It’s Week 17, which means that unless your commissioner has no idea what he’s doing, your fantasy season is over.

As such, we’re forgoing the usual mailbag this week, and instead handing out our first-ever year-end fantasy awards (It’s kind of like the Pro Bowl roster announcement, except this matters). I’ve broken down the best and worst of fantasy football players into three categories: the All-Meast Team, the A-1 Value Team, and the All-Disappointment Team. Let’s start with the best of every position:

Inaugural KSK All-Meast Fantasy Team

QB: Aaron Rodgers. True, Brees has more yards passing, but Rodgers has more TDs, half as many INTs, and three times as many rushing yards and rush TDs. Rodgers’s five touchdown passes in the Week 16 championship seals the deal.

RB: LeSean McCoy, Ray Rice. No one came close to touching McCoy this season. Rice edges out Arian Foster (who had slightly more rushing yards) for catching more passes and not being injured early in the season.

WR: Calvin Johnson, Wes Welker. Megatron gets the nod for being the best human in the world at catching TD passes on a week-to-week basis; Welker gets it for total yards and the off chance that you have a PPR league.

TE: Rob Gronkowski. Here’s me in August: “Yeah, Gronkowski’s good, but Hernandez is going to affect how many touches he gets.” I wil never forgive myself for thinking that.

K: David Akers. Seven field goals of 50+ yards. I mean, you can only give Alex Smith’s stalled drives so much credit.

D/ST: Detroit. Whaaaaa? Yes, the 49ers or Ravens may seem like the logical choices here, but those daunting defenses  scored five touchdowns combined this year; the Lions scored an NFL-best seven. Throw in 39 sacks and 32 turnovers, and the Lions D accrued more points than any other unit in most scoring formats.

The 2011 KSK A-1 Value Team

Awarded to the players whose fantasy production far exceeded their average draft value.

QB: Cam Newton. Son of a bitch. I don’t have many fantasy tenets, but one of the few I have is “Rookie quarterbacks are awful.” Newton blew that up with almost 4000 yards passing. And any quibble about his 20/16 TD-INT ratio is more than negated by his 674 rushing yards and 14 rushing TDs. Fourteen! That’s second in the NFL. He’s a quarterback. The world I know is gone. Honorable mention: Matt Stafford.

RB: Marshawn Lynch, Darren Sproles. Depending on the size of your league and how many keepers you have, Lynch was generally available somewhere in rounds five through eight of the typical fantasy draft. In my .5 PPR league, he finished as the 5th overall RB, his slow start negated by scoring at least one touchdown in his final 12 games. As for Sproles, he was available even later — I got him in the 11th round of a 12-team, 2-keeper league — and he turned out to be one of the Saints’ best weapons, accruing over 1200 rushing and receiving yards and nine touchdowns. Bonus points if you had him in a PPR league (81 receptions). Honorable mentions: Fred Jackson, Michael Bush.

WR: Victor Cruz, Jordy Nelson. Two monsters of different makes. Cruz is all talent and speed, making the most of Eli Manning’s catchable passes. Nelson’s no slouch either, but he clearly benefits from a great relationship with the best quarterback in the game. He’s the game’s first white deep threat since… uh… since… come back to me on this one. Honorable mentions: Steve Smith, A.J. Green., Stevie Johnson

TE: Rob Gronkowski. Fuck me. I’d love to give the nod to Jimmy Graham here, but Graham was coveted in every draft I was in. Gronk always went several rounds later.

K: David Akers. If you drafted a kicker before the 14th round, punch yourself in the groin.

D/ST: Seattle. Listen, no one’s more critical of the Seattle defense than I am. They were a no-show in losses to the Niners, Pittsburgh, Cincy, and Dallas. But for a team that you could pick up off of waivers on most weeks, the numbers are great: 31 sacks, 29 turnovers, five touchdowns, and an NFL-best six blocked kicks.

The 2011 All-Disappointment Fantasy Team

I don’t care if they’re injured. Fuck these guys.

QB: Michael Vick. It’s hard to imagine now, but in August, people with mid-first-round picks were actually contemplating, “Vick or Rodgers?” Honorable mention: Josh Freeman.

RB: Jamaal Charles, Chris Johnson. Two magnificent busts for vastly different reasons. Charles, a can’t-miss first-round draft pick, had the kindness to get his season-ending injury in Week 2, which at least let owners get rid of any expectations early on. Johnson, whose prolonged holdout was enough of a worry for anyone who drafted him, rewarded his faithful by recording just one touchdown and one 100-yard game in the first half of the season. To date, his only 100-yard performances have come against Carolina, Tampa Bay, Cleveland, and Buffalo — four of the worst defenses in the game. And yet he’s totaled 89 yards rushing in two games against the Colts. Fuck this guy. Honorable mention: LeGarrette Blount; Tim Hightower. But you deserve that pain if you listened to Peter King.

WR: DeSean Jackson, Andre Johnson. Wide receiver is such a tough field, because there are so many disappointments every year. I had a team whose top receivers were Kenny Britt (injured) and Reggie Wayne (useless until Dan Orlovsky), and yet that team won a chamipnship because of Miles Austin’s hamstring: I traded for Dez Bryant and picked up Laurent Robinson off waivers. Wide receivers are awful. But none more so than DeSean Jackson, who underachieved despite being the only healthy Eagles wideout all year, and Andre Johnson, who’s on par with Calvin Johnson when healthy but never had the decency to just be seriously injured and let his fantasy owners move on. Don’t tease me, man. Honorable mentions: Miles Austin, Kenny Britt, Reggie Wayne, Mike Williams (TB), Austin Collie. If you expected anything of Chad Ochocinco, you’re an idiot and you deserve it.

