Today's topic will be incompetence. Actually, it's in defense of incompetence. There is so much of it within our hobby, I think we need to find ways to turn it to our advantage.

Maybe as a start, we ought to stop knocking it. Incompetence has always had an undeserved bad name. People speak of it as though they alone, in all of fantasy fandom, were free of it. In truth, it is a god-given gift with which we are all endowed. 

We have to realize that incompetency is already a major factor within the National Football League. It is unrecorded in the box scores, but certainly there is nothing else produced in such quality. Over the past four seasons, twenty-one different teams have won twenty-four division crowns. Fourteen different teams have played in eight conference championships. Seven teams have reached the Super Bowl. And a majority of  the coaching staffs have been replaced. These are the guidelines of football professionals.

 If competency within fantasy football replaced the helter-skelter team management we get now, there would be perfect 16-0 seasons, playoff slots would be decided in October, and the online support industry would shrink to nothing. If all the better owners were good forecasters, good drafters, and good roster managers, it would be dull. There would be no need for any Monday night excitement and certainly no need for the entertaining interplay of a head-to-head schedule.

And, if you'll forgive me saying so, some of my best friends are incompetent. Who needs fantasy friends who make us look bad by going around doing things right all the time? Certainly not you or me! I have online friends whose incompetence is their most likeable characteristic and I've had league commissioners who were so lacking that they were laughably loved by all. 

Need proof? Just this week, an experienced FFLer selected RB Lamer Smith MIA as the sixth overall pick in a newsgroup-based early bird mock draft with all NFL players available. Afterwards,  the owner justified his selection with...  "If you don't have a good RB in FFL, you will get KILLED.  You have to have at least ONE "go-to" RB... WRs, NEVER score as reliably as a good RB.  QBs are a dime a dozen.  At this stage of the game...I had to get an RB." 

My My My. Did he think it was the sixth round instead of the sixth pick? While my fantasy forecasting skills are as limited as the next guy, I imagine that many of you would agree to have considered a handful of players prior to Mr Smith. We would also project that a majority of us would disagree with the general wide receiver and quarterback comments. Following him, I quickly giggled and  grabbed QB Kurt Warner STL in a league that rewards passers with 6 point TD passes. Incompetence benefited me.

We can also see recent evidence of the advantages of my own incompetence. I drafted QB Daunte Culpepper as a backup player for the disappointing Rob Johnson ~and~ my outright avoiding to draft every reasonable Raider player. More than once, I've learned that a cactus makes a poor whoopie cushion.

Fortunately, I don't think there is much chance that the level of incompetence in our hobby will improve in the foreseeable future. In the last four seasons, I've hosted more than 750 youth fantasy owners in no cost youth-only leagues. Take my word for it, as an incompetent teacher, I am turning out a large number of equally incompetent students ready to take their rightful place in our bungling hobby. Our future is very safe... and the Lions have a chance to win a Super Bowl. Yeah. Sure they do.

~TC~

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