How to Be (Almost) As Good As Me at Fantasy Football Lundy Blankenship, Fantasy Football Staff Writer Jul 18, 2007 | More

I know some of you are thinking, “Damn, Lundy, you are the most awesome fantasy football player to ever grace the history of the planet Earth.” What can I say? It’s truer than most of you will ever know. I don’t like to brag, but I am the greatest of all time. Now, you are probably asking yourself; how could I ever reach the standards of fantasy greatness that you have achieved? For one, that is asking the impossible. You will never be as good as me. That would be like me aspiring to make honey as good as a bee: not going to happen. But, alas, I am not here to shun you, I am here to help. Let Uncle Lundy make you a better fantasy football player. If you follow these seven steps, you are guaranteed to reach new heights in your budding fantasy career. You can aim to be almost as great as me, if you let me show you the way. Somehow, though, I doubt it.

Step One: Get Rid of the Wife. She can be a Distraction.

The first thing you need to do is get rid of the wife. I know you love her like no other, but, there is no sacrifice too big for fantasy greatness. You don’t need her nagging around while you are figuring out roster moves or lineup possibilities. Lock her in a closet for the duration of the fantasy season. Make sure you feed her and water her every now and then. Wait a minute, that won’t work; I am pretty sure you could go to prison for something like that. I don’t want you to become a criminal, and have that weigh on my conscience for the five minutes that it will, so just send her to her mothers. Last time I checked, that wasn’t illegal, and will give you plenty of time to avoid her nagging and clear your mind for the important stuff. You might as well send your kids with her, unless little “Joey” is a math genius. Keep him around for crunching numbers and statistical evaluation. He could be a valuable asset.

Step Two: If you have Internet at work, Misuse the hell out of it.

If you are currently employed and you have access to the internet there, that will give you a huge advantage. I know your boss, is on your back every day to get those reports done, and you might even lose your job if you blow him off, but you have to do it. Fantasy Football is way more important than your state of employment. If you get fired, that’s even better news! You can waste all your free time now at home on the computer researching for the upcoming fantasy season. This will ensure total domination in your league. It will, probably, also ensure that you will lose your electricity when the bill isn’t paid. However, if you want to win, you have to decide between your job and a fantasy championship. If you really want to be in the same class as I am, you are going to have to make some tough decisions. You didn’t really like that job anyway, did you?

Step Three: Don’t even think about buying that magazine.

When you go to the supermarket, I know they are enticing you in the periodicals aisle. Ignore them. Run as fast as you can away from them before they possess you with their evil intentions, because they are fantasy football’s version of the devil. I am talking about, of course, fantasy football magazines. It can be tempting to find an easy way on the road to fantasy greatness, but the easy way will get you “just out of the playoffs.” What do you need to waste eight bucks on an outdated cheat sheet that everybody else in your league is buying? Save that money for the electricity bill. Better yet, send me eight dollars, and I will give you my personal cheat sheet (I accept all major credit cards and Pay-pal). How about this, for a novel idea; save your money and do your own research and cheat sheets. Your league will not know what hit them as you obtain players that they could never think of by leafing through the toilet paper known as fantasy football magazines.

Step Four: Learn the careful art of Lying and Manipulation

I know you can go to hell for lying, but you must do everything you can to gain an advantage on your league mates. So, you are just going to have to put your personal salvation aside, for now. This is not the time for mulling over your morals and doing the right thing. The right thing is what will make you better at fantasy football, and you must learn to lie like you have never before. If the thought of lying makes you a little apprehensive, just think of it as mishandling the truth recklessly. Now, doesn’t that make you feel a whole lot better; you can now go to heaven and win that fantasy championship too: The best of both worlds.

Now that you have obtained the careful skill of manipulation, you must use it fully to your advantage. Send out emails of players that you think are terrible to all your league mates, but, make them sound like they are God’s gift to fantasy teams everywhere. You could use this skill in your draft. Every time someone makes a questionable pick, cheer out "good pick, he was next on my list.” However, after every good pick, hesitate and ask “What the hell are you thinking?” You get the point. After a lot of practice, you too can become a professional liar…err, I mean professional mishandler of the truth.

