Fantasy football: where new fans are born

Do you like the idea of professional soccer in the US but just can't seem to commit to it?

Here is your chance: create a fantasy team on ESPN for the quickly approaching 2011 season. It's a great excuse to follow the sport, or at least learn a bit about the exciting players. Entries are due by March 15th (only 5 days!) and the top two finishers in the league will get prizes from me (likely a six pack of beer of the winners' choosing, but could also be something sweet like a gift card or a hammock).  It's free to play, I'm throwing in prizes so I have some people to compete with.

To enter:
1. Create or log in to your ESPN.com account
2. Create a team at the FC Manager game page. Have fun with the team name.
3. Join our group: Football and Ail    Password: baseball  (You can join other leagues too. For example I'm in the group "IDK Any MLS Players")
4. Update your team every week or so to try to win.

Hopefully by the end of the season we'll know a little more about soccer that's within driving distance.

Beginnings

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. A mere seven weeks into the 2010-2011 Barclays Premier League season and the footballing world has turned on its head. Liverpool and Everton, eternal residents of topflight football, are lingering in and about the drop zone. Premier League debutantes Blackpool and the biennial newcomers of West Brom are in the top half of the table, giving supporters and casual observers alike reason to believe. Manchester United — the insatiable kings of world football, the game and the global marketing phenomenon — are off to their worst start in nine years. Moreover, last year's wonder boy can do nothing right, on or off the pitch. And finally, the Big Four is looking more and more like the Big Two. That is to say, the two teams operating on financial losses to the tune of nine figures also happen to be the two teams that appear most likely to walk away with the Premier League title.

No, Toto. Kansas, this is not.

But wait. Sunday's feature match in West London offered up some familiar headlines — and emotions. For yet another season, Arsenal came up empty-handed against their cross-city rivals, despite having the larger share of possession and a great number of chances once more. (An important point of reference here is: I'm a Gooner.) So for me and my fellow Gooners, this season is starting to feel a lot like the last season, and the one before that, and the one before that. And yes, Mr. Wenger, you are insane, as am I. For every season, I start out filled with hope and confidence, allured by 6-0 wins at home to Blackpool and Braga.

"This is the season all will be made right. The year when, finally, the moral rectitude of the Arsenal product will prevail and silence the naysayers."

Then there is Didier Drogba, and cosmos are realigned, however cruel or unjust.

But something is different this season. Where I might have seen Arsenal's title hopes seriously damaged by the Ivorian Machine alone from the couch of my (then) studio apartment in seasons past, this Sunday I watched Arsenal's title hopes seriously damaged by the Ivorian Machine in a pub, with friends, each of whom having a vested interest in the outcome. In that I may take a little pride.

Last season, I realized that Fantasy 'football' was an incredible aide for familiarizing oneself with an otherwise foreign and less accessible sport. This summer, with the 2010-2011 EPL season quickly approaching and the post-World Cup hangover threatening to set in, I needed something to sustain the football fever that produced the largest match-viewing gatherings I had been apart of thus far.

Our EPL fantasy league was born. (The details of this league can be read elsewhere in this blog.)

Of course, reservations are to be had. Maybe, as another blogger on here has alluded to, fantasy fans are a bit 'different' from the rest of us. But as Alex's ridiculous free-kick smashed the back of the Arsenal net in 85 minute, crushing my hope, and sending the arms of my smiling week-seven opponent skyward, knowing instantly that this wonder strike had secured her a victory, I knew that something good had come of this. "She got it. They got it." This game I had fallen in love with on my own, in my studio apartment, was now theirs.

Too bad they're all indirectly rooting for Chelsea.

Game Day! Woo!

This is a big day.  My favorite team plays a team I seriously dislike. Unfortunately, this is where the Ails come in for "Football and Ail."  I'm a Notre Dame fan and today we play the Golden Eagles of Boston College, who always seem to beat us when we are on top of our game. Even though I wouldn't call this season a success so far, I'm still not looking forward to this match.  Of all the fan bases that I've met, BC wins for rudest, and that includes Michigan fans throwing eggs at my friends when they were visiting Ann Arbor and Tennessee fans who basically blind you with their colors.

EPL notes:

Manchester United's dressing room was flooded before their visit to Sunderland. It delayed the game by 20 minutes and won Sunderland my respect for their dirty tactics. Rooney isn't playing (not that he contributes that much when he does), which means Man United gets to start a lot of people that no one has on their fantasy team (30-year-old Michael Owen is only owned by 1.5% of all teams).

Blackpool is the blue-collared Cinderella story of the season, and this Cinderella has a potty-mouth. Blackpool is unique in many ways; they are the only team owned by a convicted rapist. This is their first season in the Premier League and everyone expects them to be relegated right back down to the second tier at the end of the season. Regardless of expectations, the Tangerines seem to be holding their own and make a decent underdog to root for against Liverpool.

I've been taking a shine to Manchester City this season (drinking game to come tomorrow). This weekend they play my roommate's team Newcastle United, who probably don't stand a chance. City is coming off a 1-0 win over Chelsea who had looked unstoppable so far this season.

Speaking of Chelsea, the game of the week is theirs against Arsenal. It airs at 11 am here and probably not on any channel that I have access to. Thankfully my favorite pub has a Sunday brunch...

This week's fantasy team:

I'm playing against the commissioner of my league who had the highest score last week. We have similar teams, he has more Arsenal players where I have as many Man City guys as I am allowed. I started the season with an all-Brazilian team with Irish subs, but as you can see, I made a few changes to losing the league. 

Go Irish. Beat Eagles.


Update: My roommate and I now have a beer riding on the Man City–Newcastle game. Let's go Citizens!

Giving Bill Simmons his due

Though I consider him crazy for trying to pick a Premier team on research and suggestions alone, I will give Bill Simmons some credit; he's figured out a way to become interested in a sport without the years of background, moving cities, or family history normally required to become a fan of a team. As he mentioned in his Third to Last Note of his 2010 NFL preview:

This is the 20th anniversary of my first NFL gambling season -- 1990 -- when I started betting with a college friend's cousin's bookie because I was so bored by another hideous Patriots season. At some point, I realized, "Wait a second, every time I bet on a team, I care about what happens in a football game for three hours! It's almost like renting a favorite team!" The rest was history.

That's right, friends: the answer is gambling. You don't need to arbitrarily pick a favorite team in order to have one every game. You simply need to put some money on it, which is exactly what 11 of my friends and I did this season for the Premier League. Getting up at 8 am on a Saturday morning is a lot easier with $20 out of my pocket and three pitchers of beer on the line.

If you think Fantasy NFL Football is nuts, you should attempt fantasy English Premier football: no draft, £100 million cap, and Didier Drogba to mess everything up. Like American football, you need to pay attention to injuries, but unlike the NFL, these teams are playing games outside the league during the week that count towards entirely separate champion Cups.

The Tiger-Cats could ruin everything!

Imagine that the Detroit Lions play the Bears on Sunday, but then on Tuesday have a game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League that will count towards a separate post-season Bowl (North American Bowl? Less-Super-But-Still-Cool Bowl?). Your starting wide receiver could play the whole game and then be rested or just lousy on the day that it counts for your team (and if he's Robbie Keane, he will play really well in the English Carling Cup game and never get you points on the weekend) (Jerk).

The point is that Premier League fantasy play has more variables than the NFL, and is another reason to pay attention to soccer, even if you don't have a favorite team to root for (or if your team is really bad, like the 1990 New England Patriots).