A season of wēijī: (2/3) It's One Surprise after Another

Wēiyī:  Mandarin for 'crisis.'

Yesterday, I described how I formed Time and Again, my best fantasy-football team this season.  For what ended up being no special reason, I put the Timers through a computer-run draft, disallowing any players who played for Florida NFL or college teams.  On that objective, the draft was a smashing success.

On the imaginary gridiron, unfortunately, Time and Again had a weak bench.  The good news is that weak drafts can have a huge upside:  if you've been stuck with one, you should plan to scan the waiver wire every week.  Keep this in mind as the Timers' story progresses from one instance of wēiyī to another.

Wēiyī Moment, Week 1

Danny Amendola, who was supposed to be my #2 wide receiver, took an injury in Week 1.  At the time, the free agent from St. Louis was regarded as New England's new top receiver, so dropping him was out of the question.  To address what looked like a temporary gap, I added Amendola's Patriot teammate, Julian Edelman, who played well enough to earn a permanent roster spot.  Fortune would have other plans for Edelman, but the Timers made it through this crisis.

Wēiyī Moment, Week 4

Kansas City WR Dwayne Bowe, the only Florida native on the Timers' roster, proved to be a bust, and needed replacement.  The first move to replace Bowe had to also address the Packers' bye week.  Enter the Kansas City Chiefs, who would score in double digits for the Timers six times.  Their superior performance allowed me to eventually drop a fading Packer defense.

That move patched a temporary hole, but to handle this crisis, I still needed a new wide receiver.  For that, I needed Josh Gordon.  No one in the Timers' league had seen much in Gordon.  He missed the first two games under a drug-related suspension.  Even worse, he played for Cleveland.  Still, several fantasy-football experts recommended him, and I was desperate enough to pick him off the waiver wire.  He started for the Timers in Week 4, scored a creditable 7 points, and secured his spot at WR2.  Eventually, Gordon became the NFL's top-ranked fantasy receiver.

Now the crisis was solved.

Wēiyī Moment, Week 6

I would need both Gordon and the Chiefs in Week 4, just to squeak by for a 5-point win, because I was also looking for a new running back.  LeSean McCoy was humming along, but his Timer teammate, Ahmad Bradshaw, had encountered bad injury trouble  after Week 2.

My first attempt to replace Bradshaw led to the acquisition of James Starks (yes, another Packer) -- but Starks took a major injury the same week.  It turned out that Atlanta's Jason Snelling couldn't fill the Timers' RB2 need, either.  Time and Again had somehow managed to advance to 5-0, but unless I could find a second running back, the team was in trouble.

Snelling's Week 6 replacement, Pittsburgh RB Le'Veon Bell, ended up being one answer.  By now, Bradshaw had been formally placed on injured reserve, so I also picked up Chicago wide receiver Alshon Jeffery.  [Yay! A Bear!]  Both started immediately, making small contributions as the Timers turned in the first of four 130-point performances.  Both would also reach the NFL fantasy-leader board by season's end.  Crisis solved.

Non-wēiyī Moment, Week 8

With the wide receiver and running back positions secure (and Aaron Rodgers still online), it was time to start improving my flex position.  Week 8 brought an opportunity to snag another rising star, St. Louis RB Zac Stacy.  He also proved to be a critical success; from here on, he, Bell, Jeffery and Amendola would be fighting for the RB2 and flex positions.  [And the perfectly capable Julian Edelman would end up the odd man off the Time and Again roster.]

As the Packers and Bears started play on Monday night, 4 November 2013, the Timers had already assured themselves another win.  With three major crises successfully resolved, they were about to go to 9-0, with no one to challenge them.

In the conclusion:  Time and Again confronts its most dangerous moment of wēiyī.

