Planning is often thrown to the curbside even though it is the most important part of any project or program. This post (fortunately, or unfortunately) is about how a plan worked (or didn't work) in my fantasy football draft today. It turns out that I planned well, but incompletely.
Today I surprised some of my friends by actually showing up at our fantasy football draft when I was supposed to be logging in remotely from Ireland. In Ireland, I have not had access to any real fantasy football information - plenty of fantasy soccer information, but no fantasy (American) football information. So when I arrived in Chicago with family in tow, I needed to get my hands on a fantasy football magazine post haste. I was able to get one on Saturday and began my preparation with only 24 hours left before the draft.
The nice thing is that I still had enough time to put together a plan for the first four to five rounds, but I was utterly unprepared for the last seven or eight rounds. I executed my plan flawlessly for rounds 1-5 picking up exactly who I wanted to pick up and event got one upgrade because a better player slid to me. Yet, I still left the draft with a so-so feeling because I didn't like what happened after round five. I may have done ok, but it didn't feel good because I didn't have a plan.
I like to think that if I had more time to plan, I would have planned properly for the last seven to eight rounds as well. Instead of shooting from the hip, I could have targeted specific players in specific rounds. In failing to properly plan for the full draft, I now have some work to get my team set for the season. Though I believe that fantasy football is 40% draft and 60% team management. I still have the opportunity to plan for the season (yet still remain flexible enough to pounce on opportunities when they present themselves).
So my little piece of wisdom for everybody today is that proper preparation prevents poor performance. It is easy to do well when you prepare. It's not as easy to do well when you have to wing it. I'm not saying that it's impossible to do well when you wing it, it's just harder.
I'm heading back to Ireland tomorrow night. I love these 3 day turn-arounds on trans-atlantic flights.
For reference, here's my team for 2010 (keeper league):
QB: Carson Palmer
QB: Ben Roethlisberger
RB: Joseph Addai
RB: LeSean McCoy
RB: Ryan Mathews
RB: Darren Sproles
WR: Brandon Marshall
WR: Steve Smith
WR: Terrell Owens
WR: Santonio Holmes
WR: Devin Hester
WR: Jacoby Jones
K: Adam Vinatieri
K: Dan Carpenter
DEF: New Orleans
DEF: Detroit
1 comment:
Prepared or not, that roster still looks a hell of a lot better than Wally's. Picking up a magazine on Saturday puts you right on pace with most of us. Winning is nice, but now it's more about being able to just get together with friends and talk football uninterrupted for a few hours. Great to see and have safe travels!!
B
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