TE: Jermichael Finley. Don’t be fooled by his solid year-end numbers: this sonofabitch was supposed to be a key target on the Packers’ high-powered offense, and he had ONE good game. It was a preposterous 3-TD game against the Bears, but that was pretty much it for the season. If you wasted an early pick on him, you spent the rest of the season wondering why he wasn’t scoring more TDs. But if you watched the Packers in Week 15, you saw the answer: he gave up what should have been a TD catch that became instead an INT. Damn you! Don’t sully Aaron Rodgers’s stats that way! Honorable mention: Dallas Clark.

K: I will not dignify this with research.

D/ST: Pittsburgh. True, the Steelers pitched two shutouts, but they only forced 14 turnovers all year long. Of course, this is what you get if you go grasping for a traditionally solid defense as soon as other people draft the Ravens and Bears.

DeSean Jackson has already had a disappointing season for fantasy owners who burned a third-round pick on him. His yardage and yards per catch are way down this season, and he’s scored just twice all season. So with a matchup against the Cardinals’ terrible pass defense looming, Jackson is inactive for today’s game because he was late to a team meeting on Friday. Dammit, Andy Reid! Let that little concussion-prone burner run free! I’m trying to make the playoffs here.

Anyhoo, it’s a gigantic slate of early games, with the highlights being some key division matchups and a potential shootout between Buffalo and Dallas. There’s going to be smoke pouring out of the RedZone Channel for the next three hours; I fully expect Andrew Siciliano to collapse and die at 4:15 p.m. Eastern after the final game ends, John Henry-style.

Buffalo @ Dallas (Jim Nantz, Phil Simms) ★★★
Pittsburgh @ Cincinnati (Ian Eagle, Dan Fouts) ★★★
Houston @ Tampa Bay (Marv Albert, Rich Gannon) ★★
Tennessee @ Carolina (Kevin Harlan, Solomon Wilcots) ★★
Denver @ Kansas City (Bill Macatee, Steve Tasker) ★★
Jacksonville @ Indianapolis (Spero Dedes, Steve Beuerlein) ★
New Orleans @ Atlanta (Kenny Albert, Daryl Johnston, Tony Siragusa) ★★★★
Arizona @ Philadelphia (Dick Stockton, John Lynch) ★★
Washington @ Miami (Chris Myers, Tim Ryan) ★
St. Louis @ Cleveland (Ron Pitts, Jim Mora Jr.) I award this game four dog turds.

“You said you wanted a threesome.”

The best thing about bestiality is that the animal doesn’t care if you never call back. You can just hammer out your business in the barn and then go on about your day. Alas, we don’t pursue relationships with animals, but with other people. People with their own needs, their own opinions, and their own little ways of annoying us. People that want to spend time with us, people that want to share animals with us, and people that want to share other people. All these demands for sharing? People can be so selfish sometimes.

Mr. Ufford has handed me the reins this week, and I intend to whip hard, so let’s get to some questions. Heeya!

We open with an earlier request fulfilled, courtesy of reader “WBM.” Sir, the floor is yours.

Hey Punte, I’ve got an early relationship question for you as requested.

I’m about three weeks into dating a new girl. She’s fun, down to earth, not too whiny, makes my penis happy (maybe that should’ve been listed first).

I think you got it right the first time.

I’d say this has got a good shot at lasting a little while. She’s definitely the best option I’ve ran into since I broke up with my ex last fall.

I have no information on that aforementioned “ex,” but there’s something about abandoning a relationship during football season that makes me happy. My penis agrees. We’re both happy. Maybe I should have listed my penis first.

The only weird thing thus far is the fact that she lives two blocks from me. We live in the city and met at this bar that’s a stone’s throw from both of us. At first thought, it sounds great to live that close without actually having to live with the girl. Take a quick walk for some afternoon delight, easily make it home in the morning and get to work on time, or just sleep in your own bed if you don’t want to stay, etc.

Did you type “afternoon delight” with a straight face? You ol’ bastard, you.

However, what’s quickly became an elephant in the room for us is that she now expects me to see her every night, and it’s way too early for that. I’m done with work and the gym by 7, and then she pretty much knows if we’re both at home just watching TV or whatever and wants to do something every night. I can’t exactly lie and say I’m busy if I want some space because she’ll see my car there or see the lights on.

Wow, she can see your car from her apartment? That’s not creepy at all.

If I want to hang out with the bros or just relax and have a night to myself every now and then, I basically have to tell her in not so many words “I don’t want to see you tonight” whereas a bro who isn’t in my position could tell his girl “Let’s hang out Tuesday and Friday this week, I’m busy the rest of the week” and that would suffice.

Those bros have it so good.

It’s not just me wanting space, I think seeing someone every night in the first three weeks of knowing them is major overexposure and could ruin this thing before it even has a chance. So how do you think I should keep this moving at a normal pace without coming off like a dickhead?

I don’t think it’s that bad, as long as going to the usual places isn’t a huge potential issue.

The neighborhood bar is also a huge potential issue

Oh.

as my friends and I go there 2-3 nights a week and the place is littered with past hookups.

Littered? That’s an interesting word selection.

Now I’m going there with her (not my choice, she loves the place) and running into them all the time. What do I do about the other girls at the bar, probably nothing right?

I want you to realize what you’re putting out here: You and your friends visit the same bar twice a week. A bar, mind you, not terribly far from your house. You are meeting woman after woman after woman at this bar. You are making out with them and, to observe your parlance, crumpling them up and tossing them into the rubbish bin. You’ve done this enough times that the collective presence of these women is starting to make you nervous.

