Fantasy Football Librarian

Today a close friend from college is driving through Knoxville with her family en route back to their home in Athens, Georgia, and they'll be making an overnight pit stop at our place. I couldn't be more excited since it has been too long since I last saw her (and have yet to meet her son who is about my son's age) - plus, how often does someone come through Knoxville? Pretty much never. When we were living in NYC I got pretty spoiled with the number of visitors we had - Knoxville isn't exactly the same hub of activity. Plus we've got family coming to town this weekend so we've got fun times ahead - hope you all do, too. An early Happy New Year's to everyone! In the meantime, on to today's links: Start/sit suggestions for Week 17: Fifth Down's Week 17 in Fantasy Football: Favorable and Unfavorable Matchups Matthew Berry's Love, Hate and a torn sleeve CBSSports.com's Week 17 Start 'Em and Sit 'Em NFL.com's Rivers, Mathews h

I kind of love this week between Christmas and New Year's Day - things are a little bit more mellow, lots of family and friends around, college football is on almost non-stop, and there's always the feeling that change is impending. I dig it. What I don't like is the end of the standard fantasy football season and I'm sure you all feel the same way. Just a reminder that I'll keep blogging throughout the off-season with plenty of info for the 2012 season. I also hope that you're all planning on playing in the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge this year - this link should help you set up a login or you can just e-mail me for an invitation. Finally, those of you who have been participating in the weekly accuracy start/sit challenge run by FantasyPros.com should be pleased to know that we came in 4th place - check out the results here . Many, many thanks to those of you that played each week. Meanwhile if you want to see how the experts did, scope out the results

Welcome to the post-Christmas chaos. We've had a busy 36 hours or so in our family - we celebrated Christmas with my family in DC and then hopped on a mostly empty plane back to Knoxville to spend the rest of the holiday with my husband's family. Sadly once we got to Knoxville our poor niece and sister-in-law got the pukes and our various plans for dinner, presents, etc got mostly postponed until tonight. So we're doing Christmas part 2 tonight. Fortunately we'll have an interesting Saints vs Falcons game to keep us entertained if the puking returns. Fingers crossed that they both feel better stat (what's sadder than a puking baby AND a puking mom?) and that the rest of us remain puke-free...there's lots of baby slobber going around so frankly we'll be lucky to get out of this week unscathed. Anyway, I'm pretty certain I'm about to have a 2011 fantasy championship under my belt this year and hope you all are facing equally good news. But if your le

Today marks the start of Christmas celebrations in our house since one batch of family members is rotating out to see the rest of their family later today; so let the first wave of present opening begin! I've got our son down now for what I hope will be a long, long nap (thanks, 5:45 AM wake-up call) to be followed with an afternoon of wrapping paper and boxes to keep him entertained. Hope you're all enjoying the holiday season so far...now onto the remaining essential links for this championship week. And no worries for those of you who carry on to Week 17, I carry on, too, and will be here with plenty of links next week. Week 16 start/sit (should have the consensus list up by tonight, I hope): Fantasy Football Nerd's Where to Put 'Em Fifth Down's Week 16 in Fantasy Football: Favorable and Unfavorable Matchups Matthew Berry's Love/Hate (how can I not link to something that has a little extra love for fantasy-football-loving wives?) FakeTeams' Week 16

Greetings football friends - thanks for bearing with me this week. We headed up to the DC area on Tuesday to spend some pre-Christmas time with my family and things have been a bit busy. My 92-year-old grandma arrived yesterday and we have a complicated family plus a couple of babies here - so four generations of mostly good times have been keeping me busy. Definitely didn't mean to leave you all hanging in your time of playoffs need, so let's get right down to it with a few quick notes to start things off. First up, don't forget that this is a funky week with a game tonight, most games on Saturday, and two more on Sunday and Monday nights. Love having the NFL on during so many days of the week but it certainly keeps you on your fantasy toes. Next up, this is our final week to prove our fantasy worth in the FantasyPros.com weekly start/sit accuracy challenge. I'd love it if you took a few minutes to answer these 10 start/sit questions and represent for FFLibrarian.

