All those saying otherwise with preposterous claims that because they are "smart" enought to take peoples money and invest in Haliburton somehow translates to fantasy football knowledge are way off base. They are probably lucky enough to be winning in a league or two and are control freaks. Cant accept that they didnt have a hand in whats going on 3000 miles away on a professional football field.
You can use skill, research, and politics during the draft to field a great team. In that there is no question, however when the season starts there is so much out of your control that chance is the ONLY determinig factor to who wins/loses week to week.
Example, a bad schedule where every week you play against a crap team that has their highest point output of the season against you can sink an otherwise stud filled team. Or injury or your players are on teams that have locked up a playoff spot and are benched. Things that have nothing to do with all your preperation at the draft, or agonizing over who to start week to week determine who wins. Sam Gado? Please.
How many times has an absentee owner who starts guys on a bye still won because they have culpepper or Manning who blows up and the guy who really thought about who to start has their 2 WR's get hurt in the first quarter and their RB's end up in shootout games with no carries? Its all luck fellas. FF is decidedly fun to participate in because it makes almost every game worht watching whether or not the team you root for is on tv or doing well in a given year but the outcome of head to head matchups is pure luck. The only caveat is leagues where total points scored determine the winner, in that case strategy, research and effort play a larger role.
Well by looking at your roster while in theory you had arguably the top 2 WR, or 2 out of 3 WRs, that is not necessarily the case. There were arguments out there that Moss has nagging injuries, and perhaps there actually was a reason why the Vikings let him go. And Owens has been a head case for years, so a blowup like what happened this year was not all that farfetched. Safer route takers may have opted for CJ/Harrison etc, and were handsomely rewarded to this point of the season if you ask me
While your RB situation on paper I think was very solid come the beginning of the season, injuries have set in. Davis missed some time, and Dillon is now too. That is the part that is luck if you ask me. No one can predict injuries, but at the same time Davis has missed time, so perhaps has a greater propensity than others to get injured.
So I guess I stand pat that some is luck, but not entirely. If it were pure luck, I think the records I have in leagues would be more widespread. I am the exception to this case since I am in so many leagues. I have 8 teams that are 7-3 or better to this point. And 2 teams that are under .500. That's it. So in my opinion if it was entirely luck, I would have more around .500. Some better, some worse.
SwiperNoSwiping wrote:While I agree that you can't 100% predict the outcomes of the games and stats a player will accumulate, I do disagree to a degree.
There are players that are more likely to be successful than others given a specific situation. By playing them improves your chances to win.
So, I think part of it's luck, but certainly not entirely.
No Swipe, I think it's 100%. How else could you be leading the KKL?
I'm just a little Hawaiian and a homesick Island boy,
I want to go back to my fish and poi ...
No, it's not a false statement, not at all. Maybe a bit exaggerated, but not false. Compare it to fantasy baseball, where your knowledge actually comes in handy. Overanalyzing a football move can get you pulling your hair out - despite it being the right move. And dumbasses win every single week even though they don't pay a bit of attention..
I won't get into your comparing financial planning to a game of chance.
Let's just say I would say it's more like 40 percent luck and 60 percent skill over the course of an entire season.
ateam wrote:As long as you control your draft, your lineup, and your transactions that is a false statement.
I'm a financial planner in the real world, and I will compare it to managing a portfolio.
Sure what the markets do are out of my control (as are the games), however, I take alot of art and science factoring in many variables to achieve optimal returns within appropriate risk paramaters. The end results (which are generally constant) comes from my decisions more than anything else. Then it's mainly a matter of making sure clients don't make bad timing decisions----ala dumping Porter who has underperformed just before hitting TEN/KC on the schedule.
Luck is a minor part of the equation.
Last year was my first year, I won the league.
This year I'm in 2 leagues:
9-1 with a 3 game lead.
5-5 on a 3 game streak in a 14 teamer, where I lost my top 2 RBs and WRs to injury, I'm now a game out of 1st in a league of parity thus far.
I would say more along the lines of 80/20 or 70/30 in favor of luck.
Really though, the biggest thing is that the 'ceiling' for skill in FF is very very low. You have your guys who are casual players and don't know what they're doing, what VBD is, etc, and then you have your guys who do (like the guys here) who are all pretty much even. We have our arguements, for every one we're right about we're wrong about another. I called Stephen Davis as the Car starting RB and a steal in the draft 6 months ago, and I also said Priest Holmes was a better pick than LT...You win some, you lose some, we all do.
Cafe leagues are a perfect example. All the guys know their stuff, they've all hit the same low ceiling of "skill". If you put the 12 top Cafe guys into a league for 100 years, the results would come out pretty even, there is no way to distinguish skill levels between any of them.
SwiperNoSwiping wrote:While I agree that you can't 100% predict the outcomes of the games and stats a player will accumulate, I do disagree to a degree.
There are players that are more likely to be successful than others given a specific situation. By playing them improves your chances to win.
So, I think part of it's luck, but certainly not entirely.
No Swipe, I think it's 100%. How else could you be leading the KKL?
Fantasy football relates to luck the way Chris Ferguson explained luck in poker. His words were I believe "Winning any one hand is 90% luck, but winning over a long period of time is maybe 10% luck."
To translate that in fantasy football: "Winning any given matchup is 90% luck, but to win over the course of a season or two is maybe 10% luck."
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by Dukes and Terps » Sun Nov 20, 2005 10:40 am 
