Eliminated from NFL survivor pool, chasing the wildcard ~ Week 4

Before this NFL season began, I got an email inviting me into a handicapping survivor pool from Jody (i.e. he's friends with The Rick).  The object of the game is to pick the 5 games you're most comfortable with picking against the spread and then rank them.  If you ask me this season has been strange.  How else can you explain the Kansas City Chiefs being undefeated and other teams (i.e. that traditionally play well) stumbling?  Regardless, no excuses.  My handicapping skills stink and now I have to keep playing to try to earn the wild card.

For people like me that have a general interest in teams and not players, survivor pools are the way to go.  I've received numerous invitations to join fantasy football pools, but there's no way in the world I'd throw my hat into that arena.  The time and effort that fantasy football fans devote to the game is much more than I'm willing to invest. 

According to the St. Louis Business Journal (i.e. in an article it published in 2003), "A recent survey showed that 7.2 percent of all American adults played fantasy sports, with 78 percent of those playing fantasy football. A previous survey showed that the average person plays in 2.4 fantasy football leagues per year and spends an average of $154 on fantasy football. Today's average fantasy football participant has been playing for six years, checks his teams online while at work, spends nearly 3 hours a week managing teams and is more likely to become even more involved in the hobby in the future, the association said."  Are you serious?!?!  This article is from 2003, so I can only imagine how much these figure have grown.  As far as I'm concerned, fantasy football might as well be like the fantasy, roll play games people play with 12 sided (i.e. or however many sided) dice...  I'm never going to play, because I don't understand the appeal.

I find the handicapping side to be much more interesting, even though this year ~ I obviously stink!  I'm heading to Vegas later this month, so I better get my act together soon...

Ugh.


THE WIRK