Thankful for Finks League, not the insanity

 Is there a running back in the house? Anyone?

Sure, COVID has made this a crazy Finks League season, but with injuries on top of coronavirus this has become ridiculous. Since nearly everyone is at .500 and in the running for a playoff berth, even my own Triangles have delusions of grandeur and have been chasing a playoff berth. Why not? I found out listening to the Score 670-AM that even the Bears can still make the playoffs if you listen to enough on-air personalities. Yeah, right...

For Week 12, my Triangles made their 11th different transaction for an RB this season. That's right, just at one position. That's got to be some kind of record for my 27th season since starting the Finks League. 

My latest addition was Lindsay DEN, who isn't even a starter on his own team. He follows R. Jones TB, Edwards BAL, Dallas SEA, Hasty SF, Breida MIA, Mixon CIN, Da. Henderson LAR, Gaskin MIA, Gallman NYG and Ahmed MIA. Gallman, Mixon and Hasty never made a start for the Triangles although Gallman is projected to make his first start in Week 12. 

I blame much of this mess on Ekeler LAC, who was my No. 1 RB coming out of the auction, but was placed on the Injured Reserve list in Week 5. He has since been picked up by the Jays, but has still not returned for LAC. Ekeler (pictured) was an auction acquisition for $2.25. My other auction acquisitions were Mostert SF, L. Murray NO and White NE, all for a penny. 

The RB part of my auction was a disaster. I didn't get my top two choices with Barkley NYG at $11.50 and Henry TEN at $11.49. No wonder. 

My one trade to improve my RB woes would grade out a D or C-minus so far. In Week 7, I sent QB Rodgers GB, WR Kupp LAR and Mostert to the Mafia for Mixon and WR AJ Brown TEN. While Brown has become one of my WR starters, Mixon never played a game for the Triangles. His injured foot forced CIN to place him on the IR list so I cut him in Week 12. You would have to ask the Mafia how Rodgers and Kupp have worked out for him. 

I am thankful for creating the Finks League on this day. It has made me a better NFL fan and I enjoy the competition with my fellow owners. Some of you have been around for more than 20 years. I've been competing against you much longer than my own marriage, which is in its 18th season -- excuse me -- year. 

I am now working in the golf department at Dick's Sporting Goods in Lombard and all of my college-aged co-workers play fantasy football. They stare at their phones all Sunday long tracking their several teams. They have no concept of not having fantasy football. The Finks League is older than all of them. 

I tell them how our first year started without computers or even the second year when I bought my first laptop and would send results through dial-up via fax machines. This was long before fantasy websites were invented, which they can't believe. 

I explain to them how fantasy sports was invented in the first place when New York writer Daniel Okrent invited a few of his friends to the now-shuttered La Rotisserie restaurant in Manhattan to hold the first fantasy baseball draft. One of his friends that day was historian Doris Kerns Goodwin. There is a section of Ken Burns' "Baseball" documentary devoted to Rotisserie baseball. 

My Dick's co-workers can't believe anyone would play Rotisserie baseball over football. Well, that's because there was a time then people cared more about baseball than football. They can't believe that. I played Rotisserie baseball in the 1980s and 90s for more than 10 years before anyone invented fantasy football through a website. 

Fantasy football is a creation due to the internet. Rotisserie baseball mattered before the internet.

I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving. I hop to share many more seasons with you. 

Sometimes .500 feels just right

 

It should be noted that legendary former Bears defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan was just 55-55-1 in the regular season as a head coach for seven seasons in the NFL. 

Ryan went 0-3 in the postseason to finish below .500 on his career, but pro-football-reference.com just lists regular season records on its list of career coaching wins. Ryan ranks No. 89 in NFL history in wins. He isn't the only .500 -- exactly .500 -- coach on the list. Someone named Wally Lemm ranks above Ryan at No.75 with a 64-64-7 career record in 10 seasons with the Houston Oilers and St. Louis Cardinals. Lemm was the coach for the Oilers' 1961 AFL championship. 

And so .500 seems so appropriate for this topsy turvy 2020 Finks League season. Through six weeks, 60 percent of the league is .500. That's a lot of 3-3 records. 

Dah Commish's Dayton Triangles is one of them. The main problem with being .500 through six weeks is figuring out whether my team stinks or maybe it's pretty good. 

I'm afraid the final answer maybe both. And with a 14-game season, I just may finish 7-7 after all. 

Week 5: All in the Family

 Household match ups should be quite interesting in Week 5. 

Two pairs of family members are squaring off in the Week 5 of Finks League action with the main headline perhaps being the only remaining undefeated team left as Kristin Herigodt's Dublin Brawlers take on her husband, Mike Miazga's Ham N Eggers (1-3). 