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A season of wēijī: (1/3) Bizarro Protest Staging

The graphic above shows the Mandarin word wēijī, which translates into English as "crisis."  In a famous 1959 speech, John F. Kennedy propagated an old, inaccurate American meme, correctly identifying the left-hand character (wēi, in pinyin spelling) as a symbol of "danger," only to then mistake the right-side character (jī) as "opportunity."  A more accurate translation of jī would render something closer to "turning point."  No knowledge of any Chinese words is needed to view a dangerous turning point as a crisis.

When I won my first fantasy-football championship last week, my first thought was that I deserved it.  Time and Again, which started its second season as my 'C' team, averaged 113 points over its 15-1 season.  At season's end, the Timers were so deep at wide receiver and running back, top-flight players like A.J. Green, Zac Stacy, LeVeon Bell and Alshon Jeffery were fighting for three starting spots.  Their only loss came when their starting quarterback sustained a season-ending injury early in his game.

On further reflection, though, Time and Again didn't start out with such power.  In fact, it was only through a completely silly origin, followed by several turning points that could have easily doomed them to oblivion, that the Timers gave me what may be the best fantasy-football season I'll ever have.

Join me, then, on a trip through this season of wēijī.

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As miserably as the Timers struggled in their debut season on the NFL site (missing the playoffs before dropping two consolation-bracket games), I decided to use them as an experimental team for 2013.  I wasn't sure what the experiment would be, but the Timers would be the platform.

Enter the Trayvon Martin fiasco.

It would've been possible to form a fantasy-football team as a protest against the Martin-Zimmerman case, which had ended just weeks before the fantasy drafts.  I would punish the entire State of Florida by excluding from my team any player who (a) played for the Buccaneers, Dolphins or Jaguars; or (b) entered the NFL from a Florida college.

Let me start counting the reasons why this protest proposal was stupid.

• Why wait for a racially-charged murder trial?  Botching a Presidential election, electing Lex Luthor's evil twin, and just being Florida hadn't already provided excuses?
• A serious "protest" would also exclude players who grew up in Florida.  [But as I'll show presently, that additional exclusion would have made almost no difference.]
• Many, if not most, of the excluded players would be African Americans.  I'm not sure how that helps anyone.  A case could be made that exclusion could hurt the affected players -- but said players would have to care in the first place.
• Even setting those aside, an effective protest has to at least inconvenience the protester.  Moving player names around on a smart phone every week is not an inconvenience.

On these bases, a 15-1 championship team constitutes -- how do they say it in 2013?

Oh yeah: EPIC FAIL.¹

But still...

Blowing away the pretext for a no-Floridan team was a satisfying exercise, but it didn't actually affect the idea of a team without Floridians.  Why not exclude Florida-based players for its own sake?  Whatever the merits and faults of Floridans as a whole, there's no denying that Florida (a) has e NFL teams² and (b) sends many, many players from its colleges into the NFL.  Theoretically, a fantasy-football team without Floridians should struggle.

Having already created a custom draft list for my 'A' and 'B' teams, I copied it for Time and Again, then removed all Dolphins, Buccaneers, Jaguars and Florida college players from the copy.  Finally, I submitted the reduced draft list to NFL.com for an autopick draft.

When draft day finally came, NFL.com gave me the following team, in draft order:

1. LeSean McCoy, RB1, Philadelphia
2. A.J. Green, WR1, Cincinnati
3. Aaron Rodgers, QB, Green Bay
4. Dwayne Bowe, WR2, Kansas City
5. Danny Amendola, WR3, New England
6. Vernon Davis, TE, San Francisco
7. Ahmad Bradshaw, RB2, Indianapolis
8. Green Bay defense/special teams (DST)
9. Justin Tucker, K, Baltimore
10. James Jones, WR4, Green Bay
11. Tavon Austin, WR5, St. Louis
12. Kenny Britt, WR6, Tennessee
13. Ben Roethlisburger, QB2, Pittsburgh
14. Isaiah Pead, RB3, St. Louis,
15. Shonn Greene, RB4, Tennessee

As a Bear fan, I wasn't happy to have this many Packers on the team.  Also, past versions of The Ghost-Grey Cats, my 'B' team, had taught that Packer players could give a team enough points to reach the fantasy playoffs, but not enough to advance.

