Reviewed by S J Holetz
Ann Arbor
“Hey Steve, You ever play fantasy football?”
Little did I know
what a huge effect those words would have on me over the next
decade. Now,
football has been a pretty big part of my life
as long
as I can remember. I have many fond memories
of watching games with my parents
as a little guy, collecting football cards in elementary school, and
later
starting
on my Pop Warner and High school football teams. Although I grew up in
California
I would raptly follow their autumn exploits, catching the odd game in
person on the rare occasions
when my team and I would
cross paths.
But despite my interest in the NFL,
and love of the Seahawks in particular, I had somehow missed the
Fantasy
football phenomenon until 1999, at the end of my tenure in
put
together by a friend from work when my wife got a new job back in the
relocated back to the
and football stats. Any time not
spent on playing with my year-old daughter, or calling prospective
employers, was
devoted to hardcore NFL research. I soon realized that many of the
trend
assessment
and
data analysis skills that I had developed at work dovetailed nicely
with my
new hobby. That first
season, I rebounded from losing my first two games to take second in
the league. The next year, I won
it all.
I was hooked, and it wasn’t long before I coerced my friends and family
into joining my own
fresh-minted local, The Pacific Northwest Beer Drinkin’
Trash Talkin’ Football League (now
entering its seventh season, as it happens). Not long thereafter, a
book crossed my desk that would
also change everything.
That book was Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football
Junkie, by Mark St. Amant.
Committed
is the hilarious
chronicle of the season in which St. Amant lived the dream: He
quit his job
to concentrate solely on winning his Fantasy Football league. This is a
fantastically fun read, by all
means check it out. It
was within the pages of this fine book that I first heard about The
Huddle.
The Huddle is in my opinion the
finest FF website around, a wealth
of information on the game itself,
as well as the portal to the amazing community of obscenely
knowledgeable football
fans that can be found
frequenting the forums. I have been haunting the site religiously for
several years, and enjoy immensely
the high level of competition that I have found playing in several All
Huddle leagues. Needless to say
I was thrilled to hear that there was a new book hitting the shelves
this fall from David M. Dorey, one
of the co-founders of this tremendous resource.
I say this as objectively as I am capable, given how in the
bag I am for The Huddle, but as a nine-year
veteran of FF, I find Fantasy
Football: The Next Level, to be by far the most purely useful book
on the
subject I have ever read. David presents the book from a practical
"teach
a man to fish" standpoint,
providing any FF owner, from novice to
know-it-all, with a number of great tools to improve their game.
The first
section of the book shows you how to examine your league based on it’s
own specific scoring
system, in order to assess how to best build your team in the
forthcoming
season. This is followed by an
in-depth discussion of each individual position,
with detailed instructions on how to develop your own
personalized player
rankings and projections, again within the framework of optimizing each
for your
league's needs. The depth of material on player valuation presented
here is incredible, and alone worth
the price of admission.
Next the author covers how to best approach a fantasy draft,
outlining various strategies to follow and
pitfalls to avoid in building a squad capable of finishing in the money
in any given year. Finally David closes
the book proceedings with specific, actionable strategies for in-season
team
management through the playoffs,
as well as a few thoughts on state of the hobby, it's importance in
today's workplace, and the
future of
Fantasy Football .
extremely helpful, something I am
implementing this season for all of my leagues. All this great
information
is
delivered in David's winning, humorous style, which makes for an
absolutely delightful
read. If you have
any interest in Fantasy Football, The Next Level is a
must-read.
Pick it up NOW!
Unless of course you are an owner the PNW League. In which case… Okay,
I
have to come
clean here.
I
admit it, there is no such book. I made
it all up just to make my Sunday deadline. Seriously.
Move along…Nothing to see here….
AVERT YOUR EYES, DAMN YOUUUUU!!!!