Seriously — and I’m talking to all fantasy footballers here — what’s wrong with us?

It makes absolutely zero sense to devote inordinate amounts of time to fantasy football. Yes, the typical fantasy football season is a helluva ride, I’m the first to admit that. The draft is always a shitload of fun (we are renting out a big hotel conference room in Kansas City for ours this year). The game also allows you to constantly be invested in each and every NFL game, something that would otherwise be impossible. Most of all, when you win a championship in a family-and-friends league, the bragging rights are second to none.

When you take a closer look at the game, however, we are damned fools for getting so caught up.

Think about it — you can have a 72′ Dolphins-esque team, and still get knocked out of the playoffs because Billy Volek miracles a gargantuan effort out of his arse. My old man had Drew Brees, L.T., Steve Smith and Torry Holt on his team last year and got smoked in the playoffs. Maurice Jones-Drew single-handedly knocked me out of the playoffs with a statistical output I wouldn’t expect from Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl. A few years back, the aforesaid Volek scored 33 points for me one playoff week, only to give me negative points the next week.

Fantasy football is widely unpredictable, but when you get the right combination of skill and luck, the magic carpet ride that follows is amazing. That’s why we play the game, and play it hard.

Staying on the carpet ride and seeing it through to its end is damn near impossible, though. Notice I said damn near, meaning that a ride of that sort is more improbable than impossible. Here’s a list of things you can do to increase your odds of winning that coveted fantasy football ’ship.

• Draft Peyton Manning. He never gets hurt, and he’s been involved in two of the last three Dirty Dozen (our league) championship runs. Many of you will be able to draft him in the first round. I know it sounds like a no-brainer, but he was passed up in favor of other inferior players in last year’s draft.

For example, just look at the first round of our 2006 draft:

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Sorry for the delay. Most days, blogging takes precedence over booze, but good ol’ Uncle Sam’s birthday is not one of those days. Unfortunately for you, now I have to get weird… really weird…

I have a thing for Joan Allen, a women nearly twice as old as I am. I wish I could say that I didn’t, but I’d be a lying if I said I’d turn down the opportunity to star alongside Miss Pamela Landy in The Porn Supremecy (made solely for our own personal collections and not for Internet distribution, of course). I don’t know if it was Face/Off, or Pleasantville or The Crucible or… I have no clue what it was that did it to me, but somewhere along the line I just decided that I would make Joan moan. I’ll be the first to admit that she’s both a little too old and skinny, but that doesn’t deter me. She just has that unexplainable freakability that I so covet.

I cannot lie — Joan Allen does it to me.

(here’s hoping that I didn’t just scare away half of my readership)

The big news concerning The Namesake:

Pacman Jones‘ Murfreesboro, Tennessee trial for misdemeanor counts has been postponed . The judge pushed the trial back because the court is awaiting to see if he is convicted of felony coercion for his role in the infamous Las Vegas Minxx Club shootout.

When Pacman was asked if he’ll ever play football again by reporters he responded, “Fuck yeah, Goodell can kiss my ass.”

Two wild new rumors for you to chew on:

• Pacman Jones is building a strip club inside his crib. Not a pole, not a lounge — “a private in-home strip club.” See .
• Pacman was involved in an unorthodox three-way trade . Don Imus and Ghostface were the other two chief participants in the swap.

• Dominic Rhodes couldn’t really celebrate his independence from the Colts on the Fourth. Instead, he found out that he would start of the season serving a four-game suspension for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

• So, Reggie Bush is dating Kim Kardashian Hodashian. What’s up with he and his ex-USC teammate dating broads that are only famous because of their sex tapes?
• Speaking of Matt Leinart, not only is he a slimeball, but he throws slimeballs too.
• My boy Kige Ramsey blows a gasket (well, not really) over how much pub the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest received. Does anyone else think that Kige is getting a little Kanye West on us. He definitely has a newfound swagger.
• For all of you who are too hungover to have a productive July the Fifth, there’s always this (Animal Planet, 8 PM CST). I don’t know, it might just save your day.