Quick aside: I’ve never been in favor of the concept of hooking up, but I’ve never totally understood it. There were a lot of times Back In The Day where I’d meet a girl, things would go well, and I’d never hear from her. It wasn’t until I was a lot older that I eventually realized that, hey, some people just want to fool around for a night and then never pursue the relationship, and that I had even done this on more than one occasion without realizing it.

That doesn’t mean that I’m giving you grief over the hookups–I suspect that some of those women were looking for the same sort of casual experience that you were–but that sort of process doesn’t really lend itself toward stability with another person. One other person. What I’m trying to say is that parts of your brain might wonder why you’ve been fucking the same person for three weeks, and not made changes in accordance with your routine. Am I making any sense here?

So as far as the “overexposure” goes, I’d find an (honest) excuse to stay out one night a week without her, whether it’s a poker night with “a friend of a friend,” a pool league as some bar “all the way across town,” or something involving guns. Women hate guns. But also acknowledge that by sticking with one person that your pace of life will level out to some degree. Sit down with yourself, maybe before you leave the gym one night, and decide if that’s what you really want. I really don’t mean this in a negative way, but you really don’t sound like relationship material. Nothing wrong with that, unless your hair’s starting to fall out.

For Fantasy, we’re doing an auction draft for the first time this fall. What’s some good starting advice? My preliminary thinking is that with the injury turnover and the amount of good FA’s you can find throughout the season, I should break the bank on dependable first and second round talent.

Your loyal reader and occasional commenter,
WBM

Auction drafts are great fun and I wish more people would consider them. The issue is that they tend to run a bit long and most people are terrible at pegging player value while maintaining their own salary budgets. This works to the advantage of patient people who do their homework.

The best advice I can give is to nominate the better-known players early and to continually evaluate the bidding as a group. Are mediocre fantasy players starting bidding wars? Did Kevin Boss just go for $15? Why isn’t anyone bidding on Philip Rivers?

There will be one or two guys in every draft that are nominated when people get gun-shy and hold off on throwing out bids, and someone will scoop them up for a ridiculous price. Don’t spend too much too early (especially on backups) and completely ignore kickers, tight ends and defenses for the first two-thirds of the auction. Good luck and happy bidding.

~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o

Punter,

Football First: I get to keep Peyton Hillis for a 5th round pick

Nice.

and also have the 4th pick in the upcoming draft. With the 4th pick, should I take another RB to pair with Hillis or should I trust him enough to take a top of the line QB or WR? For what it’s worth, passing TD’s are worth six points.

There will enough depth at quarterback this year that might reward waiting until the second round, and depending on the RB depth in your draft pool, I’d suggest doing that. I don’t like Peyton, Rodgers or Brees as fourth overall picks, but grabbing either Tom Brady, Philip Rivers, Matt Schaub or even Ben Roethlisberger in a run at No. 21 gives you good value. If you can wait for any of those guys, I would grab another ball carrier at No. 4 and immediately start shit-mouthing the rest of your league.

Relationships: My girlfriend and I have been dating for longer than 4 months now. We are rather serious and we have both traveled out of the state we both live in to visit the other’s families and meet friends and have talked about scenarios that involve each other in our future plans.

Big steps, sir. Big steps indeed.

We have implied that we love each other but have not come out and said it. My question is how do you know when the right time is to say “I love you” to my girlfriend and how soon is too soon so that I don’t scare her off.

Thanks,
Hillis Guy

There are two times to break out the “I love you” card: too early and too late. You’ll either say it out of angst, just to get it over with, or you drag it out until both of you are bursting at the seems to just say it already and get it over with. Nobody gets it just right, unless a yacht is involved.

I’ll proceed assuming you don’t own a yacht. And I suggest waiting. You’ve only dated for four months. That’s barely enough time to memorize the moles on her ass. I’m not putting that out there as a benchmark; I’m just sayin. There’s no rush, and you’ll be happy you didn’t rush two weeks from now when you find out That One Thing about her that will drive you fucking mad. Wait for that, and if your feelings endure, let them be known.

But be warned, if she says it to you first, this plan doesn’t have to go to hell. It’s not a race, and even if it was, you can’t finish any worse than second.

And I’m sure Ufford would like to congratulate you on finding someone in your own state. That’s harder than it looks, apparently.

~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o

Captain Fill in,

Mmmmmmyessssss? [audio]

First sex:
I’ve been with my girl for about a year and a half, and we have been living together for about the last 8 months. Our relationship is great, we get along, make each other laugh, never fight and rarely argue. When we first got together, she was working nights, so our sex life consisted of nights when she was off.

But she got off! Because you were…and then she…but her boss had to…dammit. I’ll figure out that joke later.

Since April, she has since switched to a day shift, but our frequency of sex has not increased.

Now she gets off every night! But…she doesn’t. Because…

Wait, can I take that one back?

This is not a huge issue for me, as we have great sex when we do have sex, and my sex drive isn’t what it was when I was younger.

I know a guy who had a similar issue. His name is EVERY MOTHERFUCKER ON PLANET EARTH.

But go on.

I do worry that this is something that is bothering her however. I’ve brought it up to her a couple times, and she assures me it is not an issue for her either, as she feels our relationship is based on more than sex, and she enjoys the sex we have when we have it as well. My question is, should I believe her? Or is this something I need to make an effort to improve on?

…Shit, what were we talking about, again? Oh.

So you think that the absence of sex is a leading indicator of trouble for your relationship. That’s a keen ear you have there, friend. That pussy is like a crystal ball; if you put on one of those hats and rub it around the right way, it will tell you the future.

