Kyrie Irving’s impressive 2016 continues with Olympic gold medal
August 22, 2016Browns rated worst team in Madden 17
August 22, 2016Another weekend in the books, you guys. We’re halfway through the preseason football slate, training camps are closing as full-on practices kick off. We’re closer to September and fall than we are anything resembling summer. Schools are back in session, bus stop kicks are still clean, and your Cleveland Indians are as exciting as ever. Watching that Tyler Naquin walk-off as it all unfolded was one of the more insane television-watching experiences in recent memory, and that includes getting to watch the incredible feats of Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt and Simone Biles.
I’ve been progressively later and later with these While We’re Waiting… columns to the point where we almost need a WWW to precede them. Perhaps we can call it While We’re Waiting for While We’re Waiting… I’ll sleep on it. Let’s dig in.
Sportsball: Dear Mr. Fantasy
Every year, I find myself waiting longer and longer to start preparing for the coming fall’s slate of fantasy football. Those of you who know me know that I’m a bit of a hyper-competitive fantasy football guy—it’s my form of gambling wherein I feel like I can control most of the outcome, putting myself in the best position for success, while still lacing it with that element of surprise. Last season provided me with my first league in roughly eight years wherein I didn’t make the playoffs, and it was crushing. I had the third-highest total points, but ran into a weird buzzsaw of sorts that kept me out of the running. I came in second in my main money league (which will be it’s ninth season, largely all compiled of the same guys) while helping a friend navigate to a title in another league. WHATTUP Tim Hightower? But man, that other league… Still stings.
When I say I find myself “waiting,” that’s not entirely true. I have a ton of shit going on in my life and fantasy football research in July just isn’t in the cards any longer. This has its down sides, of course. I drafted Chris Ivory a few years back thinking he was still in New Orleans, only to have everyone remind me that he was now going to be running for the horrible (at the time) New York Jets. There are times you draft Roy Williams when the guy you truly wanted—or should’ve drafted—was Calvin Johnson. But there are also times when waiting simply pays off. For instance, anyone who ranks players before the preseason will have to re-rank as more information becomes available. For me, there are three drafts within six days. My crash course, in theory, should work out just fine.
I have a ton of friends who have bailed on fantasy sports in general as their lives take on new challenges and whatnot. I participate predominantly in fantasy football with basketball coming in at a close second. I have two dynasty baseball teams that are free and serve as bridges to the other two sports. These rosters are stacked, but I can’t keep up with the daily setting of lineups, especially with day games and the like. When I say these teams are stacked I’m not lying—one has a starting rotation of Kershaw, Scherzer, and Syndergaard with Kenley Jansen and Wade Davis as the starting RPs. It’s crazy. But I’m in seventh place. The other has a core of Mike Trout, Giancarlo Stanton, and now Kris Bryant and Corey Seager, but I’m in eighth place. It’s littered with indifference. Football, however, is a much different story.
While I have friends who have bailed on fantasy, the sport itself has never been bigger. ESPN and Yahoo! continue to revamp and update their mobile presence. A ton of resources are poured into it every year as television shows are dedicated simply to rankings and forecasts while ESPN2 just finished a 24-hour fantasy marathon. While the future of DFS remains uncertain, leagues continue to thrive. It’s an annual pastime that I’m thrilled is quickly arriving. I just have to start researching soon as I can’t have a repeat of last year’s nonsense.
Bonus Sportsball: Bill Barnwell’s podcast on the AFC North, including your Cleveland Football Browns
Technobabble: Quality Filters
While the average smartphone user in today’s age—their home screens littered with a hodgepodge of apps that range from news to photography to social—may not have noticed, Twitter was recently recatagorized as a “News” application, being removed from its former home as Social Media. Sourced more for news items than any other web-based service, one can see how this transition makes sense. (It’s very similar to Wal Mart being a Consumer Staple stock even though its peers are mostly Discretionary.) But it’s for this reason—valuation playing a big role—why Twitter recently introduced a “quality filter” set to weed out the undesirables based on what the company considers to be nothing more than clutter.
From TechCrunch:
The company doesn’t say much about the algorithm behind this filter. “When turned on, the filter can improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior,” Emil Leong wrote on the Twitter blog. This filter won’t affect your timeline as you’ve chosen to follow the people who appear in your timeline. Similarly, you’ll get notifications from people you follow or people you’ve recently interacted with.
In a recent letter to investors, Twitter laid out a plan that they felt would help boost value, and at no point did that include value-less one-offs from some dude watching the Browns game. While there may be value to that person or his handful of followers, it won’t boost shareholder worth. Video will. Periscope will. Developers will. It’s this reason why you’ll start seeing sports streamed over the service. And it’s the reason why Twitter’s other big change—curating top tweets while burying those that are otherwise worthless—was also implemented.
This may not sit well with those folks who thrive on the engagement factor, but for better or worse, Twitter is morphing from a social media network to a news outlet. Everyone can still interact and treat Twitter like one, giant, ongoing comment field, but it’ll be on their own accord. Those who aren’t creating new, sharable content will be slowly moved to the outskirts while those who add value will continue to thrive in Twitter’s promotional vehicles.
Culture for the Kids: Finally, Frank
After a few weeks of relative disappointment—after all, isn’t most disappointment relative?—we, The People, were finally granted access to the years of work being put in by one Frank Ocean. It was supposed to be called Boys Don’t Cry, and it was supposed to drop a few weeks back. Instead, we were given, late Friday, a “visual album” titled Endless (a 45-minute video that is in fact 18-different tracks), which was quickly followed by a 17-track album titled Blonde (though spelled “BLOND” on the cover art). As you may have heard by now, it’s Ocean’s first album in four years, serving as a follow-up to the brilliant debut Channel Orange.
