2013 Fantasy Football Top 10

Coming Soon.

Not A Moment Too Soon

I am the Ashton Kutcher of the romantic-comedy known as fantasy football. Oh sure, my talent is questionable, but I make jokes before coitus and if you film me while I do this then you can watch with your main gal and think, Ha, I never joke before sex. Who does that? My girl loves the way I make love to her. I'm all about serious sex. She'd never do this guy. Well, The Mantasy Man has something to say about that: First of all, no man should privately consider what he does to his girl making love. Maybe publicly, like for PR reasons (if that applies), but privately? No. The Mantasy Man has respect for a slow grind now and again, but only to make it last longer. I can get with calling this love making if it ensures more coitus at some later date and time, but you need to know the difference and be honest with yourself  - you are an average lay, Ashton Kutcher is probably very good in bed, and your special lady would pound out Ashton Kutcher. (Editor's note: I apologize profusely for that sentence. Childish.) So you see, as sure as the days have nights and the seas have tides and Mike Vick has a Heckler and Koch G11 for a penis, The Mantasy Man is a sex-symbol for fantasy footballers everywhere, casting down statistical sunshine and nursing your fantasy dreams from incubator to full Mantasydom. Welcome this seasonal phenomenon back into your home because although NFL owners can lock out their employees, The Mantasy is as uncontainable as Slimer at a Sedgewick Hotel buffet. Let it happen. Don't fight. I will laugh before coitus if it helps.

As we move toward draft day remember to be humble, be prepared, and draft this year's Peyton Hillis and then start this year's Tim Tebow in the finals. It's that easy if you follow the Mantasy mantra: Do whatever you want and everything else will simply fall into place. Oh, and always know that you are the smartest person in your league and it is likely that nobody else is interpreting the data as deftly as you are. What a bunch of C.J. Spiller-drafting simpleton puppets. Am I right? 

Welcome back.

It's yours.

It's mine.

It's ours. 

-TMM (Not to be confused with TMR, although his opinions of Sir Michael Vick are welcome in and around my bed.)

Heckler and Koch's G11. Game on.

Where Ya At?

Hey, Mantasy Man, where ya at? The bath is drawn, the candles are lit...please come to bed. I've missed you and there is so much to catch up on. Why have you been so cold lately? Don't you love me? I love you. Get your sexy ass over here and smell my neck, you self-indugent pervert. It's not all about you, you know? I'm starving. Feed me. 

Oh, there you are, Mr. Mantasy.
(This is Cristiano Ronaldo...even straight dudes love this guy.)

Shhh. The wait is over. It's peanut butter jelly time.

It's been too long, I admit. For that I apologize, but there is no need to be stubborn and try to fight your craving. I'm back now, sitting on the couch watching Mike 'Ferrari' Vick go absolutely crazy. He is a stud muffin. He loves touchdowns more than dog fighting. Too obvious? Fine, I'm rusty. He loves DeSean Jackson more than a Chilean miner loves a television camera. Too topical? He loves scoring more than Mystery. Too obscure? I'm trying. Give me a break.

Anyway, The Mantasy League has undergone many facelifts over the last few weeks. There have been trades, waiver moves, tough losses, and of course, some glorious victories. Let's take a look at the standings and think over things calmly.

The Grundles	7	3	0		--
Chris Henry's X-Treme Parkour	7	3	0		--
The Ghostface Spiller	6	4	0		1
Milk Steak and Jelly Beans	5	5	0		2
That's gold, Jerry! Gold!!!	5	5	0		2
Gym, Tan, Smoosh	5	5	0		2
Bowener Licious	5	5	0		2
Debbie Dumps Dallas Clark	4	6	0		3
I'm Going to Rape You Peter	4	6	0		3
Tony No Romo	2	8	0		5

There are three weeks remaining, which means that only Tony No Romo is playing spoiler. The remaining teams are all in the mix. Let's speculate and predict and stuff:


-Week 12 sees The Grundles face off against Parkour. I don't have to be the guru that I am to tell you that (barring a tie) one of these teams is guaranteed to suffer a loss. 

-The Grundles also play Peter's Raper and Jerry's Gold, meaning three crucial match-ups for Mr. Ross.


-The symmetry for Parkour is outstanding, with Judd facing Debbie and Bowener.


(I point these specific schedules out because the field could easily continue to close after next week.)


As for week 11...


-Debbie and Peter's Raper are backs to the wall against the top teams. Wins mean everything as they create parody and keep their owners in control. Losses may not be the end, but would not be comfortable. 