The Brawlers lead the league in points scored through four games while the Eggers are second in points allowed.

The Quagliano Bowl takes place in the Northwest suburbs as Hurricane Quags (0-4) faces his son, Anthony, the owner of the two-time defending champion Jays (2-2). It has been a tough early start for Quags, who ranks last in scoring (157 points) and leads the league in points allowed (259). 

COVID update, Finks style

My favorite NFL coach has already survived his own bout with COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease- 2019), but it seemed like a matter of time for former USFL New Jersey Generals owner Donald J. Trump and QB Newton NE to come down on the positive side. 

The funny part about the above warning from the Saints is that NOLA coach Sean Payton was fined at least $100,000 for not wearing a mask properly during a recent game. 

Eggers owner Mike Miazga submitted his own idea of holding a second free-agent draft each week for Finks League teams affected by new COVID cases, but I think that will include just about everyone in the league in the coming weeks. Just so you know, both PIT@TEN and NE@KC are both postponed Sunday. The PIT@TEN game will likely be played Week 7 and I don't think the NFL has a clue about what to do with the NE@KC game. 

For now, I have decided to treat COVID delays as injuries. It is your own risk with starting a player in the NE@KC without certainty that the game will be played in Week 4. Perhaps this unusual season will give Finks owners an added focus on what their bench will contain. 

My other fantasy team on CBS Sports' free league lists my quarterback, Tannehill QB, as inactive due to a bye. Everyone in the time if COVID is just making this up as we all go along. 

If even more cancellations are in the NFL's future, I plan to explore this topic again at that time. 

Records made to be broken

Until seeing the Eggers' 91 points scored in Week 2, I had completely forgot that our Finks League records were kept with such detail for regular season games. With so many years now in the league, I thought I was only keeping playoff records. 

The Eggers' achievement was quite amazing, considering former owner Matt Simo had the previous record going back to Week 11 in 1995, our second Finks League season. 

I found my 10-year celebration book in a remote file cabinet. There it is: 

Simo's Chicago Blitz 90, Matt Trowbridge's Young Guns 38. 

Trowbridge went 9-5-1 that season, but missed the playoffs as the third place team in the Baschnagel Division behind Mike Wilcox's Kansas City Kings (11-4) and Simo's Blitz (10-5). Simo finished second that season after losing to the Stone Blue Bombers, 42-27, in the Finger Bowl. 

I don't have a boxscore from that 1995 Week 11 game. 

The Eggers' 2020 record-breaking performance seems appropriate, considering Miazga's first season was 1995. Playing as the Cosan's Ham n Eggers with a co-owner named Chiarelli, the original Eggers went 7-8 and placed fifth in the Baschnagel Division. 

Other 2020 Finks owners participating in that 1995 season were Dah Commish (La Fleur de Bruce Lees) and Stan Goff (Cowpokes).

One other league note about 1995, that was our first year that Dah Commish went high tech. I bought my first laptop, an Epson monochrome with a track ball as a mouse. My first email address was AOL, such as the rest of the world when that company swamped mailboxes with startup discs. I either sent weekly standings via dialup email through AOL or faxed it out to our Finks owners as I did in our inaugural 1994 season. Wi-fi didn't come along until years later. 

For the record, here is the Eggers' 91-point, Week-2 total against Quags:

QB K. Murray AZ 20

RB Chubb CLE 17

RB Sanders PHI 9

TE Kelce KC 9

WR Ridley ATL 17

K Tucker 19

Welcome to new Links page...

... Perhaps looking much like the old page. Welcome to the first chapter of the page-by-page introduction to the new Finks League website, starting with Links.

The link to Links:

https://sites.google.com/site/finksleague/links?authuser=0

It might be listed last, but it is one of my favorite pages. I have tried to pack  it with "goodies" of various links to relevant fantasy news and sites. The new Google Sites uses "Buttons," the small squares that act as links to other pages. I have used them vigorously on the new Links page. Check them out. 

Also, if you have any suggestions for any cool fantasy websites you would like to see on the Links page, please send them to me and I will put them up. 

I have opened the new Links page with a returning tribute to our namesake, former Bears and Saints GM Jim Finks who was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Finks died in 1994 before this fantasy league was created. It seemed appropriate to name it after him. Finks helped build the Saints' famed Dome Patrol defense in the 1980s that signaled the turnaround for a previously moribund franchise. 

Why the Equalizer

A ways back, I finally found a CD of my favorite songs from the NFL Films catalog. Half of it is the legendary voice of John Facenda ("The autumn wind is a Raider.") and the other half is the music of Sam Spence.



This is my favorite song to get me in the mood for NFL football just ten minutes away. Thought you would enjoy. The talk radio today was playing Fox Sports' NFL theme. This is better.