Fantasy Football Librarian

Welcome to Conference Championship Week, my friends. I've been extremely busy over the past several days doing number crunching for my 5th annual rankings analysis. Every September I join forces with the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) and put out a call to fantasy football experts inviting them to submit their preseason positional rankings. I then compare the experts' rankings to the actual fantasy rankings at the end of the season and determine which expert was the most accurate. The results of the contest will be posted here with all sorts of detail on the top sites at each position and overall across the 4 offensive skill positions. There were 46 sites that participated this year and most of my favorites were included, so it's been a really fun contest to run yet again. The winner was announced at the FSTA conference late today and news will be flying around on Twitter I'm guessing. But come on back here for the details later in the week - stay tuned! In...

Happy postseason to you all. Glad to have you here and I'm assuming you're all playing in some sort of playoff fantasy league since you just can't get enough of this great game. If you need a playoffs league to play in, join the 250+ of us playing in the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge ( e-mail me if you'd rather have an invitation e-mailed to you). We've had a sick baby on our hands for the past few days and things took a turn for the worse this morning with multiple rounds of baby puke. So we're on the slow recovery train here and I haven't had a ton of time for blogging - hopefully this link dump will make up for my absence over the past few days. First up, these articles offer up a little advice on how to approach a playoff league: CBSSports.com's Up for a challenge? offers up a potential lineup for Wild Card weekend NFL.com's Rodgers, Brees could lead you to Super Bowl XLVII! outlines some of the rules for the NFL.com playoff game, which i...

Welcome to the post-Christmas chaos. We've had a busy 36 hours or so in our family - we celebrated Christmas with my family in DC and then hopped on a mostly empty plane back to Knoxville to spend the rest of the holiday with my husband's family. Sadly once we got to Knoxville our poor niece and sister-in-law got the pukes and our various plans for dinner, presents, etc got mostly postponed until tonight. So we're doing Christmas part 2 tonight. Fortunately we'll have an interesting Saints vs Falcons game to keep us entertained if the puking returns. Fingers crossed that they both feel better stat (what's sadder than a puking baby AND a puking mom?) and that the rest of us remain puke-free...there's lots of baby slobber going around so frankly we'll be lucky to get out of this week unscathed. Anyway, I'm pretty certain I'm about to have a 2011 fantasy championship under my belt this year and hope you all are facing equally good news. But if your le...

It's a big week for those still in the 2011 FF season and most of this post will cater to you all, don't worry, but I know many FF players have seen an end to their season already. Perhaps you're still lurking around the site even though you're out of the playoffs? Glad to have you and keep in mind that I'll be posting throughout the offseason with advice and thoughts for the 2012 season so I hope you'll stick around. But that's jumping way ahead...so I'll just jump a little ahead instead to the NFL playoffs, which are only a few weeks away. I'm running the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge through NFL.com again this year and I hope you'll join me (if that link doesn't work for you, e-mail me and I'll send you an invitation). I'm working on a prize for the challenge winner, too, if that sweetens the deal at all. But now back to Week 15 prep. Have at it: Week 15 start/sit links: NFL.com's CJ2K can lead you to fantasy championship...

Well I think as soon as the offseason got here I just completely collapsed and stopped posting as frequently here - my apologies! As I'm sure I've made abundantly clear, I've got this adorable and increasingly fascinating, nearly 4 month old little dude on my hands and as much as I wanted to keep up my blogging routines, I think it's time I admit that I'll probably only be posting once or twice a week for a little while here. The good news though? I finished my calculations for the annual FFLibrarian/FSTA FF Expert Rankings Accuracy Contest and I'm so psyched to share yet another year of results. There were 50 sites involved this year and the winner will be revealed at the FSTA conference next week (sadly, I won't be there) and the results will go up on the NY Times' Fifth Down shortly thereafter. I'll be sure to link over to the results from here of course. I'll have info on both the best overall performers as well as the top sites at each po...