-Smoosh and Bowener play the game of the week. Both teams look primed, but only one can continue the surge. This is one to track.


-No Romo looks to play spoiler to Milk Shake, but there is more in play here - What has happened to this team? The players are there, but the results are not. Think of them as the Dallas Cowboys of this league, with the namesake an ironic exclamation point.


-Spiller takes on Jerry's Gold in a rematch that should see a disgruntled Ghostface look for redemption. Jerry needs gold here.

Fantasy Football: Like playing chess on this guy's face.

THE PLAYERS


The owners get the credit, but the players are the pieces that corner the kings. Let's see which players have helped and hurt each team.


Smoosh
Queen: LeSean McCoy
Pawn: Ray Rice


Bowener
Queen: Brandon Lloyd
Pawn: Ryan Mathews


Milk Shake
Queen: Hakeem Nicks
Pawn: Beanie Wells


Jerry's Gold
Queen: Peyton Hillis
Pawn: Joseph Addai


Spiller
Queen: Roddy White
Pawn: Shonn Greene (but really C.J. Spiller)


Parkour
Queen: Jason Witten (but really Arian Foster) 
Pawn: Michael Crabtree


Debbie
Queen: Jamaal Charles 
Pawn: Jay Cutler


Peter's Raper
Queen: Purple Jesus 
Pawn: DeAngelo Williams


No Romo
Queen: Joe Flacco
Pawn: Pierre Thomas


Grundles
Queen: Terrell Owens
Pawn: Cedric Benson

MAY THE GODS BE WITH YOU.

Head Games

I had to post this. It is a good read, it is frightening, and it is frighteningly interesting. 

Future shock: The death of football

It's becoming apparent that fines and rules won't fix the game's health hazards

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By Patrick Hruby
Special to ESPN.com
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ESPN.com IllustrationFootball has always been a risky game. Maybe this should be in its future.

Once upon a time in America, smoking was commonplace. Glamorous, even. It had cachet. People puffed at the office, got alive with pleasure on airplanes, turned sporting events into movable airborne toxic events. Cigarettes were even peddled as healthy; and if Big Tobacco's promises of steadier nerves and improved digestion didn't exactly square with the reality of inhaling incinerated bits of leaf nicotine laced with pesticides -- well, lighting up sure as heck felt good, and that painful lesion in the back of your throat was nothing a spiffier, more sophisticated filter couldn't fix.

In short, smoking was a lot like football.

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AP Photo/Kathy WillensThis sack by the Giants' Aaron Ross sent Chicago's Jay Cutler off the field with a concussion earlier this month.

Maybe you've heard the news: Concussions are bad. Very bad, actually, assuming you need a working brain. Moreover, helmet-to-helmet football hits are downright scary. Especially when shown over and over on television.

In response, the NFL is getting tough, cracking down, fining the likes of Dunta Robinson roughly one-fourth ($50,000) of his weekly base salary ($294,000).This wanton cerebral trauma will not stand!

Problem solved. Crisis averted. Brains saved. Back to juggling fantasy lineups. Everything is once again hunky-dory on Planet Football, with two tiny, nagging exceptions:

1. The helmet hit crackdown doesn't solve the brain damage problem, any more than cigarette filters solve lung cancer;

And 2. Sooner or later, said brain damage problem is going to kill the sport as we know it.

To put things another way: Football is whistling past its future graveyard.

More on NFL violence

Was Dunta Robinson's hit on DeSean Jackson a sign of a problem or a football reality? SportsNation wants you to weigh in. PollCenter
• Nation blog: Too violent?

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We have looked into the future of football, and the view isn't good. The recent news about concussions and other brain damage could mean the end of the game as we know it. Story

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ESPN's Merril Hoge (right), Cris Carter, Mike Golic, Marcellus Wiley and Tim Hasselbeck weigh in on ways to make the NFL safer. Story

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From the Cowboys' Bradie James (right) to Seattle's Pete Carroll, here's what players and coaches are saying about the NFL's new emphasis on policing illegal hits. Quoteboard
• ESPN.com topics: NFL concussions

First, the whistling. The crackdown is nice, as is the public debate. Well-intentioned, for sure. Certainly can't hurt. But it won't do much to help, either, because when it comes to protecting gray matter, limiting hat-first missile hits is largely a red herring.

Let me explain.

Concussions occur when the head hits something. A hard plastic helmet. Or a knee. Or the ground. They also occur when the head moves quickly and violently even without suffering a direct impact, like during a blind-side hit.

