The Scooters Assume Fetal Position For Inevitable Rogering By Lady Luck

Over the years here on Scooter & Hum, I’ve documented some of the truly insane bits of shit luck I’ve head in fantasy football. And yes, you can’t throw a rock without hitting someone who has a woe-is-me, bad-beat fantasy football story, so I understand the whining-is-poor-form aspect of it. I get that, I really do.

I also get the superstitious side of things. I don’t consider myself overly superstitious in most areas of life, but when it comes to fantasy football, I’ve been forced to become a believer. That’s why, based on my horrific run of luck in fantasy football spanning the best few years, when my team suffered an insane, last-minute loss to Michael Vick/Ron Mexico last week, I started to get a really, really bad feeling about this season.

You see, I was sitting at 6-1-1 at one point. Even after acceding a loss due to mind-numbering bye-week woes, I romped all over a division opponent the following week to push my record to 7-2-1 and officially secure a playoff berth.

Except I didn’t.

I began to view the Vick/Mexico Incident (which I still can’t fully talk about) as an omen, a harbinger of impending fucked-over-ness. And sure enough, the fantasy locusts began to ascend. Frank Gore and Dan Carpenter, two consistent mainstays this season, put their faces on the same milk carton. Kenny Britt’s hamstring separated into multiple pieces and stayed that way. Nate Kaeding healed as slowly as, well, a kicker. Michael Crabtree got abducted in a San Francisco gay bar. Reggie Bush was a late scratch even though he almost played against Carolina two weeks ago and somehow still remained unhealthy after a bye week and another week. Which sucked because every source indicated he would play and he was a 4 p.m. start, so he was in my lineup when the TV panned to him wearing huge Kardashian-ass sweatpants. Even Kevin Kolb is laughing at me as he dog-sits for Vick/Mexico.

So my team is all of a sudden 6-4-1, and even with a 5-2 division record, is now in danger of missing the playoffs altogether. Eight of the 14 teams in our league are still in playoff contention in this, the final week of the fantasy football regular season. But the good news is that if I win, I win the division title and nail down my automatic postseason spot. Yet the superstitious, bad-luck-recognizing part of me knows somewhere deep down inside that that’s not going to happen. It thinks my team isn’t strong enough to withstand the Vick/Mexico Incident.

But then you walk out of a Food Lion with a $4.99 pumpkin pie to be given to coworkers for a Thanksgiving pot-luck lunch at a UK-based company on a beautiful November morning and sometimes you realize you just have to laugh.

Because that’s all you can do.