less expensive and eco-friendly the world would be if stores just sent wedding presents in bulk rather than individual packages; personally, I'm on the animal giving train these days, I mean who doesn't want a flock of ducks in their name? Trio of rabbits instead? Wow, look at what living in Boulder has done to me... Anyway, come home the next day and BAM, two more boxes. You never knew when there would be a little wedding treat waiting for you and I feel as though I'm reliving that era via fantasy football right now. You see, I've got some good stuff coming to you, my football friends. At the request of two of my devoted readers, I've been on the sea...

I got my Beckett/ Rotoworld 2008 Football Draft Guide last night and truly had to place it across the room so that I would stop insatiably reading it; let the draft magazine goodness last, I say. I thought about bringing it on the bus to work this morning but was worried I might muck it up somehow; seriously everything in my bag ends up dogeared, torn or coffee-stained given enough time. Now how is it that my library conference in Vegas 10 days ago didn't coincide with Javon Walker's recent spraying of champagne at a hotel across the street from where I was staying? It is unfortunate though that the night did not end well for Walker and I do hope he has a speedy recovery. Read on for other fantasy football items: I was reading some commentary on NFL.com about Philip Rivers and his recovery from ACL surgery when I realized I hadn't read Fabiano's article, Draft preview: Passing schedule breakdowns , which notes that Rivers has the hardest schedule in the league. I'...

Greetings fantasy football fans. I'm about to jump into an afternoon of non-stop meetings so I thought I'd get some football links up before the day gets away from me... For those of you in IDP leagues, Football Burrito (hmm, two things I love) has a short post on drafting defensive backs - I'd love to see more DB suggestions listed here but I do think he makes an interesting point about DBs being the "least likely of any position to have 2 good years in a row" - good food for thought here (ha, yes, the barely noticeable burrito/food pun was intended). And because I can't get enough IDP info, here's Fantasy Tailgate's June IDP rankings: Linebacker Rankings Defensive Line Rankings Defensive Back Rankings Fantasy Tailgate has other rankings, too: QB , RB , WR , TE , K and Team D are all covered. The Bruno Boys have some thoughts up on which players might be the best bargains for the 2008 season in Bruno Boys Q&A - Positional Bargains . I just plac...

So last night I babysat for 5-month-old twins; it's possible they had made a deal with the devil. As soon as one baby stopped crying, the other would start up and so forth for most of the night. As a currently childless person who has babysat only for single babies, I certainly developed a whole new respect for parents with twins, triplets or beyond. And of course for single parents. I mean honestly, last night my husband was with me so we at least had man-on-man coverage of the twins. So any non-man-on-man situation really has my admiration. Man-on-man you say? That leads nicely (eh, okay maybe not nicely, but I am still recovering from a night of twinness) to football talk... FF Geek Blog eschews the popular pick of AP at #2 in Why Joseph Addai, not Adrian Peterson, should be #2 on your cheat sheet . And for more Vikings talk for my midwestern friends, check out Sports Data Hub's article Player to Watch - Tarvaris Jackson . I have to admit, I have a small fantasy crush on Tar...

I'm glad to see some feedback on my recent 2007 projections analysis post - keep it coming! In the meantime, there's plenty of news today on the football front including Cedric Benson's likely departure from the Bears and retirement announcements from Michael Strahan and Marcus Robinson . For much more on fantasy football, read on: See why Fabiano won't be taking Brady with a first pick in fantasy drafts this year. Clearly you all are very interested in rankings, so check out Footballguys.com's very customizable overall rankings - this link goes to the redraft overall rankings but you can create whatever rankings you're interested in, really (like this one for redraft RB rankings ). Feeling like a bit of a risk taker perhaps? Read up on FFToolbox's Fantasy Gambles , a list that will be updated throughout the pre-season. FFToday has some sleepers from this year's 2008 rookie class in their first Gut Check column of the season. I highly recommend the...

Back in February, I posted an article to the NY Times pro football blog , The Fifth Down, about the accuracy of fantasy football experts when it comes to preseason overall rankings. Since then, I have tweaked my methodology for looking at the expert rankings and added a site (Rotoworld) to the analysis. And it's a good thing I added Rotoworld, too, since they led the way on almost every angle of this analysis. But before I get too deep into the results, I just want to put a big warning that these results have flaws ; it is impossible (as far as I can tell!) to do a perfect analysis of this sort of thing since every site has a different methodology and likely different scoring systems that they're working off of. And perhaps more importantly, this is merely one year of analysis that I'm looking at; anyone who works with stats can tell you that one year of results doesn't hold very much weight...which is why I plan on continuing this (and hopefully adjusting my ranking pr...

I've been in Vegas for the past few days for a library conference but was lucky enough to step outside of the conference confines to celebrate my birthday on The Strip last night. Oh Vegas. So very different from Boulder, Colorado. I must say, I can totally get down with a world where free drinks are somewhat the norm, but there are other less desirable aspects of Vegas for sure - I probably won't be celebrating birthdays in Vegas from here on out, but I guess you never know. Enough on Vegas, let's talk fantasy football: The Bruno Boys are up and better than ever; check out their new site - you won't regret it. The season has truly begun; draft kits are sprouting up all over the place and I shall endeavor to find the free ones for you. If you know of any, let me know! In the meantime, if you want a great draft kit in exchange for cold, hard cash, try Rotoworld's Fantasy Football Draft Guide . And if you need reasons to check it out, read this - you might see a fa...

On Wednesday I will be flying to Las Vegas to present on fantasy football in libraries at a library conference at UNLV. I did this in early May, too, and soon my fantasy football in libraries presentation circuit will come to an end...but if I am kind of quiet on the blog later this week, don't be surprised. So let's see what's new in the football world. It is June and that means it's time to get serious about fantasy football. First, the Broncos have released RB Travis Henry - that's big news in my book so read up on the latest. Selvin Young is now the starter with Michael Pittman and rookie Ryan Torain backing him up. Looking for some sleepers for 2008, eh? Check out Fantasy Sharks's Fantasy Gold: Lost, Forgotten, and Undiscovered Treasures? for some thoughts on potential sleepers or forgotten players that might make a splash in 2008. If that did not fulfill your desire for sleeper info, try Fabiano's Draft Preview: Gonzalez, Olsen headline fantasy sleep...