FAREWELL TO 2000

 
Well Fellas, our 13th (thirteenth!!!) season has already come to an end.  And despite it being one of the most bizzarre NFL seasons in memory, it seems as if our league took a step back towards being "normal".  We actually had four teams not finish within a game of .500, which quadrupels last seasons number.  We were also able to accomplish something we failed miserably at before.  Have a smooth running draft when someone was out of town.  With Ken having just moved to Wyoming shortly before the draft, he wasn't able to make it.  And we all know how well the phone-in drafts worked.  Yuck.  But this year, with the help of ICQ, the computer world made communicating with Ken easy, and the draft went on with out a hitch.


   Speaking of Ken Moving to Wyoming, it looks like the move paid off big time.  He was a big Oh-fer in Iowa.  I may be wrong about this, but I do believe he won his previous title right before he moved to Iowa, and now that he's left, he's won another title.  He also changed his coaching accumen this season.  Every season I can remember, Ken and I have "competed" to see who can have the most transactions during the season.  He would also call or email me every week with his lineup.  This year?  He lost his only back-up reciever to injury.  He lost first one, then later on, another of his runningbacks to injury.  He even lost his QB for the last five weeks or so of the season.  And Ken did nothing.  He let his backups play.  And except for the last couple of weeks of the season, his backups whupped all our asses.  From weeks six - ten, he put up an average score of 50 points a week, winning all of those games by an even more impressive 35 points per game.  Most of us would have been damn giddy if we were just able to score 35 points a game a couple of times in a row.  That five game explosion enabled him to get into the playoffs despite his 1-3 swoon he had to finish the season.  And as his 10-3 all time playoff record states, once T.T.P. actually makes the playoffs, he's tough to knock out.  Congrats to Ken, the 2000 Fall Classic Fantasy Football League Champion.


Our 2nd place finisher this season was a little more active than Ken was in managing his team.  He also had injuries deplete his roster.  He went the last 12 games or so with only two recievers on his roster, both of them on that oh-so-powerful Carolina Panthers offence.  He also had Ricky Williams, Mike Alstott and JR Redmond all on his roster while they were injured and not playing.  He did nothing to add live bodies to his roster.  The one move he did make though, might have cost him the title.  The trade he made with Nightmare came back to bite him in the butt.  We all agreed that the trade favored Nightmare when it happened, I don't think any of us outside of Vince could have imagined it would end up being one of the most lop-sided trades in our league history.  Keeping Fred Taylor on his roster could have put one more win on Cannabis' record, which would have gave him the division title.  And if he had Taylor in the playoffs, he definatly would have won the whole thing.  But enough of the "what-if's".  Cannabis won a playoff game.  For the first time in his FCFFL career, he made it out of the first round.  And once he did that, he won a 2nd playoff game, putting him in his first ever Fantasy Bowl.  We've all made bad trades, we've all made bad transactions.  Cannabis made his and still made it to the Fantasy Bowl, something not a lot of us can say.


 Well, what else can we say about Sheep.  This was the sixth straight season Sheep made it at least to the Semi-Finals.  He has also made the playoffs every year.  EVERY year.  We could start calling him the "New York Yankees of the FCFFL".  He once again showed his drafting brilliance by hinting Lamar Smiths name out to me in the 2nd round.  Like the draft klutz that I am, I blew him off.  Here's a little tip for all you guys out there: If the leagues all time best owner throws a name out at ya...LISTEN TO THE MAN!!!!  He obviously knows what he's doin'.  But once the season started, it started to look as if Deano had finally lost his touch.  He took a 4-5 record into the 10th week.  He was one of the teams on the bubble.  That was when the Sheep we all know put his horns on straight, and started knocking the rest of us around.  He finished up the regular season with a 4-1 record over the last five weeks.  And his 57-56 victory the last week of the season gave him his 5th division title.  


 What a turn around this guy has made the past few years, eh?  This guy put up numbers that gave him the worst record in our leagues history.  Then one year, a few years ago, despite somehow not making the playoffs, he lead the league in Total Team Points. And now for the 2nd straight season, he put up the leagues best record, and the highest Total Team Points as well.  This year he added another high mark in his quest to be the best, his first ever play-off victory.  After coming out of the draft having Kurt Warner handed to him with the 5th pick, Vince never looked back.  He had the leagues best record the entire season.  Vinces next CHALLENGE?  The Fantasy Bowl.


 Well this guy has started to put up some impressive numbers.  He has been in the playoffs each and every year of his existance, and he has taken a division title in each of the past two seasons.  He has never won more than 8 games in a season, but he has also never lost more than 7.  This year Postal went air-born.  Drafting Randy Moss and Isaac Bruce in the first two rounds.  But in the end, his 3rd meeting with the eventual league champ was what did him in.  After two very close games in the regular season against division rival T.T.P., Postal got blown out by T.T.P. in the first round of the playoffs. 


