By The Way...

have you guys forgotten how to use this site?  Click new post and fire away!  This is a league that runs on intellectual humiliation and the berating of your fellow owner's.

If you are new to the league, jump in!  You aren't going to hurt anyone's feelings...except for perhaps Don's...pussy!  See how easy that is!

Training camps are open, I declare Fantasy Football Season officially open!  Bring the pain, bitches!

Commish

27 Days Until Draft...Decisions Need To Be Made!

Training camp starts today for most teams and for those who don't, they start soon.  I am sending emails out today to get your input on live draft (without ESPN's help) or scheduled draft (using the ESPN draft machine...like last year).

I find myself at a crossroad...I really do not care which way we choose, but we need to choose it soon.  Check your email today and sound-off what you think.  I need to know LIVE or ESPN?  If you choose Live, will you be there.  If you are an out-of-towner just your preference is okay.

Commish

Live Draft Guest List

Fellas,

Now that we know what order we are drafting, thoughts now shift to the draft itself.  To avoid logistic problems we suffered last year, we are contemplating a live draft.  The live draft would be offline and live at Draft Central (Jim's Crib).  

The question I need answered, who is planning on being at the live draft?  Please leave your RSVP response in the comments.  This is primarily for in stater's.  I am pretty sure BAF is not coming in from Washington!  Please let me know.  If we don't have enough people who will be there live, we may have to revert back to an online draft format.  We are at a place in time that we can still do what ever we want.

If we do revert back to an online draft format, everyone will have to have access to a computer and be online at the draft time.  There is also a mock draft online this season to allow you to test your computer to make sure you have the appropriate software before draft time.

So, please let me know if you want a live draft and if you would be there!

Commish

TART CART PLUNGES OFF CLIFF. NO SURVIVORS.

As the official driver of the short bus I would like to say a few things before this tour begins. First, if anyone has an old hockey helmet laying around, I will need a couple more to supply my Dream Team. So if you could help me out I would appreciate it. Next, I need some type of absorbent towels to hand out. Finally, I will issue this warning. I am going to unleash my band of rrr-rrrs without direction or restraint. They will have orders to pummel savagely and without mercy. Don't be offended when I destroy you, it's just business.

Draft Order Announcement Video

DRAFT DATE ANNOUNCEMENT

Owners,

After much consideration, the 2010 Bulletproof Tiger Draft will be held Wednesday, August 25 2010!!!

More info to follow.  Remember the draft order will be established on Thursday, July 15th, keep your eyes peeled to the blog for more information!!!


Xplodey

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An overview on fantasy football terminology

by Benjamin Lomax

There are a lot of terms utilized in Fantasy Football that you will need to know to be able to communicate with other fantasy football owners. Nothing shows off a fantasy football rookie owner more than inability to speak the language. With that in mind, here are some of the more common phrases utilized in normal fantasy football interactions.

ADP (Average Draft Position): This is a ranking, often within certain positions, providing a ranking for each player based on many mock or real drafts averaged out. This is a useful tool for information prior to your own draft.

Auction (Draft): This is a fantasy football league where each owner is allocated a certain amount of fantasy cash. Each player costs a certain amount of that case. Either the owners can compete for players or more frequently a player can be on more than one team.

Basic Scoring: Fantasy points are the results of scores only: touchdowns, field goals, and extra points.

Bench Players: Players on a fantasy roster who are not starting that week.

Bust: A fantasy player who does not fulfill expectations, typically drafted in the higher rounds. This can be because of injury or just generally under-performing.

By Week: The one week out of 17 where each team does not play. Obviously fantasy players from that team should not be played on that week.

Cheat Sheet: A “quick and dirty” draft guide that many fantasy owners use. Based on projected draft rankings from other venues, it is not detailed, but nonetheless useful.

Commissioner: The one running the league, reporting the results, conducting the draft, and collecting the fees as well as paying them out (if the league prize is monetary).

Deep League: A fantasy league with many (more than 12 typically) owners. This typically necessitates drafting more players, so the teams are deeper also.

Depth Chart: Listing of NFL teams with their starters, 2nd, and 3rd string players.

Draft: The make or break session where owners gather before the season starts to pick their respective line-ups. Possible techniques are serpentine or auction drafts.

Drop/Cut: To simply remove a player from your roster without compensation.

Dynasty League: A keeper league where the owner retains their entire team every year except for a supplemental draft at the start of each season (mostly rookies).

Fantasy Football (or FFB): A gathering of football fans attempting to replicate real owners, choosing players in a draft, then choosing who to start. Those players who perform highest earn their “owners” more points. The owner whose fantasy team performs the best over the season wins the championship, usually involving a financial payout.

Flex: Line-up spots where more than one position (WR, RB, or TE) can be started.

Flyer: Taking a chance on a risky or inconsistent player “taking a flier”.

