Week 2 – I HATE ESPN

I know Mighty just ripped on ESPN, but I was planning all week as well to rip on them, and nothing is going to stop me short of censorship.

I HATE ESPN!
You see, I’m in this fantasy football league on ESPN. As an avid fantasy football player, and never having used ESPN’s site, I was quite curious. But that curiousity has been replaced by RAGE. The stupid site does not work on my computer. Or my roommate’s. Or half of the people in my league. This doesn’t just go to the topic of “bandwidth” (which is part of the problem). The other problem, is that whenever you try to access your team, it’s like it loads up in a flash application that fails 78% of the time. Needless to say, I failed in successfully pre-ranking any players, because their application crashed all the time. If ESPN would only follow the lead of Yahoo! – simple web pages, easily downloadable, no inherent errors, the site actually might be good for something. But my original excitement for the fact that you can divy up people into divisions has been destroyed by the utter INACCESSIBILITY of the website.

Up until this past week, I was only mad at the “fantasy” portion of ESPN.com. Now, I hate the WHOLE FRICKIN’ WEBSITE. I went to check the score of my alma mater, the Miami Redhawks, on Saturday, and I was excited as Miami had won 44-38. I told my roommate the happy news, and he told me Miami actually lost 38-37. After debating this, and checking the website later, the great sports reporters at ESPN then added a NEGATIVE SEVEN into the 4th qtr section of the boxscore, to get the score back to 38-37. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who had this problem, as their bottomline reported the wrong score for a half hour, as one of my friends got into a disagreement with a bartender over who won the game.

The moral of the story, is that I will only go to ESPN for Bill Simmons. That’s it. Half their articles require “Insider” subscriptions anyway. Screw ‘em. CNNSI is better anyways. And they actually report the correct scores!

In term of the fantasy problems, ESPN sent me (and everyone else in America) an apology letter for how crappy their fantasy service has been and they told me “they are working on it.” Yahoo would never do such a thing, because if there was a problem, they would have stayed up all night and fixed it.

Sorry, but I needed to rant on that one. On to the games.

Manwich Matchup of the Week:
New England @ CAR- What a matchup. I think this begins the point in the season when I try (and fail) to pick one of the few losses that New England will suffer from. I just am hoping that the Carolina players are extra-motivated by their loss last weekend, and by their need to avenge the recent super bowl loss to the Patriots. Of course the loss of D-lineman Kris Jenkins may just unwravel the whole defense and result in a thrashing, but I’m going for the interesting storyline.
Pick: CAR

Upset of the Week:
Miami @ NY Jets- This is pretty crazy, for me to pick the Dolphins in a game AT New York, but Pennington seems to be fatally flawed, and the Miami defense seems just as good as it was previous to last year, when they went 9-7 for like 4 straight seasons.
Pick: Miami

Baltimore @ Tennessee- I was pretty off-base w/ my Ravens over Colts prediction. Regardless, the Ravens should be able to control the Titans. Mason and Rolle should be extra motivated against their old, salary-cap hell team.
Pick: Baltimore

Buff @ TB- This game suddenly seems quite interesting, after both teams had (relatively) impressive victories last week. I’m sure ESPN will jump on the bandwagon of whoever wins.
Pick: Tampa Bay

Detroit @ Chicago- I really do think that Bears coach Lovie Smith is talented. I just hope those Chicago fans don’t give him the axe before he even has a chance to put together an offense.
Pick: Detroit

Jacksonville @ Indy- I still don’t believe the Colts have a good defense, just that the Ravens are terrible at offense.
Pick: Indy

Minnesota @ Cincy- This is quite the interesting game. The up-and-coming Bengals get a shot at the Vikings. Before we hit the panic button on the Vikings, I think they had 5 turnovers last weekend against Tampa, and they STILL almost won!
Pick: Minnesota

Pittsburgh @ Houston- A Classic AFC Central Matchup. Bubby Brister vs. Warren Moon. Only thing is, Carr is starting to look more like Bubby Brister, and the Steelers are just looking great, much to my chagrin.
Pick: Pittsburgh

SF @ Philly- I wonder if any of TO’s former teammates are going to be head-hunting and trying to give him a concussion? I would laugh for 5 minutes straight, do 4 somersaults, eat 3 chicken wings, sing 2 legit 2 quit, and then do a cartwheel if the Eagles lost.
Pick: Philly

Atlanta @ Seattle- How long will it be until Tim Hasselbeck (of the Giants) starts to backup his brother on Seattle?
Pick: Atlanta

St. Louis @ Arizona- I don’t understand what happened to the Arizona defense in the 2nd half of last week’s game against the NY Giants. And because I don’t understand it, and since I’m picking the Cardinals to win their division, I’m going to blindly ignore it as an anomaly… for now.
Pick: Arizona

Cleveland @ Green Bay – Welcome to this week’s toilet bowl! I really think the Browns have a good chance with Rueben “Attack of the” Droughans leading the way. He gained 6 yards per carry last week! That was the only positive of the Browns, so I felt like it was worth reporting.
Pick: GB

SD @ Denver- I don’t even like Mike Shanahan. I just saw some stat about how Denver has beaten SD 972 straight times at home, so I’m sticking to it.
Pick: Denver

KC @ Oakland- This should be a real good test of how good the KC defense is. Or a good test of whether KC can score 40!
Pick: KC

NYG @ New Orleans- America’s team will strike again. Tagliabue will make sure of it!
Pick: New Orleans

Washington @ Dallas- Was anyone else just hoping that they would relegate this game back to Sunday???
Pick: Dallas

Last week: 8-8
Manwich Matchup: 1-0 (Vick and Jenkins got the job done).
Upset Special last season: 0-1 (relying on Baltimore’s offense was a bad idea).