One of our son's favorite toys is our home phone - we have a land line since I work from home and need it for conference calls, and it's a good thing we do since he loves that thing. Obsessed would be putting it mildly. But until this morning he's never actually called anyone other than our voicemail - he's dialed a ton of numbers, he's just never hit the crucial "talk" button to pull it all together. But this morning he managed to get it on speaker so that my husband and I both heard the recorded voice that suddenly came on: "Hello there, I can offer you a massage..." is roughly all we heard before we could get to the phone, and we just both stood there stunned and cracking up that oh yes, my friends, our son called some sort of phone sex line. What are the chances? Probably about as small as the chances that the Packers would lose to the Chiefs and the Colts would finally tally a win - though of all the unlikely things I guess I should've

The season is winding down and with it, our consensus start/sit lists are starting to reach their expiration date...but don't worry, we've still got a few more weeks of consensus wisdom to read up on. As usual I went through this weeks start/sit list and tallied up below are the players with the most start or sit votes. Good luck in the playoffs and hope you all enjoy watching the Broncos beat the Pats! QB Start: Matt Stafford, Tim Tebow, Rex Grossman Sit: Alex Smith, Ben Roethlisberger, Carson Palmer (he also got several start votes though), Michael Vick RB Start: Chris Johnson, Beanie Wells, Cedric Benson, Felix Jones Sit: Rashard Mendenhall, Ryan Mathews, DeAngelo Williams, C.J. Spiller WR Start: Demaryius Thomas, Jabar Gaffney, Santana Moss (gotta love a 2-Skins start list...) Sit: Anquan Boldin, Michael Crabtree, Vincent Jackson TE Start: Owen Daniels, Jake Ballard, Jermichael Finley, Anthony Fasano Sit: Jermaine Gresham, Heath Miller, Dustin Keller, Vern

It's a big week for those still in the 2011 FF season and most of this post will cater to you all, don't worry, but I know many FF players have seen an end to their season already. Perhaps you're still lurking around the site even though you're out of the playoffs? Glad to have you and keep in mind that I'll be posting throughout the offseason with advice and thoughts for the 2012 season so I hope you'll stick around. But that's jumping way ahead...so I'll just jump a little ahead instead to the NFL playoffs, which are only a few weeks away. I'm running the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge through NFL.com again this year and I hope you'll join me (if that link doesn't work for you, e-mail me and I'll send you an invitation). I'm working on a prize for the challenge winner, too, if that sweetens the deal at all. But now back to Week 15 prep. Have at it: Week 15 start/sit links: NFL.com's CJ2K can lead you to fantasy championship

Spotted: one heavily-makeuped woman donning a Santa hat, counting out a huge wad of cash in the car parked next to me in a suburban grocery store parking lot. All I saw were $1 bills though it felt extremely wrong to be staring at her and her cash stack so maybe my quick peeks didn't see the whole story. In fact, would love to know the story there in general. Then on the drive back to my house, in the span of 3 blocks I saw 4 cars with the whole reindeer antlers and rudolph nose on the front of the car and I started muttering to myself about why it seems this whole town is being all cutesy with their holiday car decor....and then I started wondering what happens if you have one of those get-ups and you see another car next to you with it, too, do you smile and wave to acknowledge the bizarro holiday antler club you're in together? Or do you play it cool like you aren't mortified that every other driver on the road had your same Christmas car idea? Right, clearly I was in

Every year my husband's family does a college bowl pool and every year I absolutely tank...as in I perform alongside the family pets whose picks are based on school mascots being a cat, dog, etc. Or I do about as well as my aunt who participated one year and just picked whichever school was in a state that she had lived in or visited before. That's the level of effectiveness I've got going in the bowl pool and it's fairly embarrassing. Though I think I've finally figured out why I do so poorly: I'm just like my aunt, I pick with loyalty. I'm a total sucker for picking teams that I care about. No chance in hell am I picking against my Northwestern Wildcats, my sister's Stanford Cardinal, or my grandma's Michigan Wolverines, just ain't happening. I'm guessing many of you can relate and perhaps have made similar decisions in your fantasy football lives. Now I realize you've made it to the playoffs so you're obviously savvy and probably d

Well looks like I might as well just send my entire paycheck straight to Amazon this month. I've been playing the role of online Santa Sara for the past few days since no one in our house enjoys spending time in a mall, much less during the holiday season...and due to my love for Amazon Prime (they totally suckered me in after a free year via Amazon Mom), I've basically been doing all sorts of holiday shopping with just a few clicks here and there. Fortunately it's equally easy to do a little click, click, click for your fantasy football gifts this week. Read on: Waiver wire suggestions for this all-important Week 15: FantasySharks.com's Waiver Wire Wonders KFFL.com's Waiver Wire: WR - Week 15 Fantasy Football Spin's Waiver Wire Wonders - Week 15: Quarterbacks ProFootballWeekly.com's Fantasy Ticker: Week 15   ProFootballFocus.com's Waiver Wire - Week 15 The Hazean's Week 15 Waiver Wire Adds A few early start/sit links: FFManiaxs' Week

