Know Fantasy Football? Help The Community Reign Supreme!

It's September, so what does that mean? Besides back-to-school, the weather starting to turn, and Halloween ads already appearing everywhere? It's football season! More importantly, it's FANTASY football season, of which I am a self-admitted junkie. So lately I've been looking for a way to combine my love of writing for the blog with my love of fantasy football (feeling like the guy trying to figure out the exact right combo of peanut butter and chocolate for the first Reese's cups), and I've decided to try out a crazy experiment.

For the past few seasons, I've organized an informal 12-team fantasy football league amongst several of the sports fans in the office. It's just for bragging rights, and brag we do. But this year I introduced a twist. At our draft (held late last week), I drafted my own team, but also a Community team that will be run mainly by readers of the Chatter blog. That's right - YOU! Each week, I'll put up polls on our Chatter discussion board asking everyone for who should start at each position. Where it makes sense, that is - no reason to ask who should start at kicker when there's only one on the roster, for example. Help me prove that the Community knows best (and beat the pants off some eBay employees while doing so). Just take it easy when it comes time to play my own team.

Here's the league setup, which is pretty basic: you play 1 Quarterback, 2 Running Backs, 3 Wide Receivers, 1 Tight End, 1 Kicker, and 1 team Defense.

You get 6 points for a TD (passing, running, or receiving), 1 point for every 25 yards throwing or 10 yards rushing/receiving, -3 for a turnover, and 2 for a two-point conversion. Kickers get 3 for every field goal (4 if it's 50+ yards), and 1 for each extra point. The points for your defense is too complicated to list here without making a big mess, but you get points for sacks, turnovers, and how many points you allow.

After the draft, here's the roster the Community ended up with:

QBs: Donovan McNabb (Philadelphia Eagles), Eli Manning (NY Giants)

RBs: Steven Jackson (St. Louis Rams), Brandon Jacobs (NY Giants), Julius Jones (Dallas Cowboys), Rueben Droughns (NY Giants)

WRs: Donald Driver (Green Bay Packers), TJ Houshmanzadeh (Cincinnati Bengals), Vincent Jackson (San Diego Chargers), Devery Henderson (New Orleans Saints), Matt Jones (Jacksonville Jaguars)

TE: Jason Witten (Dallas Cowboys)

K: Josh Scobee (Jacksonville Jaguars)

Def: Miami Dolphins

Obviously my TE, K and D choices are easy (at least for the time being), but I'll need YOUR help for QB, WR and RB. I'll be checking the polls late each week to see who's leading, and make the lineup decisions accordingly. To vote, just visit the board, and look for the poll on the right-hand side. After you've voted in one, click the "More Polls" link to see the others. To simplify things a little, I've decided that RB Steven Jackson of the Rams and WR T.J. Houshmanzadeh of the Bengals will be starting for sure, so you'll be voting on everyone else.

One more wrinkle - this week the Colts/Saints play on Thursday, so if Devery Henderson of the Saints is a leading vote-getter by Thursday I'll put him in. I'll also try to post the other team's lineup near the end of the week, once we're pretty sure what it'll be. Finally, I've created a "Fantasy Football" folder in the nav bar to the left, and will post updates occasionally there. If you're only interested in the fantasy football stuff, that's the place to go.

Are you ready (to help me play) some football??