Preparation vs. Blind Luck

You can pour over stats for days all you like, at the end of the day fantasy football pretty much comes down to the luck of the draw.

By Guest Blogger, Ron Bishow

According to a recent report by a Chicago-based employment research firm, fantasy football costs $1.1 billion in lost productivity per week for companies during the NFL season.

Fantasy players spend 10 minutes per day, or almost an hour a week, drafting players, setting rosters and plotting strategy at the office. And that doesn’t even factor in the time they are spending when they are home plotting for next week.

The reason I am stating these facts is because, as many of you know from your own lives, millions of us devote a considerable amount of time making sure our team on Sunday has the best chance to win. Sometimes there is a lot of money on the line, sometimes it is just for bragging rights, but it is almost a part-time job.

But does all that really help? On the surface, as with most things, proper preparation and research always increases your chance of winning. As a counter point however I would like to introduce the case of my boss.

My boss is an avid NFL fan, he follows it religiously, especially the New York Jets (tough year for him). He also had spent the last few years making fun of the rest of us in the office for playing fantasy football, largely because he didn’t see the point in wasting that much time on it.

So this year he was finally convinced to join a league, but to say he participated in it would be an exaggeration. He did not do the live online draft or even rank his players, and he has yet to this day logged on to his team. That’s right, he doesn’t know who he drafted, doesn’t know what any of them have done, and has told the other people in the league not to tell him who his on his team. He does however know he has LT because he had the first pick in the draft.

Now for the really amazing part, he is in first place at 9-4. I didn’t even believe it till someone else in my office that is in his league showed me the standings. So even with players on byes, injuries, and match up issues being completely disregarded he still is the top team.

I had to just sit there and reflect on all the hours I put in thinking about if I should play so and so because of the defense he is going again, or picking up a defense because mine is on a bye to get to my 9-4 record in my one league. Could have just left the team on autopilot and achieved the same thing?

Of course if he did that every year he would probable finished last nine-out-of-ten times, but the fact that it could happen once has to make you think about the possibility you are over thinking things. It’s like when a girl goes to the race track and picks a 40-1 horse because they are pretty and it wins, or picks the NCAA Tournament by the location of the schools. At the end of the day fantasy sports is still gambling and in correlation based on luck as much as it is on skill, which helps account for how I am 12-1 in a league where I am ninth out of twelve teams in total points. Or how picking Tom Brady this season became the biggest fantasy coup ever and picking Larry Johnson and Steve Smith was pretty much a waste.

Well, I better cap off this blog, have to get to the waiver wire before it is too late.

Ron Bishow has been reporting on the sports world for the past seven years for AOL, Tribune interactive and CO-ED Magazine among others. He is such a fantasy sports fanatic he plays fantasy NASCAR. He is currently a contributing writer and video producer at www.newyork.metromix.com.