It's been awhile since I posted last, my fantasy football friends - thanks for sticking around. Those of you who are long-time readers know that I lived in Boulder, Colorado, for 6 years until moving to NYC about a year and a half ago. Boulder is about as close to a second home as I've ever had and we have incredibly good friends there - so when my husband had a conference in Denver last week, I jumped on the chance to bring our son out and join my husband at the end of the conference for a few days in Boulder. This involved flying alone with our 3 month old, which went stunningly well. Gotta love the red carpet treatment I got at check in and security courtesy of the little man's presence. Anyway, I'm back on track here with info about the divisional round. Kudos to BethS4 in the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge group who has the most points after the wildcard weekend - nicely done, way to be tops out of the 165 group members. The Ravens D gave both BethS4 and me a hug...

Welcome to the NFL playoffs and all of the fantasy fun that comes with it! If you're still hanging around the blog here then I know you, too, are having trouble breaking off a season-long addiction to fantasy football. Or you can't get enough of my far-fetched analogies of living with an infant and the world of fantasy football (what's tougher: saying goodbye to your tiny tot at daycare for the first few times OR saying goodbye to a championship FF team?). Either way, glad to have you around still. Head on over to the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge and join in on the fun if you don't want the season to end. I've got a bunch of links for both the playoffs and the 2011 season, so read on... Playoffs rankings and advice: Fantasy Football Jungle's Fantasy Rankings: NFL Playoff Edition Bleacher Report's 2011 NFL Playoffs: Ranking the Top 25 Running Backs (other positions linked off this page) FFToday.com's Playoff Rankings , includes projected number of...

Greetings fantasy footballers. It seems particularly awesome to me that our fantasy football season has just been extended for another day - who doesn't want yet another night when we can watch the NFL, right? I love that it's a fairly solid game, too, that might make a big difference for a bunch of championships. Good luck to you all! Unfortunately for me I already know that I have lost the championship game...to my husband of all people. I will not be living this one down for a long, long time I'm sure. I have Jamaal Charles' multiple touchdowns to thank for my fantasy demise this week. Before I get to Week 17 links (since I know there are plenty of you rockin it for Week 17), I wanted to remind you all that I do a fantasy playoffs league of sorts every year. All readers are invited to play in the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge group that I usually run through NFL.com's Playoff Challenge - here's a link to the FFLibrarian group and if you have trouble joinin...

So we've got a winner for this year's FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge run by NFL.com and I'm happy to announce that the winner is someone near and dear to me: my father-in-law! Seems a bit like shenanigans, right? Well what can I say, the man knows his football and he won the competition fair and square. So kudos to my father-in-law, aka Lee Hill, on his victory in the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge and a $25 Amazon gift card courtesy of the Bruno Boys . After losing pretty much all of his players during the first week of the playoffs, he then created a team comprised entirely of Colts and Saints...hence he had a monster Super Bowl Week and carried off an overall victory by 1 point. The top 5 results are as follows: Lee Hill (594 points) playball35 (593 points) coachnk (590 points) SEADOGS (585 points) Planet 10 (581 points)  Congrats Lee Hill!

The countdown is on - in T minus 6 I'll be in Ft. Lauderdale or Miami or wherever all the Super Bowl festivities are occurring. I'm wondering just how early I can arrive at the game on Sunday - is it inappropriate to show up 12 hours early? Perhaps. Once again I want to be sure to extend an invitation to all of you in South Florida to swing by the Miami Buffalo Wild Wings for the party I'll be co-hosting with Trey Wingo on Friday, Feb 5th. E-mail me if you want more details. With all the chaos of the FSTA conference I forgot to note the leaders in the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge - our top 5 players at this time are: 1. People of Walmart (428 points) 2. Titleist432 and ColdOne (tied at 404 points) 4. pink fury (403 points) 5. Planet 10 and MIAMI64 (tied at 402 points) Onto today's links: First up, let's pretend that the Pro Bowl matters - Lester's Legends is keeping us all entertained with his Fantasy Football Out on a Limb 2009, Pro Bowl Edition art...