Of course, my previous Packer experience hadn't included Rodgers.  Perhaps things would improve with him at quarterback.  Then again, after Davis, the team looked about as appetizing as a plate of week-old garlic fries.  As constructed, Time and Again would struggle to reach the playoffs.

I had to keep reminding myself that, with no nominal Floridans allowed on the team, the result no weaker than expected.  The only individual player with any connection at all to Florida was Bowe, who grew up in Miami.  He lasted only three weeks, and no native Floridian would replace him all season long.  Even if the Timers didn't win a single game, I had achieved my primary objective.

Next time:  Let the wēijī begin!

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1.  Well, I had to use the phrase 'epic fail' soon, before the Internet outlaws it.
2.  Miami and Tampa Bay account for one team apiece, but Jacksonville contributes only about 78.18% of a team.  That's 2.718 teams.

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I has a sad, I mean, Saad!

On I Can Has Cheezburger, the caption waited all season to write itself.

Brandon Saad had one goal in the 2013 Stanley Cup Final, which concluded successfully tonight for the Chicago Blackhawks.  To say the least, though, his contribution to the Hawks' wire-to-wire dominance this season was nontrivial.

Two goals, 17 seconds apart, to come from behind and win the Cup?  Seriously?  Time to post video of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing "Chelsea Hammer," the song that plays every time the Hawks score at the United Center.

Check that; the CSO rendition is so silly, you'll have to search for it yourself.  Instead, enjoy "Here Come the Hawks," performed by a slightly less silly Ray Coniff-style choir, as the Great Maker intended.

Here Come The Hawks

Powered by abmp3.info

The Boston Bruins played so well in defeat, I can only give them props.  Instead, the smack has to fly in a more deserving direction.  Have some, Southern California.

• The Los Angeles Kings suck;
• The Kings sucked last year, even as they usurped Lord Stanley's trophy;
• The Kings will keep sucking, world without end.  Or at least until they stop letting Eric Cartman lead the crowd cheers.

Congratulations to the Hawks, Stanley Cup champions again!

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Victory Weighting: Liveblogging NFL Week 17

If it's the last week of the NFL regular season, then it's time to look at how Victory Weighting would affect the playoff races.

13:03 CST:  Here are the deviations going into today's action.  Early games launched an hour ago; late games start in the 15:25 window.  Dallas and Washington meet in the season finale, which kicks off at 19:30.

1. The biggest change impacts the NFC East and wild-card races.  Officially, they're messily linked, as two NFC East teams can qualify for the playoffs.  With Victory Weighting, though, the two races are separate:
• Only one team will qualify from the NFC East.  While the New York Giants (31 Strength) and Dallas (30 Strength) can each win the division, neither can catch Chicago (37 Strength) for the last wild-card slot.  Washington (35 Strength) can, but doing so would first earn the NFC East title.  Tonight's Dallas-Washington game will still determine the NFC East champion, but if the Giants win today, then Dallas becomes their proxy tonight.
• Consequently, the second wild-card race is between just Chicago and Minnesota (35 Strength).  The Bears would clinch with a win, rendering the later Minnesota-Detroit game academic.
2. Houston (Strength 46) can secure one of the AFC first-round byes with a win in the early stage, but in Victory Weighting, that wouldn't be enough to clinch the top seed.  For that to happen, Denver (Strength 48) would have to lose in the late state.  [The official standings give Houston the inside track.]
3. New England (Strength 43) can't win the AFC top seed (as is officially possible), but can still secure the #2 seed and its associated first-round bye.
4. The San Francisco-Seattle race in the NFC West race is the same, with one wrinkle:  Victory Weighting would lock Seattle into a first-round game.  The Seahawks (Strength 39) would then be fighting just to stay at home next week.
5. Finally, Victory Weighting would leave Indianapolis (Strength 39) and Cincinnati (Strength 36) fighting for wild-card position.  [Officially, the Colts are locked into the #5 position, and the Bengals are locked at #6.]