I've held off on gushing over my Broncos a whole lot here since we all know the world has long since maxed out on the Tim Tebow lovefests...but seriously, the comebacks are unbelievable. They're making for incredible 4th quarters/OT and I'm loving it. Next week's matchup with the Patriots should be an interesting battle in our family since my sister and bro-in-law are big Pats fans. Fortunately we won't all be together for the holidays yet; it would just be sad to see their faces when the Broncos win yet again. I hope you all joined in on FantasyPros.com's Beat the Expert challenge - looks like there are 1800+ of us participating and I'm ranking somewhere in the 400s I believe. My Ray Rice/Shonn Greene combo was pretty solid but my receivers didn't exactly pan out as hoped. Let's see how many of you make $5 by beating my lineup... Now onto today's links: Week 14 recaps: Roto Arcade's Sunday Scene, Week 14 Football Outsiders' Audi

Welcome to Week 14 consensus start/sit list. I've gone through all of this week's start/sit links that I've posted from the industry's top experts and tallied up the players with the most start/sit votes. They're listed below in no particular order. Good luck in the playoffs! QB Start: Carson Palmer, Rex Grossman Sit: Andy Dalton, Matt Ryan RB Start: Michael Turner, Marshawn Lynch, Ryan Mathews, Reggie Bush, Shonn Greene, C.J. Spiller, Roy Helu Sit: Cedric Benson, Brandon Jacobs, Beanie Wells, Peyton Hillis WR Start: Percy Harvin, Anquan Boldin, Michael Crabtree, Santana Moss Sit: Santonio Holmes, Pierre Garcon, Dwayne Bowe TE Start: Dustin Keller, Kellen Winslow, Brent Celek Sit: Owen Daniels, Greg Olsen, Brandon Pettigrew DST Start: Jets, Broncos, Seahawks Sit: Eagles, Cowboys Kicker Start: Jason Hanson, Robbie Gould Sit: Adam Vinatieri, Neil Rackers

In the upcoming year my mom is moving out of the house that my family has lived in for 35+ years. I was born there, made mud pies there, built innumerable snowmen there, fought repeatedly with my sister there, snuck out of ridiculously tiny windows there, and have spent every Christmas morning there. So this year will be our final Christmas there and I'm feeling fairly sentimental about it, though trying not to let my mom see that too much; I know the move will be hardest on her. But I guess this just makes this year's holiday season that much sweeter, doesn't it? Speaking of sweet things, how about fantasy playoffs? I hope you all enjoyed last night's game - I only made it until half time or so...I think I'm cursed with a Mike Wallace - Antonio Brown bad decision problem. I essentially can start 1 of them each week (I have both in 2 different leagues) and inevitably have made the wrong decision about which one to start for the past month or so. Here's hoping

This week marks the start of playoffs for many of you and if you aren't playing FF any longer - or even if you are - I have another way for you to get your fantasy fix this week. FantasyPros.com has asked me to be their Featured Pro this week, which is awesome. You can play against me in their weekly salary cap game on FanDuel and if your lineup beats mine, you get $5 in your pocket. Cool, no? For the details, check out this link . And while we're talking about FantasyPros.com, here's the weekly link to their start/sit accuracy challenge. Keep bringing the fantasy goodness and answer these 10 start/sit questions. Start/sit links: The Fifth Down's Week 14 in Fantasy Football: Favorable and Unfavorable Matchups CBSSports.com's Week 14 Start 'Em and Sit 'Em FootballDocs' Start Sit Roto Arcade's Lames: Woeful Browns run D could make Ben bust vs. Cleveland Week 14 rankings/projections: Rotoworld's Week 14 Rankings FantasyOmatic.com's Fa

Last night we had friends over for a bourbon tasting party and despite the boisterousness that inevitably developed, our son managed to sleep through the entire thing directly one floor above the fun. Such a good sleeper. But if it's fantasy sleepers that you're in the market for, just read on. Get your Sleepers for Week 14 from FFToolbox.com - or head on over to KFFL.com's FF sleepers: QB - Week 14 (other positions linked off that article). Week 14 start/sit links: Roto Arcade's Flames: Don't laugh, Grossman could go from zero to playoff hero FFToolbox.com's Week 14: Sit 'Em PigskinAddiction's Studs and Duds FantasySharks.com's Start/Bench: Week 14 FantasyFootballXtreme.com's Week 14: Start 'em & Sit 'em advice Week 14 rankings/projections: Bruno Boys' Week 14 Rankings: Running Backs FantasySharks.com's Player Projections - Week 14 The Fantasy Shrink's Week 14 Fantasy Football Rankings Your weekly targets

