August 29, 2005

GAME ON!


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Do the math with me for a moment:

Beer + chicken wings + football + free wireless Internet access + 458 televisions ------------------ Fantasy football draft nirvana

Rommie and I launched into another silly season of delusion on Sunday by picking our players in a live draft for our fantasy football league, Wasted Sundays.
Since most of the league members are someplace other than Tampa, Rommie and I found a corner booth at Barnacles and hunkered down for a couple hours with a laptop and way too much access to the Web.
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I've well-chronicled the Barnacles experience, both as an Asses of Fire Tour stop and as a supremely psychotic dance club experience. If there is a Mecca for grease, sports, projection television and debauchery, Barnacles is it.
Alas, we were not the only gents with football on the brain. Two huge banquet tables full of stat freaks, quasi-behemoths and one-eyed humunculi were also in attendance. Both featured a legion of middle-age men huddling over their expertly assembled research. Both were havens of testosterone and girth.
And although we were only two corner specks in the place, we held court as the only ones smart enough and geeky enough to bring a laptop. As that monosyllabic culinary unibrow Emeril would say, we kicked it up a notch.
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Rommie and I also had the sense to protect our families from the insanity. This poor gent did not heed that instinct and, no doubt, probably drafted Koi Detmer by accident while he was worried about a No. 2 in this kid's back pocket.
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The day was not all about sports. We watched on one of the screens as the Weather Channel broadcast swirl after swirl of replays showing Katrina's radar footprint spinning toward New Orleans.
Unfortunately, all it did was make us have to go potty.
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What is the owner of the Jack 'n' Cokes thinking at this moment?
"I can't believe I have to draft Keyshawn Johnson."
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We finished with our selections about 90 minutes later. Full with brew and chicken product, we considered leaving. Then the outdoor environment turned into something out of an Irwin Allen flick. One minute we had clear skies. The next, trees bent sideways in the wind and horizontal rain pelted the restaurant windows. Even on the other side of the Gulf, Katrina was having her way with us.
Non-verbal cue absorbed, we sat back down and finished our beer.

So without further delay, I introduce to you...

YOUR 2005-06 SIDE SALADS

Tom Brady (NE - QB)
Jake Plummer (Den - QB)
Torry Holt (StL - WR)
Donald Driver (GB - WR)
Isaac Bruce (StL - WR)
LaDainian Tomlinson (SD - RB)
Brian Westbrook (Phi - RB)
Todd Heap (Bal - TE)
Mike Vanderjagt (Ind - K)
Atlanta (Atl - DEF)

BENCH:
Ben Roethlisberger (Pit - QB)
Ronnie Brown (Mia - RB)
Terry Glenn (Dal - WR)
Jerome Bettis (Pit - RB)
Pittsburgh (Pit - DEF)


Not a bad team, as teams go. We'll see how that works out late in the season when the injuries start piling up.

I am not so full of hubris that I won't let the draft picks settle before taking aim with analysis.

I do, however, hold a sneaking suspicion that the Salads are doomed to middling results, if only because we pre-soaked our season with so much pleasure at the front end that there is no way that the season could provide an equivalent level of joy.

All that lies before us is misery and ruin. And it was all so f-ing worth it.

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We've already scoped out our perch for Draft 2006. Same place, same eats, same great beer, same great food - but in a back room with additional perks...

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...Namely, a pool table where we can take shots between selections and a dart board at the other end of the room.

All we'll be missing next year will be hookers and blow. Which, you know, was the same thing we were missing this year.


Posted by Jeff at August 29, 2005 06:19 AM | TrackBack
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