Malfeasance is always the first question read off the Paranoid Gentleman’s Mental Checklist. She was fucking me, now she’s not fucking me. She’s gotta be fucking somebody else! To that I would say, Settle down, Sherlock.

I went from loading trucks at UPS on a twilight sort to working as an accountant in the span of a weekend, and it was a bigger change than I expected. The biggest change of all, despite trading cardboard boxes for commercial paper reports, was the total disappearance of down time.

Instead of intermittent morning classes and missing my girlfriend during the afternoons, I was at work for nine hours and then spent ALL NIGHT WITH MY GIRLFRIEND. And I gotta be honest, it pissed me off a little bit, and I wasn’t even sure at the time that I realized it. Instead of chilling with a book or getting that 75-minute nap I enjoyed each day, I had to put on my boyfriend face and be entertaining.

That blows.

So yeah, your girl might be going through some of that. It sounds like she’s only been on the day shift for a month. Continue being attentive to her needs and give her a little space. But not so much that some other dude’s wang could just come flying in there.

Oh, as for that girlfriend who annoyed me by wanted to be around me and stuff, we got married two years later. Don’t worry, she barely ever read With Leather.

Football:

I am the commissioner of our league and I typically start setting the league up in July, sending out the invites, letting people know the when the fees are due, setting the rules, etc.

I love this. Even when people say it’s too early, it’s just early enough. I had a rules meeting for one of my fantasy leagues two weeks ago. Nothing says “fantasy football” like 12 college-educated people screaming over each other about whether sacks should be worth one point or two points.

My problem right now is, this lockout situation does not look like it will be ending anytime soon, and definitely not by July. Should I still start setting up the league, even with the real threat the season will be starting late?

Thanks
Commissioner Procrastinator

My knee-jerk reaction is to go forward with your league as planned, but then people tend to bitch during summer drafts because the preseason is still going on (or isn’t, in this case) and the top 200 cheat sheets aren’t out yet and Oooh what if my first-round draft pick gets hurt? and all of that.

I know a couple people in the NFL offices and they’re proceeding under the pretense of business as usual, and I don’t know of a better way to proceed. The turnaround from deal-done to kickoff could be as little as a week or two, and getting a dozen dudes with other obligations together in that span of time is a headache you don’t want.

One suggestion would be to drag the draft out longer than your league normally would; email drafts and email auctions are great if your owners sit in front of computers all day. You could offer insurance; an owner whose star player gets hurt could replace him with enhanced waiver priority.

Ultimately, you’re doing all the work, so you do what works for you and assuage the whiners in the order they are received. And if anyone doesn’t like it, you have that much more time to bring in someone new.

~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o

Howdy,

The girl I’ve been seeing for the past 4 months or so is pretty great in every way. However, she has difficulty getting off.

…I got nuthin’.

In fact, she’d NEVER had an orgasm until she was 30 (she’s 33 now), and she’s NEVER had an orgasm while someone else has been in the room (me included).

Lemme guess…washing machine?

So far, she’s only had an orgasm when she’s alone, using her vibrator.

Oh, of course.

She’s tried using the vibrator on herself while I’m with her (SEXY!), but she can’t quite get there–she says because she can’t totally relax and let herself go.

I just have this vision of you in a lab coat and a clipboard behind a pane of glass while your girlfriend mutilates her nether-regions with somebody else’s back massager. She has like all of those suction-cup thingies on her with wires leading to this machine with an EKG readout. And then afterward this disappointed doctor comes in and tries to sugarcoat the whole non-orgasm thing.

“I’m sorry, but the climax results came back negative. We’ve run every single test we can think of. In all me 29 years of medicine, that’s the most belligerent pussy I’ve ever seen.”

Not that any of this is funny.

I don’t have a problem with any of this.

Liar.

Whoops, did I type that?

In the past, I would generally make sure the woman I was with came first, because that would take the pressure off to take care of her after I’d made my O-face.

That’s also good policy for repeat business.

Anyway, the only reasons why any of this is an issue is because: (1) she refers to it as her “problem”, which kind of makes it one even if I don’t think of it as such;

A fine point.

and (2) it’s sometimes difficult to walk the fine line between not worrying about this, but also not ignoring it completely. For example, I’ll occasionally say “hey, is tonight a night where you want to break out your little friend?”, but sometimes she’ll take this to mean “I really want you to deal with this fucking problem” instead of “I’m a dutiful and supportive boyfriend and I’m interested in your pleasure.”

“And I want you to come like the ravenous woman I–” yeah that’s not gonna work.

Anyway, I think I’m doing all the right things (being supportive and open-minded, without obsessing about things), but any advice from you or the Kommentariat is welcome.

P.S. We’re in a long distance relationship. Should I have mentioned that? I keed, I keed…

Oh, Mike. You’re such a kidder. And a good sport, really. Not many guys can say, “Hey, I can’t get my girlfriend off. Help.”

This may not be helpful at all, but I’m reminded of how they treat people that have fear of spiders. They show the phobic party a picture of a spider, then they put a rubber spider on their arm, and then they cap off the treatment with a real, live spider. I don’t know if you want to do this with your penis or not, but just realize that there’s some scientific backing in that process. Just don’t drop a plastic dick on her arm and say, “Well, PUNTE told me to do it.” Though, technically, that would be true.

Then again, this could be the symptom of a deeper issue. Or not. I would keep tabs of the situation without bringing it back up for a while. I think getting the other person off is a big part of intimacy, which is a big part of a relationship, but your shows of concern aren’t bringing about the desired effect. If she still likes it and you’re still getting it and that works for both of you, I wouldn’t be terribly concerned.

If you really want to be helpful, do the dishes or vacuum or something. Chicks dig housekeeping.