14:56:  (New York Giants 42-7 Philadelphia) The Giants' regulation win eliminates Dallas from the Victory Weighted playoffs.  If Dallas wins tonight in regulation, the Giants would win the NFC East title (and its sole playoff spot).

15:02:  (Indianapolis 28-26 Houston) The plummeting Texans' loss hands Denver the AFC high seed, and puts New England in position to steal a first-round bye with a win.  Meanwhile, Indianapolis cements the #5 seed.  [Officially, the Broncos would still have to win to secure the high seed, as New England remains eligible for that honor.]

15:07:  (Detroit 24-26 Chicago) It's almost all over in the NFC, as the Bears wrap up the second NFC Victory Weighted wild card.  The Vikings-Packers game would have meaning for only Green Bay, as Minnesota would be out of the playoffs.  [Officially, this eliminates the Giants, while the Bears remain on the bubble.]

15:24:  (Cincinnati 23-17 Baltimore) This result locks both teams' Victory Weighted playoff positions.  Because the Ravens and Bengals (both Strength 40) own the #4 and #6 seeds, respectively, they wouldn't meet next week in the first round.  Instead, the Ravens will host Indianapolis in the first round, while the Bengals wait to see where their punched tickets will lead them.

18:14:  (Denver 38-3 Kansas City) The Broncos clinch the AFC high seed... .

18:22:  (San Francisco 27-13 Arizona) The 49ers wrap up the NFC second seed, forcing Seattle into a road date next week.  Meanwhile, Green Bay will host a first-round game as the NFC's #3 seed.


18:31:  (New England 28-0 Miami) ... and the Patriots grab the other AFC bye.  Houston is stuck with the #3 seed and a home game next week against Cincinnati.  [At this point, the standard and Victory Weighted AFC playoff scenarios are identical.]

18:44:  (Minnesota 37-34 Green Bay)  Under Victory Weighting, this wouldn't affect the NFC playoffs, as Chicago would have already clinched the last playoff bid.  In the real world, though, these two teams meet again next week in Wisconsin, the Vikings having eliminated the Bears.  [Jon Gruden to Chicago, maybe?]

18:48:  (Seattle 20-13 St. Louis)  The Seahawks, as NFC fifth seeds are headed to the East Coast for the first round, but they don't know exactly where, yet.

Final update, 00:17, 31 December 2012:  (Washington 28-18 Dallas)  A Dallas win would have created a second Victory Weighted deviation in the playoff schedule (the officially eliminated Giants would have won the division).  But Washington won instead, so there's only one change in either the lineup or the seedings.

Here, then, are the playoffs.  The sole officially-sanctioned deviation is scratched out.

NFC
Byes: (1)Atlanta, (2)San Francisco
First round: (5)Seattle at (4)Washington; (6)Minnesota Chicago at (3)Green Bay

AFC

Byes: (1)Denver, (2)New England
First round: (5)Indianapolis at (4)Baltimore; (6)Cincinnati at (3)Houston

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Tuesday Night Football: Outrages big and small

On the Belcher-Perkins incident:  Unless the Kansas City Star completely made up this account of Saturday's murder-suicide, there's not much to be said.  It affected not only two families, but also the Kansas City Chiefs.  [Jovan Belcher played for them, but had he married Kassandra Perkins, he would have become an in-law to a much better known Chief, running back Jamaal Charles.]

Take the names away, though, and the murder-suicide becomes just another domestic-violence case gone horribly wrong.  Take away the guns and the entitled-jock mentality, both of which factored into the incident, and what's left is this:

Where did Jovan Belcher get the idea that he could "resolve" domestic dispute by shooting his way out of it?

