Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Bragging Rights

ESPN's new MLS fantasy game has a bit of a twist. There's an "experts" group comprised of some writers and editors that cover soccer. I'm one. It will be my first fantasy league of any kind, actually, so I'm not sure I'm qualified as an expert.

Last year, Luis and I ran a simple "pick 'em" game of sorts right here on the blog, where we chose the winners of the MLS match-ups every week. He pretty much ran away with that one, although at one point late in the season, I started catching up. Then I decided the Galaxy's lucky streak couldn't last and kept picking them to lose or tie. They kept winning, and that messed up my comeback completely.

I've always preferred the artistry of soccer to the statistics, and since fantasy play, I've been told, is stat-dependent, I'm not optimistic about my performance. Even if people don't sign up for the league, they can probably check in on occasion to see how horribly I'm doing.

6 comments:

nothingtoseehere said...

The player weights are so off in the ESPN MLS fantasy game it's almost impossible to assemble a half decent team offensively.

Is there going to be a SV specific league?

A.C. said...

Uh, honestly, I'm not even sure what that means, (would we have to build a fantasy engine to total scores here on the blog?)so, probably, no.

Actually, I think Luis took part in some MLS fantasy game last year, so he might have some say in all of that stuff.

A.C. said...

Some of the values do seem odd - I've only looked at the goalkeepers, but both Cronin and Wicks are at the same value rate. I thought I might get Wicks for a bargain - the rate of Preston Burpo, for example. I have to put my team together soon, though, but I'll probably put it off a bit longer.
In other procrastination news, I haven't done my taxes yet.

nothingtoseehere said...

There should be an option to create your own minileague but it's MLS and ESPN might shaft us just for kicks.

(eew taxes. Thankfully UCSD does all the work for me and all I do is mail my forms in)

Anonymous said...

Kirk Quavas is a bargain at 5m. Yes, that's how they listed it.

bdure said...

Interesting -- I used to write a fantasy column both at USA TODAY and MLSNET, but I had no idea ESPN was starting a league of its own.

I won't be offended that I wasn't asked to join, though. I found that the more I followed the league for news and so forth, the less capable a fantasy player I was. Strange how that works.