~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o

Dear Fantasy “Experts”,

FF First: Of course there is plenty of time to decide what keepers to keep, but I’m anxious to make one over the fact that there is little to look forward to NFL-wise until the butt-pirate owners and the NFLPA execs get their act together.

Because otherwise we’d totally be playing football on Memorial Day weekend!

anyway, my keeper league allows 3 keepers. Keeper has draft day implications as you lose the corresponding pick he was taken in the previous draft, unless waiver wire (WW) claim where he takes your last pick.

Wow…whoever has Peyton Hillis in your league must be dancing a jig.

Last season, my strategy was to keep WW guys who I knew would get drafted and open up more early picks for myself. I kept LDT (WW), Pierre Thomas (WW in 09), and Antonio Gates (6th). Gates is still a solid choice even if he drove me nuts last season with his injury woes. I don’t hold a grudge as I won the league due to waiver claims Danny Amendola (KR/PR yds count), LeGarrette Blount, KC and Dallas D. Crazy right?

Uhhh…

So my other choices are Jamaal Charles (5th), Matt Forte (8th), Reggie Wayne (1st), Wes Welker (3rd), Eli Manning (4th), or Matt Ryan (7th). Also, 6 pt Passing TD, non-PPR. Welker and Wayne seem overvalued, but Charles and Forte seem way undervalued to me. Ryan with the addition of Julio Jones could be a great investment too. So my first question is do I go with the guys I see as undervalued or do I stick to the same waiver wire keeper strategy? Second question, who do you recommend?

I fell off the truck somewhere around Danny Amendola. Why don’t I just do your taxes for you next year? That’d be easier.

Sex: I’m married with small children so sex is few and far between.

YOU MARRIED SMALL CHILDREN?!?! YOU POLYGAMIST SICKASS! I OUGHTA oh, with small children! I totally missed that.

Her sexual drive has been down since we started having kids (she used to wear me out). Our 8 month old still sleeps in our bed nursing half the night.

That’s disgusting. No, really. I’m fundamentally opposed to the family bed idea, but I’ll let you finish before I climb onto the soapbox.

Recently, when we get both kids in their own beds and I do get a green light there is plenty of oral and it is usually hot but quick sex. So I’m happy with what I am getting right now, but we’ve been much more adventurous in the past and I’m interested to get back to that. How should I get that train rolling again when she has little desire anyway?

Full disclosure: I don’t have kids, and I try really hard to not make it my business to raise anyone else’s. But that door swings both ways: I don’t tell anyone what a shitty parent she is, and I don’t listen to her whine about my language in front of her impressionable little shit. YOUR CHILD WILL LEARN THESE FUCKING WORDS EVENTUALLY, YOU POOR EXCUSE FOR A MOTHER!

With that said, I’m saying with confidence that your little one is fucking up your sex life, and if you don’t stop that shit in its tracks, you may never get your dick wet again. But you can’t just run up to your wife and plainly lay out your perfectly-legitimate complaint. You’ll get shot down. If she won’t even compromise with keeping the baby’s crib in your bedroom, then my advice is to play off the paranoia of the mother. Here are some family bed facts:

Do your part to make sure the kid is tired before bed: play with him, take him outside, keep him away from sugar and sweets as soon as you get home. Feed him turkey, if you can do that to a baby. Hell if I know. But this will wear down your target and it also gives your wife a bit of a break from the baby. And them drop that little shit in the crib and watch him pass the fuck out. Offer to bottle feed in advance if there’s crying in the night. The critical juncture here is putting your wife’s mind at ease with the idea of the kid being out of arm’s reach.

I understand that you love your child, but gaaddammit, that little fucker has his own room for a reason.

And on another subject, with almost a week between encounters, is it advisable to introduce a new toy? She’s got a rabbit-dong combo and has enjoyed using it while I plow her brown eye a couple times. This is awesome, but she makes me use a condom and we all know how much those
suck.

Wait a minute, did you just say that she won’t let you raw-dog it in the pooper? Why did you marry this woman?

Also the rabbit-dong is bulky and difficult to maneuver. So I want to try a strap-on to double penetrate her, then she can just finger or use the rabbit part or another vibrator for her clitoris.

I was just about to suggest that.

I might just wait for her birthday in July, but then is that a good birthday gift? Hey, I got this to stick in your caboose? I don’t know. As long as she doesn’t think it’s for my caboose.

Up yours truly,
DP Champ

Sexy birthday gifts strike me as playing with fire. This might be a good week-before-birthday kind of thing. Something to the effect of “I know you’re birthday’s next week, but I just couldn’t wait to give you this.” And then next week, get her a nice seat cushion for her actual birthday. Sounds like she’s gonna need it.

Toot-toot!

~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o

Substitute Sultan of Snooch,

This is my leader in the clubhouse for salacious salutations this week.

Fantasy: Each year I’m always on the fence about whether to draft my favorite team’s players (The Bears) or stay away from them like the plague. I find myself doubly pissed when they have a shit game and lose, but on the flip side, there are times when I’m almost rooting against them if they’re playing one of my fantasy players. Any advice on how to balance beating the shit out of my friends and also not being a douchebag who cares more about his fantasy team then real life results?

I’m a Bengals fan, so rooting against Cincinnati has not only become easy, but profitable. And I nearly made it a point to hate every prominent Bengals skill player over the last ten years, with the exception of Cedric Benson. He just seems like my kind of guy.

I’ve seen guys quit fantasy altogether because they couldn’t rationalize their respective ways out of your quandry, which is dumb to me. It’s not like you’re dodging gunfire from the Rwandan Armed Forces and you have to decide whether to run for the Zaire border or go back and find your family. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s not like you assholes are making the Super Bowl anyway.