Well the field just keeps getting smaller - we're down to the final four teams and I for one will be excited about any of these clubs making it to the Super Bowl. But if I must pick, I'm pulling for a Colts vs Vikings game; Colts for my husband's sake (they're his team) and Vikings since we've got some connections with them via Buffalo Wild Wings. Meanwhile, I've got a new set of top teams in my FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge (there are 164 of us in the league): The NFL Night Club (256) MIAMI64 (254) KevinGould (254) Titleist432 (253) itsawrap (253) Congrats for the solid 2 week performances - will one of you win my $25 gift card to Amazon courtesy of the Bruno Boys?! So we've got Conference Championship advice already pouring in so let's head right over to today's links: Let's start with rankings: Working Man Sports (a site from one of my favorite Bruno Boys writers, Chris Ziza) has rankings up for this weekend's conference champ...

Happy almost three-day weekend (and happy MLK Jr's official birthday). I will be celebrating the weekend by putting the finishing touches on my fantasy football accuracy analysis, which I am almost done with. Meanwhile The Big Lead has done an accuracy analysis of their own (love seeing this concept pick up steam) looking at 7 different sites' preseason rankings. Take a look at their results, which were compiled in a relatively similar manner to what I do - I'll be very interested in seeing how similar our end results are when it's all said and done. But let's take a look at today's links to help those of you in playoff leagues like the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge (there are 162 of us!) get your best lineup set: I'm pretty much sold when I see the phrase Abita beer in a post (there's some tasty Abita Amber on tap at the Henry St. Ale House a few blocks away from me), but The Hazean also has some quality football commentary for us in Round Two Star...

Well I've got my Super Bowl tickets, hotel room, and flight down to Miami all set - seriously, could I be more excited? Another huge thanks to Buffalo Wild Wings for this incredible grand prize for winning their All-Star Blogger League . As more details emerge, I'll be sharing them on the BWW league site - so be sure to check back for details and tales from South Florida. In the meantime, I'll be heading to Las Vegas in about 10 days for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association annual conference. I know, I'm living such a charmed life right now. If any of you FF experts out there are going to be in Vegas for the conference and want to grab a drink, let me know ! I've already roped Marc from the Bruno Boys into keeping me company. Moving on to today's links: Speaking of the Bruno Boys, let's start there with their Divisional Round rankings - they've put out their WR and TE rankings . More thoughts on this weekend's games from the FantasySharks.com...

Those who follow college football news can only imagine the upset in our household last night when my husband learned that Lane Kiffin (Univ of Tennessee's coach) is leaving for USC to replace Pete Carroll who accepted the head coaching job with the Seahawks. Kiffin had only been in TN for a year and this rightly has pissed off my Knoxville native husband and likely the vast majority of Vols fans. Dark days here, my friends, dark days. But the good news here in Brooklyn is that I have a library job interview today - I believe this is now my 7th interview of one sort or another since arriving in the city: turned one job down, got turned down by another, and now I'm pulling a Goldilocks and hoping that this one will be just right. Keep your fingers crossed for me! So let's get right to today's links so that I can shift gears and focus like a laser on the library world before my interview: Personally I need to turn things around in my two playoffs leagues so I could ...

I've embraced a major technology change here in 2010, my football friends. I am now a Mac user. For the past few weeks I've been gleefully coming to you from a new macbook and pretty much loving every minute...until this past weekend. I still love my new mac, don't get me wrong, but figuring out how to use iWork's Numbers to the same extent as Excel has been a challenge. I miss Excel and am considering purchasing Office for macs, but have heard negative feedback on that front, too. What's an Excel user to do? I know with time I'll probably discover lots of the same tips and tricks that I know and love in Excel but if anyone can guide me toward resources to speed that process up, I'd appreciate it. Now why was I up to my elbows in spreadsheets this weekend you may ask? The annual accuracy challenge of course! This will be the third year that I've run an analysis to compare the accuracy of preseason positional rankings from FF experts out there (here...

