They say that, in the lobby of the Rio All Suite Hotel and Casino where the World Series of Poker is held, they have a booth set up where you can sidle up, pay a dollar and tell your “bad beat” story. It’s supposed to be cathartic, a way to get the tale told to a sympathetic ear in hopes of moving on more quickly. Well, that’s what this blog post is serving as today: a forum to tell perhaps the worst “bad beat” story in the history (well, at least my history) of fantasy football.
Going into last night’s Redskins-Iggles game, I was up by 80 freaking points. 80. I had 131 points, my opponent had 51. He had Michael Vick still yet to play, but that was the only bullet left in his gun (Vick reference intentional).
So by the time I flipped over to the game, Vick had run for a touchdown, thrown for an 88-yard touchdown and was just moments away from throwing for another. The ‘Skins, playing what appeared to be some type of Tecmo Bowl defense, then allowed another long touchdown throw (which was sketchy) and another Vick touchdown. In less than a half of football, Vick had already racked up 69 points -- by himself.
Not wanting to sit around only to watch a historical moment in fantasy football history happen to my team, I turned off the game with three minutes left in the first half and went to bed, secure in the knowledge that I would somehow lose in an almost unlosable fashion. Of course, this morning I got up to see that Vick had scored 87 points.
Read that again.
Mind you, this is the most points ever scored by a single player in the history of our league. And it is easily the most ridiculous loss in the history of our league.
As if I needed yet another reason to want Vick to contract an incurable disease, apparently the Eagles didn’t call off the dogs (Vick reference intentional). In snatching defeat from the jaws (Vick reference intentional) of victory in an almost incomprehensible way, I didn’t, in fact, advance to 7-2-1 and lock up a playoff berth. Instead, losing 138-131, I fell to 6-3-1 and all of a sudden brought a handful of teams who were essentially out of contention back into it.
Over at NC State, football coach Tom O’Brien said before the season that he wasn’t necessarily asking for his team to go through a season with no injuries and at full health -- all he wanted from the football gods was a “normal” season as it relates to injuries, instead of the mind-numbing litany of physical ailments that had struck the Wolfpack over and over and over again in 2008 and 2009.
All I wanted this year for the Scooters was a “normal” season of fantasy football as it related to luck and the impossible. In jumping out to a 6-1-1 start, I was playing on a level playing field and taking full advantage with a stellar team. Now, from beyond the grave, the fantasy football ghosts of the past few seasons have seized the Scooters’ cleat strings yet again. Can the Scooters push through and weather an almost unfathomable setback? We’ll find out soon.
Sometimes all you can do is laugh at situations like this. And someday, I’ll look back at this and have a chuckle.
Today is not that day.
Death to Ron Mexico.
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