Not-So-Sexy Sexy Time: I made the mistake of dating someone I work with who ended up being Satan incarnate.

Never shit where you eat. Unless a copy machine is involved. Then, it’s awesome.

Of course, her horns and pitchfork didn’t actually become visible until we were living together and she began sharing her lady garden with one of our married coworkers.

Wow.

The side of that coin that was our relationship got dealt with swiftly when I threw her out and made sure the psychological damage was medicated with a steady stream of good bourbon and college sluts, but the question now becomes what do I do when I see a.) her and b.) him.

That would depend on whether you work closely or have any sort of work responsibility interaction.

We luckily don’t work closely or have any sort of work responsibility interaction

I see.

but we’re going to bump into each other. Perhaps an even bigger question is what do I do with the photographic evidence of them being complete shitbags.

KissingSuzyKolber. At. Gmail. This isn’t rocket surgery.

Mail them to her parents? Email them to his wife? Work distribution list? The high road seems pretty unattainable in this case since my bloodlust for vengeance seems to only be surpassed by her lust for fresh penis.

Slutdater

Well, I’d advise against the work distribution, not only because the damage there could be severe and irrevocable, but because the chances of that being traced back to you are fairly high. I’m an advocate of “The best revenge is living well,” but that said, I’m just gonna drop this out here for your consideration.

~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o

Football – I live in Australia. For the last 4 or 5 years I’ve played fantasy football on NFL.com or Yahoo. While it’s ok, it doesn’t have the same punch as being able to talk smack with a group of people you know. Also, as there’s no buy-in and no ramifications, about half of the comp is usually not setting rosters by week 4. Last season there wasn’t a single trade in my comp, which sucked. Being an aussie, I don’t know any more than 2 or 3 people who know anything about NFL, let alone important details like the difference between a manning face and a laser face. So what’s the best way in my situation to get some proper fantasy football action? Obviously I should spend some money somewhere – but where?

Any interest in joining me in a world-wide fantasy football league, with one owner from 12 different countries? Email me if you do. That would be crazy fun. If you’re not interested, then fuck you.

Sex – I’ve recently started dating a pretty awesome girl that I met at work. She’s quite athletic and was in the Australian swim team a few years ago. We do heaps of cool things together – but – she has big shoulders, no ass and a slightly iffy smell.

I think you’ve found my female doppelganger. Does she have a shaved head and a donkey porn fetish?

She thinks the sexual chemistry is great, on the other hand I’m becoming less sexually attracted every day. While I want to hang with her, I’m also checking out other chicks a lot more than normal and feel pretty shitty because of it. A few weeks ago she told me she was falling in love. Obviously I didn’t respond in the same way, and it hasn’t come up again.

However now she wants us to buy a dog together, she’s bought us primo tickets to a big rugby league game next week and she’s planning an overseas trip at the end of the year. I would love to do these things and couldn’t imagine a better person to do it with. No pressure, but how do I convert this into an awesome friendship rather than a romance?

What kind of dog?

~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o

Douches,

However, at week 9 last year, he traded Vick straight up for $10 worth of Brett Favre brain goo. I have still yet been explained why this trade was agreed upon. This topic appears to be the Area 51 of our league. Yet, understandably, it still infuriates me. He needs to be punished though. I think that he should have to keep Favre this year for being such a dumbass. Thoughts?

I’m really not a fan of vetoing trades or “competitive balance” or anything like that, but the challenge is to keep the interest of the shitty owners that are out of the running by week 10. It’s hard to do that without either league-approved trades or paying out for end-of-the-season performance (best record for last 3-4 games, etc.). Alas, the one thing we can’t legislate out in fantasy is stupidity, and your league seems to have an abundance of it.

Here’s an email I got from a commissioner of one of my leagues, who wanted a take on a dubious trade in one of his other leagues:

I’m in one other NFL league at work this year. I’ve already told some of you about its bizarre rules (best example: home teams get an automatic +3 advantage, which has already given me one loss and one tie this season where I’d have had two wins and been undefeated). It’s a twelve team league on ESPN.

This morning one of the teams made the following trade:

Drew Brees, 5th ranked QB
Terrell Owens, 7th ranked WR
Percy Harvin, 25th ranked WR

for

Brett Favre, 29th ranked QB
Rashard Mendenhall, 10th ranked RB

My query to the group is whether this trade is significantly unfair or just marginally unfair. The latter team is 0-4-1 (again, thanks in part to that stupid +3 thing), but basically just traded away its three best players for Favre and Mendenhall.

One final note: typically we have votes on trades in this league. This trade did not have a vote — probably because the commissioner was the guy getting Brees, Owens, and Harvin.

Be thankful you’re not in that league.

Sex: My wife tells me that I have a tendency to talk in my sleep (especially after drinking). I have been blessed with a very explicit sexual dream-bank(?) as well. It’s only a matter of time before I’m getting a BJ from Tori Black in my subconscious. I know that one day I will say some other chick’s name in my sleep. It’s inevitable. How do I play this off without sounding like a cheater or sexual deviant?

Thanks!
–Freddy Rumsen

I doubt your wife would immediately disclose anything you said subconsciously to her; a woman’s play there would be to just tuck that name away and wait to see if it came up in wide-awake conversation. It’s good advice in general to not mention other women’s names in front of your wife, and it’s doubly so for anyone that might be blurting out nonsense in bed, awake or otherwise.

I’m not a fan of screaming out women’s names anyway. It’s not like there’s anyone else in the room. Usually.