There's another question about the lesser offense that followed Saturday's shootings:  What on Earth made the Chiefs decide to play on Sunday?  Was there a ripped-from-the-headlines script that just had to be sold to Hollywood producers?  Were they just hoping to avoid dealing with the fact that on of their own had become a murder (and a cowardly one, at that)?  Or were they just hoping to avoid having to deal with grief, full stop?  Whatever the excuses, it would have been better to postpone the game for at least a few days.

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And now, something even more predictable than The Walking Dead:  Here in my corner of the world, there was also amusement at the possibility that the Northern Illinois gridiron team would actually get invited to one of the five major bowl games this season.  For kicks, I decided to watch ESPN's BCS selection show to see if NIU got in.  The Huskies did, indeed, win an invitation to play Florida State in the Orange Bowl.

The outrage among the ESPN college-football commentariat was incredible, but I still can't decide why.  Was it incredible because the reaction was so (a) intense or (b) asinine?

Naw, check that.  I can decide, and the answer is (b) -- because everyone who's criticizing NIU's selection should have seen it coming.  For its entire existence, the whole BCS selection process has rested on the assumption that there were exactly six conferences that were automatically worthy of consideration for either the national championship or one of the elite bowl games.  That presumption never worked, because the Big East was never elite, but the administrative eliminations of Ohio State and Penn State also made the Big Twelve Fourteen Ten irrelevant this year.  Of course spots would be open for two lesser programs to reach a BCS bowl.  After Wisconsin took one of them, the only outstanding question was whether that lesser program would be Northern Illinois or Nebraska.

By the way, if the Huskies (good luck to them) do somehow win the Orange Bowl, it will be their greatest victory, but not their greatest upset.

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Tuesday Morning Football: Midseason rotisserie review

The short version:  Excuses line up here; explanations, there.  The season has sucked for all three teams, except for Atlanta QB Matt Ryan and the Houston defense, which are keeping both my NFL.com teams in the top half of their respective league tables.

The Fluttering Horde (4-6):
Office of Secret Intelligence offense,
Orange County Liberation Front defense.

Whose job was it to feed the butterflies?  You'd think that a team that has Ray Rice, Steve Smith, Wes Welker, Darren Sproles and Denver's Manning-to-Decker combination would dominate its 16-team league.  Yahoo! thought as much of my flagship team, The Fluttering Horde, projecting it to finish 11-2.

With just a bit of luck, the Horde would be on track for an easy division title.  In fact, just one 11-yard touchdown pass between Peyton Manning and Eric Decker would be enough to give the Horde an 8-2 mark.  Instead, the Horde -- losers by 1, 2, 4 and 5 points in four failures -- is stuck at 4-6.  Only its season total score, third highest in the league, is keeping it in playoff contention.

The Ghost Grey Cats (6-4):
Fully recovered from
their trip to the pet hospital.

Meee-ouch!  Injuries have hobbled The Ghost-Grey Cats, who spent three weeks without a first-tier running back and four more without my best receiver, Danny Amendola.  The Cats' higher-profile receivers -- Calvin Johnson, Marques Colston and TE Antonio Gates -- haven't helped with their inconsistency.  If they can stay out of the hospital, the Cats can still win a title.

Time and Again (5-5):
Against expectation,
winning on occasion.

Tick, tick, tick...  I'm actually pretty proud of Time and Again, whose personnel (particularly Demaryius Thomas) have individually exceeded expectations.  In a stunning midseason turn, the Timers saw Jason Witten go online just as they also picked Owen Daniels off waivers.  At the beginning of the year, I expected no more than six wins, but the Timers have made it to 5-5.  They're the best managed of my teams.

That mark should be even better, but the Timers' has almost as bad as the Horde's.  In three of their losses, they caught Jamaal Charles, Rob Gronkowski and Andrew Luck on their best weeks.  No such problem cropped up this past week, as the Timers romped to a 70-point win.