 After an agonizingly slow start (0-3), Bill picked it up, and infact put up a 5-1 record over the last six weeks of the season.  And a sign that Bill looked ready for the playoffs, he averaged 45 points a game in those five victories.  But one move left Bill short handed in the playoffs. Trading for Terrell Davis at first appeared to be a move that could put Bill over the top.  In Terrell's first game back from injury, he ran for 125 and got a TD.  Little did Bill know that a RB can put up those kind of number on a leg that wasn't healed yet.  Terrell didn't play again.  And Bill went out in the first round of the Playoffs.


 Well this rookie didn't put up bad numbers at all.  He drafted the eventual Player Of The Year (Daunte) and surrounded him with a couple of studs (Harrison and Bettis).  After a rough introductory period where he started the season with a 1-4 record, the Slam Boyz turned it on, going 6-1 over the next seven weeks.  He actually put himself in a position to take the division title from Vince with that seven game streatch. But then he went belly up, and never surfaced again.  He lost his last two games of the regular season, and then lost in the first round of the playoffs.


 This season can officially be a dissapointment for Matt.  After the draft, both Nightmare and CHALLENGE pegged Orgasmatrons as having the best draft.  Having Curtis Martin, Rickey Watters, Eric Moulds, and Jimmy Smith on a roster after the draft was over was eye popping.  He started off well, posting a 6-3 record after nine weeks.  But then his team went south.  He lost his next four games (in one of them, his opponent only scored 5 points).  And he had to win his last game, and hope for another team to lose, just to make the playoffs.  Orgasmatrons did make the playoffs, but it was a short stay.  He put up 11 measily points in the first round, and joined seven others in the bleachers to watch the Semi-Finals.


 Here is a team that somehow had put itself in position to make the playoffs just by winning his last game.  How he got that far with his lineup is amazing in itself.  He finished the season as the leagues lowest scoring team, but he was able to get by due to playing the 2nd easiest schedule.  His 383 points against was only four points higher than Nightmares.  In fact, he even got a victory when he scored 5 points one week.  And in the "Believe it or not" file, a QB named Ryan Leaf led the Juggernauts on a 3 game winning streak that almost put Jeff in the playoffs.  But the season ending loss to Cannabis left Jeff watching his first FCFFL playoffs from the bleachers.


 This season has got to be one of the biggest dissapointments in our leagues history.  Comming out of the draft, Nightmare had the #1 spot in the Pre-Season Power Ranking.  And his team started off bitch-slapping his first two opponents, out scoring them 81-31.  Then the collaps began.  Over the following nine weeks, Nightmare put up a 1-8 record.  And it wasn't like his opponents were lighting him up (he finished the season having the lowest points scored against).  Over those nine weeks, Hobie put up an average of just 20 points a game.  Then in week 12, he put up the best performance in our leagues history: 82 points in one week.  And he didn't stop there.  He went 3-0 the last three weeks, averaging 60 points a game in that span.  So the question Hobie has to think about during the entire off season is this, What happened over that 9 game stink hole streatch of the season?


 One thing Scott can take out of this season, he wrote the book on what NOT to do on draft day.  By not getting back from his excursion that day, he was on the road when the draft started, and had to make his first two picks while driving, no notes in hand.  But dispite his setback, he still had a chance to make the playoffs up to the last week of the season.  And in a sence, he can thank Sheep for knocking him out of those playoffs.  In their two meetings this year, Scott scored 37 and 57 points respectivly.  His record against Sheep?  0-2.  And he lost those games by a combined 3 points.  Had those two games gone the other way, Scott would have been in the playoffs, and Dean would have missed them for the first time ever.


 Well, what can we say about Botts year.  He has been the most inconsistant owner of this league of ours.  He rarely has an "average" season.  Six times in the past 9 years, he has had either 10 wins, or 10 losses.  And those six times are split evenly, three 10 win seasons, three 10 loss seasons.  This was one of those 10 loss seasons.  He wasn't exactly what you would call an offensive powerhouse, but what has to be the main reason for his reaching that loss total was this:  He broke the All-Time Points Against record set by Big Dog in that infamous 1-13 record season.  The old record was 509 points.  Bott got pounded on with 520 points against.  You can thank Nightmare for a big chunk of that as Mike was on the recieving end of Patricks 82 point explosion.  But Bottweiser also had three other weeks where he was on the recieving end of a 50+ point output.  Bottweiser was already the all time leader in points against.  Maybe next year he will start working on the Points For record, and get back in the double digit win column again.