~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o~~~o ~~~o ~o ~~~o

Hola amigos de futbol! (that’s 80% of the Spanish I know right there).

Press 1 to read this mailbag in English.

Football: how bad are the Seahawks going to suck this year? I am doing some late summer/fall planning and the answer is important. I won’t even bother to ask about WSU . . .

The cloudy quarterback picture doesn’t help anything. Pete Carroll seems content to push the oft-injured Matt Hasselbeck out the door before an able replacement presents himself. Charlie Whitehurst isn’t the answer, so they’ll be bringing in someone new. Someone who didn’t have a job last year, and is therefore shitty. They won’t skate past the Rams again in the West. If you put a gun to my head, I’d say six wins would be realistic for them.

Sex: Me and my dirty little angel (aka my wife of five years) have mutually decided that now is probably the right time for us to make a baby or two. The problem, and one I should probably ask an actual doctor about but instead will go to KSK with: When me and the Mrs. are getting after it it is not uncommon for me to finish first.

You don’t say.

To my question: If the goal is to get her pregnant, do we need to stop sex after I ejaculate? I am no engineer but even with a layman’s understanding of fluid mechanics it seems like continuing on after I am spent might be defeating the purpose. A purpose anyway.

–Buhnerful

I really don’t have the medical expertise to give a real answer for you, so here’s a video of a turtle fucking a shoe.

We need to hear from you before Monday to claim your prize, or else we’ll consider it unclaimed, and start handing them out to the next-best finishers. If they don’t respond before next Friday, then tough toenails for everyone. Use the EMAIL PUNTER addy in the sidebar to get in touch.

Congrats to our winners and thanks to everyone that participated.

Holy hell, it’s hot outside. But the more uncomfortable it becomes outside the closer we get to 350 pound men suffering through two-a-days. And when that time comes, it becomes socially acceptable (relatively speaking) to start obsessing over your upcoming fantasy football draft. Sadly, we’re still weeks away from that, but it doesn’t mean we can’t get in the spirit of things a bit early.

That’s why this week you’ll be drafting your all-time fantasy football team. It’s pretty simple, really. You pick a player and a year, wait for at least ten people to pick after you, then select again. By the end you should have filled out a starting fantasy football lineup (1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DEF/ST), and whichever commenter can claim to have the highest point total (1 point for 10 yards rushing/receiving, 1 for 25 yards passing, 6 for rushing/receiving touchdowns, 4 for passing touchdowns, -1 for interceptions) can declare themselves the winner of this furtive time wasting activity.

The ceremonial first pick of the draft is…OJ in 1975! Say what you want about the murder and that other crime for which he was actually convicted, that ’75 season was fantasy magic. That was the year he amassed 2243 yards from scrimmage and 23 touchdowns in a 14 game season. Extrapolate that over the modern 16 game season and you get nearly 414 fantasy points (granted, it’s not the all-time record, but the difference is negligible).

Now it’s your turn. Please pay attention to the rules. And no biting.

Millions of people play fantasy football. Most of them never win anything. The vast majority of these losers fail in uninteresting ways. Occasionally, one of them will break through with a masterstroke of disappointment. We have three readers who fit that bill. But first, one sob story of my own:

One of my four fantasy teams the past two seasons has been in a league comprised of fellow Pittsburgh fans and bloggers. Yes, yes, I know – “Are all your teams named Sixburgh36 and HEREWiiGoStillers6xChamps? Let me guess – Heath Miller went in Round 1″ Haha, no, but seriously, shut up. Anyway, it’s an eight-team league with one significant wrinkle I didn’t catch before the first season – every team makes the playoffs. Not sure why I missed it then, but then who the hell creates fantasy leagues where everyone makes the playoffs? It renders the entire regular season meaningless. You could theoretically finish 0-14 and win the championship. It’s goddamn stupid. Still, no one (to my knowledge) purposefully tanked any games.

Naturally, this rule bit me in the ass right away. I finished the first season 11-3, had the top seed in the playoffs, led the league in scoring, only for it all to come crashing down in the semifinals against a team that finished 6-8 during the season. Suffice it to say, I was pissed and responded by bitching as pathetically as I could about the policy. Surely, it would not stand another year.

Of course, flash forward to this season and, lo and behold, all the teams are still making the playoffs. Once again, I posted another 11-win season. Didn’t lead the league in scoring, but was still in the top 3. No way the same fate would befall me this time, I thought.

And I was right. IT WAS WORSE. I lost my opening playoff game to a team that went THREE AND F*CKING ELEVEN in the regular season. I played the same guy in the final week of the regular season and beat him by 35 points. In the playoffs against me, he posted his highest scoring output of the season by 20. I had Drew Brees and Cop Speed Zulu put up rare pedestrian numbers. IT HAPPENED AGAIN! I’M THE COLTS OF THIS LEAGUE!

Even if they change the policy next year, I’ve been screwed enough that I couldn’t possibly take it again. Plus, knowing my luck, they’d make the change and I would respond by finishing 5-9.

I hate this game.

Now to tales of reader fantasy woe.

Week 8 of the fantasy season and my team, StallworthSpeedBumps, is coming off of two straight wins to enter the black at 4-3 on the backs of Drew Brees, Marques Colston, DeSean Jackson, and Cedric Benson. This is important because I play in a league primarily composed of hardcore ex-football players, a $250 buy-in, merciless mocking (like making fun of my dead parents with a little orphan Annie avatar), and because I’m unemployed at the time and a $2000 league title would sure be nice. To be extra accurate, we use such rules a fractional points, negative points for missed PATs, etc.

Chris

That’s a bad one, but then it’s still only one regular season game. Not gonna ruin your year on its own.