Wow, I was not expecting some of the outcomes that we saw from this weekend's Wild Card games. The Jets win is basically the only one that didn't surprise me - I have no clue how things could look so ugly in New England, the Cowboys are more impressive than I gave them credit for, and seriously, no more Aaron Rodgers?! It only seemed fitting that Rodgers and the Packers would keep rolling and make it to the Super Bowl since Rodgers is much of the reason that I won my Buffalo Wild Wings league and will be at the SB in a few weeks. Seemed like some Super Bowl kismet to me... In the next day or two we should have the results from the first week of the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge to see which of the 150 participants is in the lead. I can already promise you all that it is not me! If you already have a team set up with NFL.com for the playoffs, I think you can still join our challenge for your chance to win a $25 gift card to Amazon, courtesy of the generous Bruno Boys . Let...

Happy Wild Card weekend day! I've got a few quick links for you but mostly I wanted to let anyone having trouble entering the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge know that I've removed the password and made it a public league - I heard from too many of you who were having issues with that. So come on in, join the league, and take a shot at winning the $25 gift card prize for the winner of my challenge. And speaking of playoff leagues, if you're looking for another postseason league, you can jump into 365FantasySports.com's weekly contests . But let's get to today's content... RapidDraft is churning out the matchup analysis, which I'm totally digging - Green Bay Attractive This Weekend and Beyond , Tough Call, but Pats Over Ravens , and Newsflash - Target Teams That Score and Play D .   Fantasy Depth Chart has some rankings for you for this weekend's games.   The Sports Guy has a humorous look at the upcoming games in New rules help define '09 pla...

Happy Friday! I hope you all enjoyed the National Championship game last night - like many of you I'm sure, I definitely thought Texas had a shot as they started to make things more interesting in the 4th quarter. Though all I could think about for awhile there was how impressive Texas' backup QB was and how I couldn't even imagine my Northwestern Wildcats maintaining so much talent on the bench. Man, playing the game at different levels for sure. Anyway, back to the NFL. It's been a few days since I've mentioned how psyched I am to be going to the Super Bowl courtesy of Buffalo Wild Wings , so I thought I'd bring it up again lest you all think I've become blase about such a gigantic coup. Trust me, within about an hour or so of waking up every morning, I gleefully think to myself, "I'm going to the Super Bowl!" But time now for today's links...  Plenty of rankings still being cranked out in FF land: Athlon/Grogan Postseason Player Rank...

I was walking to my local Trader Joe's (man, can I do a post solely dedicated to how much I love that place? Seriously, how is it so cheap and so tasty?) and I passed a denuded Christmas tree. It must have been trash day since there were Christmas trees lining the sidewalks everywhere, ready to be picked up and taken to tree heaven (one of the saddest sights) but I have never once seen a tree stump with all of the branches chopped off and bagged. Why would one do that? Truly, I'm looking for an answer here. Those branches weren't being kept for their aroma, they were being dumped in garbage bags alongside that sad and sorry Christmas tree stump. Who knows - but I think we can all agree that New Yorkers can come up with some of the most inventive and nonsensical solutions. Fortunately, we've got a bevy of very sensible and helpful fantasy football links for you today... The rankings and projections continue today though not with quite the same depth as earlier in the we...

I love this time of year - just when I'm accepting the fact that I've seen the last of my Northwestern Wildcats for the season, we get access to all of the NFL games going on this weekend. As a non-Sunday Ticket gal (not an option for us here), there's little that makes me happier than full-on access to all games; no picking and choosing needed, no being at the mercy of local matchups...love it.  Another thing I love? Playing in the FFLibrarian Playoff Challenge - keep your fantasy football season going by joining in on the fun (password: librarian). Anyway, it's a bright and sunny morning here in NYC (hey, we'll get above freezing!) and I've got a handful of playoffs articles for you: Playoff rankings are now starting to emerge all over the place - here are some of my faves: KFFL.com's Playoff Rankings Yahoo's Roto Arcade - Eleven Dart Throws: Your Fantasy Playoff Cheatsheet Razzball released the rest of their position rankings with WR, TE, D, ...