By Greg Fox
Rotowhine.com Assistant Editor
December 20, 2007

Fantasy football smells… badly. Thanks to the legendary conclusion of Sunday’s Eagles/Cowboys game, years of transcendental meditation have gone to waste. As of this writing, my left eyelid is twitching frantically and new afflictions are surfacing by the minute.

Let me first switch gears and let you all know that Jeff and I will be going up against each other in the Cha League championship game, clearly a disaster in waiting. At least it should be a fitting ending to a league that should never have had a beginning. If I’m not done by 1:15 pm this Sunday, I’ll call the season a success. In Big Daddy, my horrid 7-8 team, on the strength of five consecutive losses, backdoored its way into the playoffs and will square off against the top-seeded Woodmen in the semifinals. I’ll touch upon the GM of the Woodmen momentarily.

In Big Daddy I have Brian Westbrook. I know I don’t need to utter another word, but if I don’t talk this through I think I’m going to stroke out. In the history of professional football, no player has ever been selfless enough to stop short of an easy touchdown, despite the fact that by him scoring it would have given the Cowboys a remote chance to win the game. Doesn’t Westbrook know that the entire football world, let alone the hordes of fantasy geeks, will be judging him based on how many touchdowns he scores? Isn’t it obvious that a player who rushes 19 times for 80 yards and a touchdown is much better than a guy who rushes 19 times for 120 yards and no scores? That one-yard plunge makes all the difference. If he was on any roster other than mine, John Runyan would have carried Westbrook into the end zone like a bag of pumpernickel.

The only problem now is that I couldn’t care less about fantasy football or any sort of playoffs. Westbrook putting on the brakes at the urging of his insane offensive guard knocked the starch out of me for good. It probably cost me my game (all I would have needed was 11 yards from Crayton in a garbage time drive) and should have cost me my spot in the playoffs. When it unfolded, I shrieked like a little girl and caused my wife to look at me like I was a cast member in “I Love New York.”

Two other teams - Jeff Junior and Maynard’s Minions - also came in to the week behind me in points and with identical 7-7 records, but both were defeated. Junior dropped a 69-68 nightmarish decision to my buddy Steven, more famously known as the son of Uncle Vito. Steven got two points out of Shockey on Sunday night before his leg fell off to cap a furious rally. Each week we start a head coach in which you earn three points for a coaching win and negative one for a coaching loss. I realized Sunday mid-afternoon that Steven’s starting coach was the Jets’ Mangenius at 13-0 New England. I have to remember to thank him for that .

The Minions came into the day needing both Junior and me to lose while defeating the unstoppable Woodmen to make the postseason… a long shot at best. But lo and behold, Wood, a great buddy of mine for more than 20 years, puts in a lineup that the ‘76 Buccaneers would have snickered at. Did my good buddy try to tank to avoid me in the playoffs? Was it to avoid playoff-deprived Jeff Junior? He didn’t start Brady, Moss, Steven Jackson, Brandon Marshall and the good Adrian Peterson for god’s sake! Can anyone think of the other people who will be affected when they either make ridiculous lineup decisions or decide not to change their lineup before a game with playoff implications?

My buddy Scotty of the Potsdam Express summed it up best: “In Wood’s defense, he did start the better of his two coach options. I guessing Wood’s taking a dive was the unreported portion of the trade with Vince.” I think Scotty nailed it. The week before, Wood fleeced Vincent in our basketball league, acquiring Steve Nash and McGrady for Kobe and Zach Randolph. It’s the ol’ guilty conscience theory rearing its ugly head.

I can’t wait for the result of my game with Jeff. It will be exciting to find out which one of us will win and not get paid.

I thought this was supposed to be fantasy sports therapy.