The Diary of a Fantasy Virgin - Week 14 Timothy Davoll, Fantasy Football Staff Writer Dec 12, 2003 | More

The end has arrived and either you are the shark or fish bait.  I guess I fall into the latter in this random, active-passive, hula dance that we do in Fantasy Football.  I have to think hula because there was a very large snowstorm over week fourteen in New England and it made that New England – Miami game a snoozer.  Good old Mother Nature playing the role of the great equalizer and vanquishing those sun lovers from south of the border and West of Huntington Beach.  Lets talk about the end of the season and how to continue if your league has a bucket bowl.  Oh by the way, the Captain finds a dingy this week aboard the HMS Demolition.

Qualifying For The Bucket Bowl

My league has three tournaments at the end of the year.  There are the Playoffs for the three league winners and the wild-card team.  Then there is the Not In Playoffs (N.I.P.s) group, which are teams 5-8.  The Virgin won three weeks in a row to finish 6 – 8 in a three-way tie for 6^th but the tiebreaker is the number of points you scored all year.  Ouch, that means we immediately dropped to ninth.  Have no fear though; there is a championship for us in 9 – 12.  It is affectionately known as the Bucket Bowl.  This is the bottom of the barrel bowl for the rest of the participants.  Now you know how those college teams not getting a BCS bowl chance are feeling.  Just to be in the N.I.P.s group carries with it a … “at least I am not in the Bucket Bowl!”  … feeling of superiority.  I still contend that it is mostly a random feeling but it seems to be real when you have won and hollow when you haven’t despite the randomness.  In this type of competition, I regularly feel as though I am ensconced in a padded room reading “Pork Chops For Underwear in a Dog Pound World” by an author with a nom-de-plume of I.M. Loser.  What makes this book poetic is that there is a mirror for a cover so nothing is left to chance.  So off to the bucket bowl for us shark bait and may you have fared much better matey.   Speaking of matey’s, I wonder what awaits the conscripts aboard the HMS demolition.

Captain’s Log – 12-8-2003 – 11:00 PM

We were on a roll and defeated the next obstacle as if Mawu was still with us.  Just like that we reached the end of our journey and there were three ships waiting for us at the finish line.  There was a resplendent frigate, luxurious cruiser, and a dingy dingy (din-gee ding-ee).  Artemis noted that all ships had hoisted flags of the vessels in the competition.  Our flag flapped in the breeze of the dingy.  Oh well, “…three consecutive victories does not a season make harped in the boatswain”.  But that at least meant we were still in a tournament.  To the victor went a bucket instead of a goblet of gold or a chalice of silver.  Such be the spoils of the bottom-dwellers.  Artemis opened a hatch below the gun-deck and received the directions of the new course from the Captain of the dingy who bobbed around like a cork in a lost open sea.  We then set off with three companions who came in later than us but still part of the bucket brigade.  We felt better that we were still in a competition but splitting a bucket left a hole in our bellies the size of that shiny cannonball from Mawu.  I screamed “On to the elimination round of the bucket festivus"  and the conscripts old and new shouted balooo.  Artemis noted that I must be a “glass half-full character” to get everyone all excited about a bucket.  May ye be too whatever competition you be left in this year.

Master D.