I want my NFL please

I am a long, long, long time fan of the Cleveland Browns football team. Since the days of Brian Sipe and the Kardiac Kids I have ridden that roller coaster and have come close to tasting the ultimate prize of getting to the Super Bowl. The lowest points have been “Red Right 88”, “The Drive”, “The Fumble”, and the move of the team to Baltimore at the end of the 1995 season.

When I was a kid I had no problem watching the Browns games on TV. The AFC was on NBC then and living close to Toledo, Cleveland games were the AFC default. The closest NFL team to our market was Detroit and they played in the NFC.

When I moved to Columbus the issue because troublesome. I am now in the middle of 2 team’s market area (Cleveland and Cincinnati) and also could be included in a 3rd (Pittsburgh) and all of them are in the AFC. Our local CBS station has the thankless job of deciding which team to show each week of the season especially if they are playing at the same time – which seems to be most of the time. The NFL and CBS doesn’t allow WBNS to move the other games to another channel like WWHO which is a broadcast channel or to a dedicated digital cable channel.

Each week one of us group of fans is going to lose out and be forced to listen to the game on radio. With the poor play Cleveland has had the past few years and the improvement of the Bungles, Cleveland fans in Central Ohio lose out most of the time.

Sure there are options if I want to pay a large amount of money to see games I don’t want to see just to see the games I want to see. I do enjoy football but I am less inclined to watch games I have no interest in.

This issue came up again for me with the start of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament this week. WBNS is showing not only the regional games for our city since Ohio State is playing, but they are also showing games from the other regions on 3 digital channels on the local cable systems. They do this by splitting the feed from CBS. If the technology is there to do for basketball then CBS should be able to do for football.

I’m NOT talking about a Seattle fan living in Boston being able to watch the Seahawks, I am talking about allowing an affiliate that straddles more than one team market being allowed to show all the nearby teams each Sunday.

I don’t fault the NFL for being particular on the right to watch games as their TV rights money is basically what keeps them in business but they are missing the opportunity of giving some of us what we want and blowing the opportunity of getting us to buy more merchandise, going to a game in person, and breeding another generation of fans.

The NFL

Cleveland Browns

WBNS 10 TV

Fantasy football leaves me unfulfilled

Sorry the first entry of 2007 is so late in coming. Part of it is I started a new work schedule and January is our busiest month and I was working a lot of overtime. I was also stumped in what to write about, having thought of several good issues to post. Then I watched the weekend NFL divisional playoffs and thought I would write about my experience with Fantasy Football.

For those who don’t know what Fantasy Football is, that is where you pick current players and base scoring on their stats each week.The team with the most points wins your game.

I have been playing for several years through Yahoo Sports and NFL.com My general strategy has been to pick a team that I think will make it to the end and get me in the playoffs and maybe winning the league. While some of my league mates base their weekly lineups on matchups they also sign free agents or trade players.

Unfortunately, five years of playing has shown I am the unluckiest player in the world. I have never finished higher than 4th in any of the leagues I have been in and this past season I finished last or near the bottom of the three leagues I joined. My records were 3-11, 5-9, and 4-10 and each team finished the season by losing 5 games in a row.

Being on my fantasy team is like the kiss of death for a good player. QB Byron Leftwich had a season ending injury, WR Chris Chambers sucked this season, WR Doug Gabriel was cut from the Patriots after getting into a fight with the staff there, WR Braylon Edwards suffered from a sucky Browns team, and QB David Carr faded at the end. The only player that performed consistently for me this season was RB Larry Johnson and WR Reggie Brown. Even the defenses I picked, Indy and the Steelers, had bad years.

In previous years I let the computer pick my teams but this year I bought a Fantasy Football preseason magazine with all the stats from 2005 and predictions for 2006 and I used that info to rank my first 50 players. In my NFL.com league, one of the teams that finished in the top 2 at the end was for an owner who didn’t even show up for the live draft we had.

I thought at first I just stunk at the game but I really think that luck plays a major role in how players and teams do in a given year. For example, in 2004, I picked up QB Ben Rothlisberger when I found out he was going to start for Pittsburgh after the starter, Tommy Maddox, got hurt. I knew Big Ben would do well as I had watched him in his college days and Pittsburgh that year had a good team. He led them to a 14 game win streak to end the season.

At the start of this year one of my league mates wanted to trade TE Tony Gonzalez to me for Kellen Winslow Jr. Looking at points alone I said no and wouldn’t you know, Tony had the better year as Winslow suffered from a poor offensive team performance. It was pure luck. Had I made the trade I might have won more games that I lost by only a few points.

As the old saying goes: Wait till next year….