Enough of the blah blah blah...

Fans don’t need to be constantly reminded by the media that this is an upside-down football season. We’re not stupid. Everyone knows the two Super Bowl participants are a combined 0-8. We realize that a Davis is leading the NFL in rushing yardage and his first name isn’t Terrell. We know Fred Taylor has not scored a touchdown; that Terrell Davis, Vinny Testeverde, Jamal Anderson, and Trent Green are gone for the year; and unlikely players like Kurt Warner, Tim Biakabutuka, and Stephen Davis are tearing up the league.

We’ve heard enough of this from newspapers, chat rooms, television, talk shows, and websites. The reality that this year represents the zaniest, most unusual NFL season ever has been pounded into our psyche by the media for a month. It’s time to move on. We don’t need more facts. We need answers to make sense of this wild season of chaos.

Luckily, our salvation is here in the unlikely form of the Y2K computer problem. That crazy bug will be a blessing to the football universe. It will be to the fantasy football world what a mulligan is to golfers. And this is why: According to my sources, when December 31, 1999 turns to January 1, 2000 all information about this football campaign will be erased and lost forever.

It is common knowledge that programmers across the globe have been working frantically to stop the chaos this well documented malfunction could create. Because of the publicity, normally reasonable folks have stockpiled essentials while they prepare for the loss of electricity, bank accounts, government checks, and yes football fans, even potato chips.

But Joe Football fan needs to look at this Y2K thing through a different set of glasses. We need to view this "crisis" as the glass being half full, rather than half empty. Instead of fearing Y2K as a technological beast that may destroy civilization, consider it a blessing in disguise. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine how the football universe will improve when Y2K cleanses us of this disastrous season. Picture our pigskin world when the 1999 campaign suddenly vanishes and we are technologically transported to an undisclosed date before all the insanity of this final season of the nineteen hundreds. Yes indeed… the familiar world of fantasy football will be a welcome relief when the old NFL is back after this worldwide computer crisis performs its intended task and ruins modern society.

This year’s insanity began when training camp opened and two Hall of Famers, John Elway and Barry Sanders, perhaps the best running back and QB ever to play the game, called it quits. Ok, it was Elway’s time, but Barry was one year removed from an amazing 2K-yardage season. Meanwhile Elway has spent this fall doing a beer commercial that I’ve seen about 2K times. Come to think of it…if the Y2K meltdown succeeds in eliminating the memory of those horrible advertisements by Coors we owe the developers of Cobol a huge thank you.

Bill Parcells once said that after four weeks "a football season develops a personality of it’s own." In case you haven’t heard I’ve spent the last month trying to alert Coach Parcells to the magical power of Y2K. Imagine if Tuna understood that on midnight December 31^st his starting quarterback, could be miraculously healed by a computer malfunction that sends everything back to the way it was before the start of the football season. You can bet there’s one future Hall of Fame coach who would trade in his tough guy image for a manual on computer programming.

Meanwhile my fantasy QB Steve Young has looked like the "2KY" old man during this soon to be deleted season. Reports have circulated that the Forty Niner quarterback can’t stop daily hallucinations of defensive lineman rushing towards him. From what I’ve seen, opposing teams have threatened to knock the future Hall of Fame QB clear into the next century. Recently, Young allegedly told wide receiver Jerry Rice that if he dropped any more passes "there would be no more flowers, rides in the park, or American Express commercials."

Perhaps premature symptoms of this strange computer virus have already wrecked havoc on the NFL. Maybe the wrong information has been transmitted to local media outlets. For example, it’s been reported that last year’s four finalists - Denver, Atlanta, NY Jets, and Minnesota, opened the season a combined 1-11. Let’s face it: that’s impossible. The top rated passers in the NFL contained the names Foley, O’Donnell, Batch, and Harbaugh, while Favre, Flutie, Young, and Plummer were holding up the rear. That’s even more unlikely. And Dallas, Detroit (without Barry), and St. Louis (with Kurt Warner as it’s starting QB) represented the only undefeated teams in the NFC. A quarterback with the last name Griese was leading plays for a losing team, while one named Manning called signals for a winner. Who is kidding whom here? Has anyone considered that some weird sort of preY2K virus has already affected the information we are receiving and that TV and newspaper reports are dead wrong?

"It’s a league turned upside down," declared Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman. What the Dallas quarterback really is saying is that a Y2K computer crash is a good thing for the NFL. Gone will be that image of Ricky Williams in a dress. Deleted forever will be the bizarre happenings of Dimitrius Underwood. Purged always from our minds will be the memories of the most bizarre season in NFL history. Hopefully in a little over two months this long needed Y2K computer crash will miraculously spin the pro football world back to its roots where it will once again become your father’s NFL.

Breath a sigh of relief when on January 1^st 00 you awaken to the image of Johnny Unitas on your black and white television screen, his Baltimore Colts battling the New York Giants on an icy field for football supremacy.

Todd Finestone is a staff writer for Fantasy Football Mastermind. His monthly column "FINE STUFF" can be found at several different fantasy football related sites on the Internet. Please click HERE to offer a "Thumbs Up" or "Thumbs Down" on this article. Thank you for taking the time to offer your valuable opinion.