Step Five: Do everything you can to Prepare for the Draft.

No, I don’t mean research the players and make cheat sheets to dominate the competition. That will only get you so far. Sometimes, you need to take drastic actions to win at fantasy football. I will give you an example. What do most people like to do at a draft party? You guessed it: drinking like fish and sailors, and not necessarily in that order. So, why not help, your friends out, by providing the booze free of charge. Oh, they are going to love you for being such an upstanding guy. Everybody loves free drinks. Here is the trick, though; you must keep a clear head and stay sober. There will be plenty of time to drink later, when you win your championship. It will be a lot easier to pick the good players when everybody else is blasted out of their mind.

Another way to prepare for the draft is to bring a hot friend to the draft. Make sure that she dresses as scantily as possible. In fact, ask her is she will operate the draft board and act as sexy as she possibly can. Again, everybody in your league will thank you for it, as the drool from their mouths will ruin the ink on their inferior cheat sheets. If you do not have a hot friend, hire one. They are in the yellow pages. The combination of alcohol and a hot babe will be enough of a distraction for you to dominate your draft. Just be sure not to get distracted yourself.

Step Six: Ignore the Four-letter Family of Network and websites.

(In order to keep the lawsuits and litigation down, I will not be calling the four-letter by their proper name. But, I am pretty sure everyone knows who I am talking about, so we will leave it that. Yes I am afraid because, their lawyers are bigger than ours.)

After reading some of the content and listening to the broadcasts, All I can do is shake my head and wonder what kind of cheap synthetic meds that they are taking over at the four-letter. I have seen trained monkeys that can do better fantasy analysis than some of those morons. Don’t listen to them. They cater to the mass audience as they are nothing more than sycophants for advertisers. Better yet, follow step four, and let your league mates know exactly where you get all your wonderful fantasy information: The four-letter family of networks. Let them be falsely led, not you.

Step Seven: Join the FantasySharks.com Shark Tank and participate.

Seriously, this is the best thing for you to become a fantasy player genius. After a season of participating in discussions in the Tank, you will have improved yourself over a thousand percent, if not more. All the research and reading other sites “expert opinions of who to start and who to pick up” is no substitute for learning how to figure out this stuff on your own. Some of the brightest and insightful fantasy minds participate in the tank, and we are all there to help you. Here is the trick, though, you must get involved. You get a whole lot better at fantasy football by answering more questions and offering your opinions than just by lurking and asking questions. Sure, they will rib you for an unpopular comment or opinion, but stand firm in your beliefs and offer proof. Doing all that will ensure that you will become a better player. Your marriage, job, and personal salvation will depend on it.

If you decide to take the plunge and participate you won’t be disappointed. However, one word of advice: Don’t listen to Checo. We felt sorry for him a long time ago and let him join. It is rather, sad actually. I don’t even know where in his messed up brain of his that he gets those lame ideas. Seriously, did someone feed him paint chips as a child? I think we might have to let child protective services investigate his parents. Anyway, the point is not to listen to him. He will steer you in the wrong direction.

(Since I am such a fair guy, I have decided to allow Checo to respond to my bashing. His response is below in italics

What in the world? Is Lundy spreading his lies again?

Yes, Checo, I am spreading my lies again (step number four). This is the kind of thing, really good fantasy players do. We follow the seven steps, or at least I do. Since, I am the greatest living fantasy football mind in the history of this great universe of ours; I would suggest you do the same. No, you will never be as good as “the Great Lundy” but, I have to die sometime, and someone will eventually have to take my place. Might as well be you. Good Luck with that!

Editor’s note: We, here at fantasysharks are not responsible for the content of expressions written in this article or of Lundy's over bloated high opinion of himself.

As always, if you have any hate mail, fan mail, complaints, death threats, or if you just want to drop a line telling me how awesome I am; email me at Lundylove@msn.com. I might even answer some of your deepest darkest fantasy questions as long as it is about football.