In other words:

• Helmet hit? Possible concussion.

• Non-helmet hit? Possible concussion.

Helmets aren't the thing. Hitting is the thing.

Then there's chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease found in people who have suffered brain trauma, including a number of deceased football players. Symptoms include mood swings, erratic behavior and memory lapses, followed by dementia. CTE was found in the brain of former Pittsburgh Steelers lineman Terry Long, who slid into depression before killing himself by drinking antifreeze. The disease was found in the brain of Owen Thomas, the 21-year-old University of Pennsylvania football captain who hanged himself in April. It's a nasty, mind-mushing, irreversible disorder -- and experts believe it's caused not just by concussions, but also subconcussive brain trauma.

In football terms, little hits.

The same little hits that are part and parcel of the sport.

The same little hits that aren't regulated -- can't be regulated, really -- by parsing and tweaking the rules of the game.

On to the graveyard. So long as the little hits lead to brain damage, they're going to bury football. Not overnight, but eventually. Maybe you don't believe me. Probably you don't believe me.

But think it through.

Football is brutal. It exacts a terrible physical toll, savaging current and former players alike, from Philadelphia 's DeSean Jackson to Hall of Famer John Mackey, a runaway fire truck of a tight end who now suffers from dementia and resides in an assisted-living facility. And fans know this. Players, too. Both groups have made their peace with the mayhem; for many, the mayhem is the draw.

If risk of brain damage was truly objectionable, spectators wouldn't pay. Athletes wouldn't play. But they do. They don't take up tennis, shift their fantasy leagues to indoor soccer and turn away in horror and disgust when New England's Brandon Meriweather nearly decapitates Baltimore's Todd Heap.

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AP Photo/Paul SpinelliThe game might be in trouble on the grassroots level if parents begin to worry about head injuries.

So losing the hearts and minds of people who already love and accept football's essential ugliness isn't the sport's long-term problem.

It's losing the hearts and minds of everyone else.

Ask yourself this: What happens when communities decide there's something better to do on Friday nights than watching their brothers, boyfriends, sons and grandsons turn their brains into ticking little time bombs?

What happens when mothers trade worrying about broken arms and blown knee ligaments for fretting over depression and suicide, and CTE gets a full eight minutes on "The View?"

What happens when a smart, ambitious trial lawyer sifts through the sport's human wreckage -- not to mentionthe NFL's previous reluctance to seriously address the problem -- and decides to pursue an attention-grabbing class action suit?

What happens when public and private colleges and universities decide that putting student safety at risk isn't worth the branding and fundraising benefits of having a football program, particularly in a world that includes trial lawyers?

What happens when general health-care costs keep rising, incomes keep stagnating and the sport itself becomes a public health issue that concerns everyone, in the manner of drunk driving and obesity?

Here's what could happen: Slowly but surely, people tune out. They decide that entertainment culminating in brain damage -- entertainment that turns performers into candidates for early bedpan service -- is neither glamorous nor, well, entertaining. Over time, the game loses its cultural cachet. Inside the sports world, it becomes boxing -- a cultish pastime held in low repute in which people with options in life watch people without options in life hurt each other for money. The Super Bowl was once the most popular event in America? Yeah, right. Was that before or after we adopted the yuan? And outside the athletic bubble, football becomes more marginalized still.

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Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesWill football of the future become boxing of the present?

Take the debate back to smoking.

Smoking still has devotees. (Read: nicotine addicts). Tobacco remains a cash crop for a profitable, semi-respectable industry. But cigarettes will never again be viewed as harmless; never again be marketed as a healthy, wholesome foodstuff. The sheen is gone. Smoking is now a bad habit you try to quit, not start; a cancer-causer, a very real killer, a behavior banned from public spaces, requiring a dirty, smelly product that sports a big ugly surgeon general's warning right on the pack. No amount of well-intentioned discussion and regulation can turn tobacco cigarettes into their bubble gum doubles. They will never be safe.

As for football?

In 1905, a University of Chicago professor called football a "boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport." And that was before we knew anything about CTE. A hundred years from now, somebody somewhere will survey the damage -- the broken minds and lives, the public and private tragedies, the countless little hits delivered and endured -- and likely say the same thing. Or worse.

Because the game's real crisis isn't helmets hitting helmets. It's football being football. The sport can't become bubble gum.

Patrick Hruby is a freelance writer and ESPN.com contributor. Contact him at PatrickHruby.net.