I think a congratulations are in order - if you're still here reading the blog then you have likely made it to the playoffs in at least one league. Or if you're out of the running, perhaps you at least know how to finish off a season with class, fighting with all your FF skills finely tuned. We've got plenty of waiver wire links and even a few start/sit bits, so read on:  The Week 14 waiver wire links roll on: Athlon Sports' Waiver Wire: Week 14 Playoffs ProFootballFocus.com's Waiver Wire - Week 14 FFGeekBlog's The Wire: Playoff time! The Hazean's Week 14 Waiver Wire Adds Razzball.com's Week 14 Waivering Wire Pyromaniacs.com's Pickups After Week 13 ProFootballWeekly.com's Fantasy Ticker: Week 14 For some IDP suggestions, take a look at FantasySharks.com's IDP Waiver Wire: Week 14 article.   We've got two early start/sit articles up: FFToolbox.com's Week 14: Start 'Em FFManiaxs' Week 14 Start/Sit TOFantasySports

Welcome to your weekly installment of the consensus start/sit players for Week 13. As usual I went through this week's expert links and tallied up the players with the most start/sit votes. Those players are listed below in no particular order. Extra good luck this week to those on the playoffs bubble! QB Start: Tim Tebow, Eli Manning, Matt Moore Sit: Ben Roethlisberger, Mark Sanchez, Joe Flacco, Carson Palmer RB Start: BenJarvus Green-Ellis, LeGarrette Blount, Chris Johnson, DeAngelo Williams Sit: Steven Jackson, Peyton Hillis WR Start: Victor Cruz, Mike Williams, Antonio Brown, Reggie Wayne, Eric Decker Sit: Anquan Boldin, Santana Moss, Torrey Smith, Santonio Holmes TE Start: Fred Davis, Kellen Winslow Sit: Vernon Davis, Owen Daniels, Jermaine Gresham DST Start: Patriots, Cowboys Sit: Giants, Lions Kicker Start: Stephen Gostkowski Sit: Adam Vinatieri, Mike Nugent

I know, you're thinking to yourself: what, another FFLibrarian post? Oh yeah. Happy Friday. This one focuses primarily on some resources for 2012 since I know many might be staring down the end of their fantasy season as Week 13 comes to a close.  But first off, I nearly forgot to send you all the weekly FantasyPros.com start/sit questions for their weekly accuracy challenge. It's nip and tuck as usual so I could use all of your great fantasy brains here. And now onto the 2012 links: Hawk Fantasy Sports is the author of some solid keeper info - check out 2012 Fantasy Football: RB Keeper Rankings - Top 100 . Or scope out Hawk's advice up on Y ahoo - 2012 Fantasy Football: Hidden Gem Keeper League Players for 2012 . Dynasty League Football has two articles of interest - both their 2012 Stock Market Report: Risers and their Fallers. To finish things off, DraftSharks have some 2012 Fantasy Football Ranking Tips to help guide you during the (gulp) offseason. Can it po

So the whole sit-on-Santa's-lap thing with our son? Didn't go so well. Kind of expected that one but it was still sort of sad to see. Fortunately, after his Santa mishap he went tearing around the event with the energy of a thousand little boys, loving pretty much every minute of it. So overall I'll call that whole outing a success. And now onto the keys to your fantasy success. Scope out these links below for advice: Start/sit suggestions: The Fifth Down's Week 13 in Fantasy Football: Favorable and Unfavorable Matchups LestersLegends.com's Start/Sit Week 13 RotoExperts.com's Hold 'em or Fold 'em The Football Girl's Startability Index Week 13 (Start/Sit) Matthew Berry's Love/Hate: Twitter Amnesty ProFootballWeekly.com's Start or sit: week 13 TOFantasySports' Play 'em and Lay 'em Week 13 Week 13 rankings for those in PPR leagues with KFFL.com's Rankings: RB - Week 13 . IDP leaguers will want to scope out FantasyShar

Today might just go down as a most tremendous day in our son's life. The day was pretty good to begin with since he slept until 8 am (unreal!) but when I realized that our neighbors were getting their driveway repaved, it became an awesome day: so many trucks to go check out, huge wheels to touch, bobcats to track, all sorts of fun for the little guy - and a really nice paving crew...seriously, if you're looking for a friendly city, Knoxville is it. Anyway, now to top things off we're heading out to get my son's photo taken with Santa this afternoon. Let's hope that one goes over as well as the trucks... Now to keep your day awesome, let's get to today's list of links: Start/sit links for Week 13: Roto Arcade's Flames:  Need a win? Call the law offices of BenJarvus Green-Ellis or Lames: Ryan, Turner could walk into hornet's nest in Houston CBSSports.com's Week 13 Start 'em and Sit 'em NFL.com's Blount can lead fantasy owners to