Passion for the game
I fell in love with football at the tender age of 10 when my Chicago Bears captured not only the imagination of the sports world but the imagination of the entire world. Their absolute dominance in such a physical sport combined with all the larger than life personalities helped to create both one of the most feared and loved sports teams in history. I've been in love with the game ever since. I picked up the art of prognostication at an early age as my dad would bring home parlay cards for us to play. Every Thursday night I could be found going over stats in the paper along with my parlay cards. "That Miami passing game is overrated and no match for the balanced Buffalo attack. I'm gonna key the Bills, give me them with the 4 and the hook all day long" I would say as my 12 year old voice cracked. My five dollars allowance just turned into twenty.
IT Background
For the past 15 years I've been working professionally with technology focusing heavily on database design. I've used much of this knowledge to my advantage participating in various leagues and contests. I have formulas and models that you will never see because they are too valuable to me for competition purposes. I'm now starting to incorporate new technologies used by various new media outlets to keep my data as fresh as possible. The early bird gets the worm, and as far as breaking news goes, I don't sleep.
The proof is in the pudding.
I have been playing fantasy football for about 10 years. I started in cold, public yahoo! leagues and then moved to online leagues with cash payouts. I played in a 'free' contest and quickly gave up on it because of the fee every time you change your player. The next year in 2004 I tried it again and started off hot, real hot. I was ranked #1 overall for weeks 6 through 11 out of over 34,000 players. I hung in there but finished 9th overall with a few more teams in the top 20. I think I won $500 dollars between my teams. The thrill of being ranked #1 out of so many people really hooked me. I got a whiff of that $10,000 grand prize and I wanted more. The next few years I hunted for higher stakes contests but they all seemed to only pay 50%-60% of what they took in.
The Big Time
In 2007 I heard about a contest with large payouts and a reasonable entry fee. I entered that contest and it went belly-up the next day. Luckily, on opening day 2007 year I heard a radio spot for a similar high stakes contest in it's inaugural year. I entered and spent most the year dancing around the top 10. I was on fire down the stretch and went from 13th to 2nd in the final three weeks. My $69 entry fee turned into $125,000. In 2008 I entered 10 teams in the FFOC contest that awarded a top prize of a million dollars. I drafted real well and started out hot. Considering the success I had the previous year I was pretty excited to see one of my teams #1 on the leader board after week 1.
By week8 of the contest 4 of my 10 teams were in the top 37 out of 6,660 teams. My ten teams combined for about a .750% win percentage, six of the teams made it to league championship games week 10. Unfortunately, those 6 teams went 1 - 5 and I didn't last too long in the play-offs. I think my top team finished 51st, not bad out of 6,660 but not the success I have grown a custom to. I played the other contest that I finished 2nd in the previous year and finished 31st out of about 2,000 teams. Pretty good again, but not good enough.
What makes someone an expert?
It's not a journalism degree. It's not an expensive haircut and a pretty mug. It's not that you've been playing since Vince Evans was slinging it. It's passion for the game, good prognostication skills and the ability to gather and access all the information you can to make quality informed decisions.
It's all these factors that have contributed to me becoming one of the best fantasy football experts in the World. If you want to prove me wrong, let me know where you play at and I'll show you what time it is.
Juggernaut
Do you think you are one of the best? Email me your credentials and I'll consider adding you to the FF Juggernaut list of top 10 experts.
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