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Friday Double: (13) Stormy baseball edition

There's so much to say about Hurricane Sandy, but apart from the new tagline in this blog's header, I'll limit myself to a couple of comments.

1. Any elected official who's acted the way leaders should in a disaster like this gets a big win this week.  President Obama and New Jersey governor Chris Christie (whom I otherwise don't like) get high marks for dropping the party labels and just getting to work.
2. On the other hand, Mitt Romney can add "loser" to an impressive list that already includes "liar," "thief," and "biohazard disposal bag."  Smooth move with those cans from Walmart, Money Boo Boo.
3. In the middle, where he always looks comfortable as a cat in a box, sits another bag of money, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Ordering shelters and cabbies to let evacuees take their pets was cool.  Keeping the New York Marathon going this weekend when so much of the city needs that event's resources?  Not so much.

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Sergio Romo and the Giants win the National League pennant,
in glorious San Francisco rain.
[Getty Images/Ezra Shaw]

On a much smaller scale, baseball had a couple of notable events this week, and they're the focus of this Friday Double.

Yay! Giants!  There's something exhilarating about watching bad weather roll in just as your favorite outdoor team wraps up a convincing semifinal victory.  Back in early 1986, at the end of the NFC Championship, that incipient snow that fell on Soldier Field was the best part of the fumble recovery that Bears used to finish off the then-Los Angeles Rams.  A couple of weeks ago, I felt the same warmth as the Giants reveled in the rain that helped them dismiss the St. Louis Cardinals.

As I keep telling friends and family here in exurban Chicago, my ten-year stay in California led me to, among other things, defect from the Cubs to the San Francisco Giants.  The only bad thing about their Game 4 win in Detroit last Sunday -- and the World Series title that came from it -- was that the ninth inning conflicted with The Venture Brothers Halloween special.  Lots of unnecessary clicking took place.

Key to my eventual conversion to a Giants fan was the construction of the their waterfront stadium in 2000.  Back when it opened, it was called "Pacific Bell Park," but then PacBell went through so many mergers.  Every acquisition caused the official name of the venue to change, so by the time it became "AT&T Park," I just gave up.  Because it's so compact, I've taken to calling it just "The Phone Booth of Doom."

The real charm of attending Giants home games is getting to The Phone Booth of Doom.  Sure, you can drive, but it's a lot more fun to take BART to either the Embarcadero or Montgomery stop.  From there, the quickest way is to take the N-Judah.  The most fun way, though, is to walk the dozen or so blocks to the park.  That way, if my friends and I decided we were thirsty, we could stop off at any of the numerous watering holes on the way.  If not, the exercise is always useful.

This aspect of going to the game wasn't lost on the Giants organization, which put out a memorable ad that managed to sell both The Phone Booth itself and the experience of walking through San Francisco's South of Market district to get there.  Petula Clark's "Downtown" provided the background music, and it fit like a glove:



¡Felicidades a los Gigantes!

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Remembering Pascual "Perimeter" Pérez:  It was sad to hear of his murder this week.  I remember him less for his actual Major League Baseball career (which ended up being riddled with drug problems) than for the timing of his arrival in the majors 30 years ago.  Cable television was becoming the norm throughout the U.S., and Atlanta's Channel 17, WTBS, was turning the Braves into everyone's second team.  To believe announcer Skip Caray was to buy into the notion that Pérez would lead the Braves into either the Promised Land or the NLCS, whichever was closer.

The Braves had just called Pérez up, and he was scheduled to start at grand old Fulton County Stadium.  Still unfamiliar with Atlanta-area geography, he missed a freeway turn, and ended up taking a couple of trips around the city.  It was comical. [Not least because I doubt that, were someone to suddenly teleport me to Santo Domingo one morning and tell me to get to the stadium by 13:00 that day, I'd do a whole lot better.]  From then on, he became Pascual "Perimiter" Pérez.

Anyway, this 1980s classic form Dead or Alive came to mind when I heard the news about him.

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