My downward spiral into fantasy football hell is officially at the point of no recovery. We’re no longer landing this thing, we’re managing a crash. I just thank the lord that I had enough sense not to talk a lot of trash when I was 4-0. Restraint is the better part of valor… or something like that. Set, Hut!

This is going to be a rough fantasy rant to write this week given I was on a plane all day Sunday and watched about as much football as Vince Young played – that is to say ZERO. I’ve had to gather my thoughts from highlight reels and internet banter instead of my normal method of watching NFL Redzone for eight hours straight. I may miss some of the dumber things that happened this week, but I should get to most of the good stuff. Pardon me if it’s short this week. In other news I lost all of my fantasy contests again. At least this time I put up respectable scores in my losses. A 38 point effort for a loss hurts more than a 95 point effort for a loss. However, being that close makes you really examine who screwed you in the past week and kept you form the “W.” I’m going to be extra testy with this group this week. I think that’s something Lance Armstrong would like. Let’s play ball.

Last week I told you how well I was doing in all of my fantasy leagues. I even bragged a little about being undefeated in one of them. As you may have guessed… I got my ass waxed this past week.  I’m talking about losing by 40 or more points in three leagues and sputtering to a 38 point finish in one. Tebow’s dad sent me a little reminder about humility. He also sent one to an AFC quarterback on Monday night that we’ll get into in a minute. The moral of the story here is simple – don’t be a real life fantasy asshole. Here we go.

I’ve got be honest with you people, I’m not all that angry this season. You see, I’ve got a winning record in every single one of my leagues and I’m undefeated in one of them. I feel like the Cubs in the World Series at this point. Like butter at Thanksgiving, I’m on a roll. The bad part is that I can’t explain why. I’m assuming I’m just lucky. Here we go.

Without the replacement refs to kick around, we’ll just have to go back to bitching about the players. Week four is past us, so it’s time to look at who’s leading what and why. For you Florida grads that means there’s going to be a lot of numbers to look at.  I’ll try to keep them in the two digit range and I promise there will be no math.  You just need to promise me in return that you’ll try to breathe through your nose every once in awhile.  Deal? Clock starts on my whistle….

At this point the replacement referees have pretty much taken all the comedy out of football.  I think we all agree that this has gone from “date night” to “game night,” which is to say bad to worse.  When America’s team gets screwed on Monday Night Football, you know there’s a serious problem.  Oh, I did go there Cowboys fans.  Deal with it. The only bright spot here is that the crisis has encouraged NFL players to communicate their frustrations via the written word.  (See also: Twitter.)  A whole bunch of respectable secondary education providers out there are praying they stop the game opening introductory sequence where these guys tell everyone where they went to college.  And by “went to college,” I obviously mean “where they were paid to play football before they were legally paid to play football.” The bottom line here is that the bad calls, no calls, and missed calls are directly affecting fantasy football stats and my feelings are best summed up by the words of the great Walter Sobchak who once said “Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules? Mark it zero!” Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way – let’s try to work out some real aggression.

What a week two in the NFL. We’re going to touch every single issue you’re boiling about and many more. I’d like to address the replacement referee situation in the opening instead of doing it as a bullet point below. It’s important to address this development first and separate from the other noise of the NFL. So, how awesome is it to call bullshit on the officiating team at the top of your drunk lungs during the game and actually be right most of the time? Awesome – that’s what it is – AWESOME. If the NFL required quarterbacks to be fatter and shorter than me, it would be even better. Lace up your panties and pull up your cleats – this going to hurt.

It wouldn’t be a great opening Fantasy Football Rant if I didn’t take the time to quickly let you in on how I lost a Fantasy Football contest before the season even started.  Stories of my failure excite you and give my wife something to tell strangers at the grocery store (we’ll be referring to my wife as “Betty Draper” this season).  It’s a win-win for everybody. One of the founders of FamousDC contacted me a month ago to let me know that a website whose name rhymes with “pantband.com” founded by a guy whose name rhymes with “Shrill Lemons” was holding a contest to see who would be their next fantasy football writer.  Long story short – I entered. I lost. Apparently the secret criteria you had to meet to win was being both stupid and unfunny.  You would have figured I’d be perfect for the job.  At least within the top ten (the number of unfunny idiots they picked to compete in this case) at worst… What does all of that mean for you?  It means I joined 15 fantasy leagues of all different makes and models with many different draft strategies so I would be ready to kick ass if I was picked to compete in that totally stupid aforementioned contest.  Therefore, I’m ready to bitch about more players for more reasons than I have ever before. Shall we?