Free Agent: An available player not currently on any fantasy roster in your league.

Gamble: Akin to Flyer, this is a high-potential high-risk player, either because of injuries, inconsistency, or off-the-field problems.

Ghost (or Ghostship): A team without an active fantasy owner.

Handcuffing: Drafting a player on the same team and same position as another player, typically done in case of injury.

Individual Defensive Player (or IDP): A league that utilizes statistics for individual fantasy defensive players, rather than the traditional team defense.

Injured Reserve (or IR): Similar to the NLF option, keeping a player on your roster but making him unavailable for a set number of weeks, freeing a roster spot.

Keeper League: A fantasy league where a certain number of players are retained year to year by the owners, leaving a smaller portion to draft each new season.

League: Group of fantasy owners playing against each other, also used to define the type of scoring, drafting, etc.

Mock Draft: A rehearsal draft, typically utilized to give owners an idea where players might be drafted. This is rarely done in a league, very often done online or in advertisements for fantasy football as an informational tool for owners.

Owner/General Manager: These are the actual people participating in the league, those in charge of drafting and choosing their starting line-ups each week.

Performance Scoring: Fantasy football scoring where yardage is considered for points in addition to points for actual scores on the field.

Pick-up: Adding a player to your roster through free-agency, waiver, or trade.

Points Per Reception (or PPR): Fantasy scoring where owners receive points for each reception their starting player has that week.

Projections: A Cheat Sheet with statistics, this is longer but much more useful. Projections include not only the player rank, but also includes their statistics.

Quarterback by Committee (or QBBC): Drafting multiple low ranked quarterbacks in low rounds, taking a chance that between them you will have one performing well each week.

Running Back by Committee (or RBBC): Drafting multiple running backs for situational starts, typically a distance runner for yards and a power back for short touchdowns.

Scoring: TD = touchdown, FG=Field Goal, XP=Extra Point, INT=Interception.

Serpentine or Snake Draft: The owners choose from first to last, then in the second round they choose last to first, enabling owners to make up for not getting early first rounders.

Sleeper: Fantasy player who is ranked or projected low but who has an unexpected outstanding breakout year. Typically late round picks. See also Flier and Gamble.

Starting Lineup, Starters, or Lineup: The actual fantasy players chosen to start on each team each week, eligible to score points, typically one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one tight end, one kicker, and a team defense.

Stats: Fantasy players numerical accomplishments either for the week or the season.

Stud: Excellent fantasy performer consistently at the top of his position.

Team/Roster: Every player on a fantasy owner’s team.

Team Defense: Drafting an entire team defense and recording their statistics each week, often including special teams statistics.

Team Position (or Team QB): An unconventional system where a whole team’s performance at a position is recorded each week, for example all the players at quarterback statistics for Dallas.

Third Year WR Rule: The common belief that NFL wide receivers do not have breakout years until their third year in the league.

Trade: Fantasy owners swapping players, can include multiple players, but not cash!

Transaction: Any change (see Drop, Pick-up, or Trade) to a fantasy roster, some incurring fees.

Waiver: An increasingly popular complexity where each player dropped by a team goes into this status for a certain period of time (usually one or more days). All interested owners can attempt to claim, usually preference goes to the lowest ranked owner.

An exhaustive list, but if you understand each of these terms, you will fit right in during the next fantasy draft.

For You New Owners

July 9, 2010, 11:08 AM

So you want to play fantasy football?

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By Jim McCormick
Special to ESPN
Archive

Every passion and hobby has an individual genesis, a moment when one is introduced to an activity or subculture that they may pursue for the rest of his or her lives.

Fantasy Football 2010

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Several years ago, my then-technophobic dad asked me exactly where the Internet was (the man is a doctor, mind you) and I told him that it was housed in a building outside of Cleveland. These days, after years of acclimation, the guy is the Gordon Gekko of eBay, placing bids on wooden gnomes, classic beer bottles and 5-irons (unrelated hobbies) with precision.

The point is that we all have the potential to evolve from rookie to expert quite quickly, particularly thanks to all of the amazingly accessible resources at our disposal.

Fantasy football may seem like a complicated and consuming activity from the outside, but once you're immersed you'll find it to be a generally easy game to navigate. My duty here is to illustrate the framework of fantasy football and introduce what could become an enjoyable, empowering and enduring hobby for you.

The Basics

Fantasy football participants are "owners" and "managers" of teams that engage in competitive leagues, accruing "fantasy points" based on the statistics of real football players. The vast majority of leagues are scored on a weekly basis, matching up teams in a head-to-head scenario in a rotating schedule. The teams in the end with the best records make it into the fantasy postseason (often held from Weeks 14-17 of the NFL schedule).

Matthew Emmons/US PresswireDrew Brees is a top player in fantasy football, no matter what the rules.

