After being sick for the last week and change I have come to hate winter just a little bit more.  I curse the descendants that thought living in Minnesota would be a good idea.  Just because it has a similar climate to Scandinavia, does not mean it’s a great place to settle down and start an onion farm.  I suppose if I wanted to be in a warmer climate, we could load up the truck and move to Beverly, but it’s not so easy when the kids are involved and I don’t have a truck.  So, I’m stuck here in this snow globe until it all melts after March Madness. 

The first half of winter doesn’t seem to drag on as long as February does simply due to a little diversion that I like to call the National Football League, and the lovely by-product of said league called fantasy football.  I love fantasy football.  No other sport is arranged quite as perfect as the NFL for the fantasy game.  I believe this so much that I simply cannot stick with any of the other conventional fantasy sports.  My gripes about the other leagues are as follows…

The NBA just feels like one of the most heartless sports ever.  If the average NBA player doesn’t care until mid-May, why should I?

The NHL just has never cut it for me in a fantasy sense, simply because I can’t stay motivated to keep up with those teams that drop the puck south of the Mason-Dixon Line.  If they cannot produce an outdoor rink, they should not produce an NHL squad.

Major League Baseball is pretty cool, and I follow it as much as I can, but the length of the season and amount of games played turn me off from a fantasy standpoint.

NASCAR is not a sport. 

So, with that being said, I feel like I need to find something to fill in the dead time between Week 16 and March Madness.  I love to place a bit of money on contests of strength and skill, but what contests are left to be contested?  Here are three different ideas, even though some of which already exist. 

Fantasy American Idol At this point there are 20 contestants left on one of the worst shows ever to grace the airwaves.  Even though I truly believe that the show is terrible, I have probably seen a portion of half of the shows this season, and have realized the fantasy potential.  I figure if one were to enter a league of any size, each owner could select four idols as your team.  A simple one point for every round survived should suffice as a scoring system.  Everyone could pick and just wait for the weekly outcome.  My team of four players would include David Archuleta, Carly Smithson, David Cook and Kady Malloy.  Think you could choose better?  Post a comment on the blog. 

 

Fantasy LostYou could almost run a death pool on the show, because it seems fairly obvious that someone could die on any given show.  Since we now know that only the Oceanic Six leave the island, and the O-6 seem to have to lie about the lives of so many other plane survivors.  I think that a roster of any six people on the island would be appropriate, with any new characters finding their way to the island being a part of the free agent pool.  Every character is available for all owners, and people can pick up and drop as many times as they want.  Receive one point for every death on your roster.  On my roster I want Claire, Miles, Charlotte, Desmond, Karl and Juliet.

 

 

Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament PoolIf you call yourself a hockey fan, you know that the premier event in all of hockey happens in Minnesota in early March, and is known only as the “Hockey Tournament.”  As of last year I started a pool for both the Class A and AA tourneys.  Every year it’s a complete crapshoot, even with the addition of the top four seeds in the eight team tournament.  Last year the Iron Range dominated the tourney, with Hermantown beating Duluth Marshall in class A, and Roseau defeating Grand Rapids in the big school title.  My home school, Minnetonka is still alive in their section finals, and don’t count them out if they make the tourney.  If you want to be in this year’s pool, email me at smoothmat@hotmail.com, and I’ll send you a bracket. 

 

If anyone else is as bored with the weather as I am, they would see that the format of the American Idol game could be used in any reality show, and if you have any great fantasy ideas, such as Fantasy America’s Next Top Model, leave a comment on the blog.