Both albums are exclusively available on Apple Music. Endless is captivating and beautiful and pairs Ocean building a staircase with features from individuals like Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. Blonde takes Ocean’s crooner style and marries it with his envelope-pushing creativity while maintaining his persistent desire to produce meaningful work. The opening track “Nikes” pays homage to Trayvon Martin, for example. Credits on Blonde range from The Beatles and Bowie to Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé. Greenwood is back on the actual album as well, providing one of the many guitars featured throughout.
The coolest part of it all? Ocean’s message on his Tumblr page, thanking us for pushing him to the finish line. Being a perfectionist who is also an artist cannot be easy—it may very well be the worst combination of traits, the constant wrestling and tweaking and sleepless nights. But for the consumer, it’s perfect. Unless, of course, you don’t have a subscription to Apple Music, but that’s on you…
And finally, this week’s edition of #ActualSportswriting
“It’s impossible to properly rate Kyrie Irving” by Jason Concepcion (The Ringer): “Players with offense-only reputations are always divisive, and the score-first point guard is a particularly distrusted basketball archetype, because of how their on-floor inclinations seem to run counter to the nature of the position. In real life, people who hoard things for themselves just seem off. In basketball, the point guard’s primary role is to share. This is why Irving drives people insane.”1
“Olympic Games complex, charismatic beast that cannot be stopped” by Bruce Arthur (Toronto Star): “The history of these Games will depend on who you ask, and it is not fully written yet. When it came to sports, the Olympics soared, because the Olympics always soar. The Olympics sell nothing less than the magnificence of the human spirit, and there’s nothing better.”2
“Usain Bolt wins ninth gold medal” by Tim Layden (Sports Illustrated): “A track and field relay baton is just under a foot long, light, cylindrical and smooth. It is constructed for safe carriage around a running track and for easy passage from one runner to another in the course of a four-person relay. It is an unpretentious piece of sports equipment, yet it binds the men and women who exchange it like blood binds brothers and sisters. When the baton is successfully passed, it unites the relay members in a common cause and can bring joy to their shared work. When the relay baton is dropped or otherwise unsuccessfully passed, it sinks the relay members into embarrassment and anger at failing to successfully execute such a fundamental task. It makes them a team, larger than the sum of their parts; or it makes them disjointed loose parts, smaller than their individual abilities.” 3
“Welcome to Manu’s basketball familia” by Zach Lowe (ESPN): “When he was 16, Emanuel Ginobili was something of a family disappointment. His older brothers burst from their hometown of Bahia Blanca, Argentina’s one basketball hotbed in the 1970s and 1980s, and played professionally. Their father, Jorge, was a legendary coach. Ginobili was a short, skinny kid who couldn’t make local all-star teams.”4
***
Have a fantastic Monday, you guys. Now go listen to Frank. At the very least, he’ll help you up your Twitter quality.
- Irving’s play has always been a polarizing topic, one that leads crazy people to think the Cavs should have traded him for Chris Paul. Good news is, they just won a championship and Irving now has an Olympic gold medal to go with it. [↩]
- The world’s best being written about by one of the world’s best. [↩]
- An on-deadline recap written with perfection. It’s tough to read robotic recaps when you know what the potential of a recap can be. This is fantastic. [↩]
- I love The Ringer, but it has to be killing Bill Simmons that Lowe is at ESPN and is getting one hell of a push at the same time. This is one of the best basketball-based pieces of the summer. [↩]
16 Comments
I care about people’s fantasy teams as much as I care about people’s pokemons.
Which is…I don’t.
I don’t care how many points your second string TE scored, and I don’t care about that pikajigglytentabok either.
It certainly is a thriving industry though.
I gave up fantasy football due to time commitments, but I certainly enjoyed the aspect of understanding the entire NFL’s 3-deep depth charts at any one particular time.
I hate talking football with someone, then they whip out “Yeah, he scored 20 points for my fantasy team…”
Conversation over.
I’m officially Fantasy Free for the first time this season. It took a lot for me to finally retire from it, but I did it. I’m debating a pick’em league because that’s more like weekly betting, but I think I might take off from that as well.
just have to pivot it to discussing expected future contribution, etc.
https://colekev.github.io/quarterback-values-2016/
And you did it in a year where RG3 is being considered the best late-round QB pickup.
well …. i’m a die-hard grizzled fantasy football veteran ( 24 years) … and i don’t mind sayin’ so. that’s just me … to each his own.
Wish I could like this 1000 times
I <3 pick'em
Another acceptable response
http://i.imgur.com/w6Xoo5S.gif
http://img.pandawhale.com/post-36434-Tyrion-Lannister-cheers-gif-dr-iK5y.gif
http://www.sharegif.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Braveheart-quotes-7.gif
I’ve learned over the years that whatever the antithesis of popular is, these comment fields are it. Don’t sweat it—I’m right there with you.
I am forced to do fantasy football by my friends. I don’t like it, but they make me re-up every year. I hold out as long as i can, but the night before the draft, they’ll always enter my team in the league.
Kind of like a Prima Nochta for fantasy football.
I don’t really enjoy fantasy football because my allegiance to the Browns runs too deep. I would rather the Browns win than my fantasy team. And it also creates a problem because there’s just no way i can draft a Flacco, Big Ben, Antonio Brown, or Ravens RB and root for them.
Baseball, I love. And I enjoy the fantasy aspect nearly as much. But, as with football, I’d rather see the Tribe shutout the Rockies, even if I have Arenado, Blackmon, and Trevor Story on my team.