The goal is to collect the most productive players across a variety of positions. In a standard league, you are asked to fill out your starting roster with a quarterback, two running backs, one "flex" player (a slot for either a running back or wide receiver), two wide receivers, one tight end, one team defense/special teams (you draft the entire Pittsburgh Steelers defense and special teams, for example) and a kicker. To fill out your roster with depth you are afforded seven bench spots. This may seem like an absurd number of players to manage at once, but as the season wears on you'll wish you had even more room on your roster.

Fantasy leagues can adhere to any variety of rules and settings desired, but for the sake of simplicity, I suggest perusing the scoring settings in theESPN standard leagues. Before you join any league, it's imperative to have a sound understanding of the scoring and roster settings so that you can capably build a successful team. The players make up a marketplace, so consider the players as commodities; that their value fluctuates based on the rules and regulations of a given league. In the Draft Kit you'll find a number of helpful scoring-specific guides.

The draft marks the beginning of the fantasy football season. Often held in the weeks leading up to the NFL season, the draft is when you initially construct your roster. Most leagues are comprised of 10 to 12 teams and the drafts are conducted in either "snake" or "auction" formats. Pick by pick, you build your team and fill out your roster. Draft day for many leagues has become a holiday of sorts, with spirited trash-talking and camaraderie becoming core traditions. Once you get a good grasp on the elemental rules and settings in fantasy, take a few minutes to read Christopher Harris' valuable take on drafting strategies.

Playing the Game

Clearly, you play to win the game. Fantasy, in every permutation, is about the numbers. As is true on the field, maximizing production from every starting position on the roster is the goal. While the actual players risk life and limb for extra yards, we risk ego, pride and semi-public humiliation for fantasy glory.

Tony Medina/Icon SMIChris Johnson helped many fantasy owners win their leagues last year.

The question then, is how does one become a deft fantasy manager?

The road to imaginary glory (but glory, nonetheless) begins, of course, with a concrete understanding of the parameters of the league you are entering. Once this foundation is established you can focus on becoming the best manager possible, which requires taking on several different roles.

Scout: During the spring and summer months, you are tasked with collecting information on injuries, position battles, free agency and the NFL draft. Don't let this overwhelm you. You might be relieved to know that during the spring and summer months ESPN Fantasy and the rest of the fantasy content industry are also tasked with analyzing these events and placing them in a fantasy context. The summer is the time to gauge where value lies amongst the collective of football players. Read up and read often and jump into somemock drafts in order to get accustomed to the process while also refining your understanding of the marketplace for talent.

General Manager: You've already spent some time over the summer mocking it up and reading and otherwise general fantasy "nerdery." On draft day, you are the war room. You and you alone are building the squad. While it takes several hours to conduct a draft, it can go by quite rapidly. Having a few cheat sheets and some handwritten notes on the side while drafting can help focus your decision process. While it's hard to envision this in August and September, the makeup of a fantasy roster often changes somewhat by November and December, given the attrition of the NFL season. This means that having valuable backup players is often just as much a determinant of your team's success as how your "stars" perform. Put some time into learning about some of the value players, or "sleepers" as the cool kids call them.

Some of the most important work continues post-draft in regards to managing the roster, as transactions on the waiver wire (collection of players who are not owned in a specific league) and pursuing trades with other managers can impact your season just as much as the draft process. Much like in the real thing, the job of a GM is never quite finished.

Insiders, have a question about your fantasy team? Get it answered by an ESPN expert! Ask your question 

Coach: If the GM's role is to evaluate the roster in regards to the entire market for players, the coach is asked to consider the best decisions for each given week. In this role, you must choose which players to start and bench given your limited slots for starters. "Coaching" a team is essentially a mixture of informed decisions and flat-out gut calls. Some start/sit decisions truly can become dilemmas and induce handwringing and pacing. But much like a golfer would say, the "stress" of it all is also what affords such a grand payoff when you excel.

In the end, the payoff is that you are simply in charge. An effective blend of these roles and a conscious eye on merely enjoying the fantasy and football seasons will make for the best experience.

Striking a balance

Fantasy football information is everywhere, sometimes there's seemingly too much. We all get advice on basically everything (especially those of us who are married). From the guy in line at the supermarket to the ESPN analyst, opinions on fantasy football are endless. The real task is digesting all of these different angles and resources and forming your own strategy for not only that upcoming season but throughout your days playing fantasy football.

DRAFT ORDER SELECTION THIS THURSDAY!

...and with those words, the collective sphincters of twelve men from across the country...tighten.  Logistics will be available very soon!  It is Thursday night, it will be filmed for posterity so you don't have to access live...it will be posted here on the blog in glorious standard definition.

Keep your eye on Fantasy Central and here on the blog cause the season is upon us!