I’m in two seperate leagues, a redraft and a keeper, and this week both of my teams were in the the semifinal game. I’d like to just win 1….seems fair, yes?

Adam

That first one’s a nutpunch, but the second is a little iffy. Most weeks, Steve Smith should outscore Nicks. Still, sucks for both to go out at once. On a related note, last week prolific commenter Otto Man e-mailed us asking us if he should start Foster, to which we replied that he should. Which is yet enough in a long line of examples of us being clueless idiots.

Brothers in Bukkake

Non-homosexually yours,
DeSean (formerly Westbrook) Is My Anti-Drug

Good to know someone feels my pain.

Okay, one more, just because this guy was dumb and deserved his fate.

Meachem-Gate

Is it possible that such a perfect cluster-fuck of circumstances existed anywhere else in Football Fantasia such as this….

Week 13, I’m squaring off against 1st place team in our league. I’m in 4th with the most points. If I win, I’m in first place (200 clam payout) + #1 seed heading into the playoffs. My opponent has Meachem. As of Sunday night, I have the lead by less than 1 point with Ray Rice left to play on Monday. My opponent has no one left to go, so I figure I got the win locked up. Monday afternoon Yahoo has subtracted points from Meachem, so I’m now up by about 4. I sit Ray Rice…..whether to gloat, or to prevent something fluky happening where he loses points and then gets injured…well, the jury is still out. I go to bed on Monday figuring everything is square. Come Tuesday – Yahoo fist fucks me with the +6 offensive return fumble points for Meachem. Rice had 10pts. I leave him in and everything’s fine. I’ve now lost 1st place….down to 6th seed, and no money. The league votes on whether or not to allow Rice’s points/change the scoring of the Meachem play. I get no sympathy. I proceed to lose to the highest scoring team in round 1 of the playoffs. If I had the #1 seed, I’d currently be sitting in the finals given how things have gone since then.

Beat that Kolber-Nation
-Never sitting anyone again

You, sir, didn’t just lose, you received karmic comeuppance. Why would you ever sit players to gloat, especially when overall points scored is a tiebreaker in many leagues? And what would make you think Ray Rice would get negative points? Yours was a well-earned humiliation.

We’ve been over this before: Lee Evans is fantasy football AIDS. Lee Evans is like a $100-dollar bill from a country that doesn’t even exist anymore. He’s a mirage. For Lee Evans’ projected totals for 2009, every fantasy magazine should simply read, “Seriously?” There’s no redeeming value to his production whatsoever.

And so I took him in the third round.

The much-heralded KSK Keeper League has produced two champions and one engagement in its brief existence, but it also has produced an assortment of chicanery, stupidity, and inappropriate remarks about other fantasy owners’ mothers. So it seems only fair to show you how the fantasy sausage is made. Some of you won’t care about this at all. You’re excused. The rest of you can tag along in the following liveblog, set to start at 7. You can see the board of selections and participants here. But yeah, it’s other people’s fantasy football.

We’ll keep the porchlight on through Hard Knocks if the draft spills over, but in the interim, enjoy, if that’s possible.

Note: If you’re one of those people that doesn’t want to hear about fantasy teams, best move along to the next post. This one’s pretty self-indulgent.

For years I avoided playing fantasy football because I’m very protective of my free time, and I already spend too much time staring at this goddam computer screen.  I finally caved last year because Yahoo’s Andy Behrens made a 12-team blogger league where we could play for free.  I made the six-team playoffs, finished fifth, and was hooked.

This year, with a girlfriend living in London and a ghost of a social life, I fell off the deep end.  I drafted Tom Brady first overall and Marc Bulger as his backup, and my immediate need for a decent quarterback bred in me an obsessive-compulsive streak to tweak my roster.  In 14 weeks I’ve made 36 moves (not counting the four waiver moves this week), 20 more than the second-most active manager.  I engineered two of the three trades in the league (Ryan Grant to Behrens for Kurt Warner in late September, and BenJarvus and Pennington to Shanoff for Brandon Marshall and Matt Schaub just before the trade deadline – SUCKA!).

And you wanna know what excessive tinkering gets you?  A 6-7 record after you single-handedly mismanage your way out of at least three wins.  Some of my fantasy highlights this season:

Week 3: I’m 2-0, but goddammit, T.J. Houshmandzadeh is NOT producing.  I bench that fuckface against the Giants for Bryant Johnson — he’s totally due for a breakout!  And he’s playing the Lions!  Housh gets 146 yards and touchdown for 20 points, Bryant gets me two for a net loss of 18 points.  I lose to Unsilent Majority by nine.  I swear to God it made sense at the time.

Week 8: I’m up against Shanoff, who notoriously sucks at fantasy.  When I find out that his starting WR Santonio Holmes will be sitting out after his pot bust, I taunt him over email. His sincere response is “Thanks! I wouldn’t have realized it otherwise!”  He starts Kevin Walter in his place, who gets 70 yards and two TDs as Shanoff — who didn’t even start a kicker or defense — beats me by three points.  Also, I start Jeff Garcia instead of Warner.  I fucking hate myself.

Week 9: It’s Sunday morning, and the only QBs on Daulerio’s roster are Philip Rivers (bye) and Carson Palmer (out).  I use my four expendable roster spots to pick up any QB who might be worth a shit, leaving him only the run-heavy Ravens’ Flacco against the Browns.  Flacco gets 17 points, I lose.  Granted, I lost by more than 17, but I bring this one up because the Yahoo projections predicted I’d score 93 to Daulerio’s 62.  Daulerio beats me 90-72.  Fuck you, Yahoo projections.

Week 12: I desperately need a win against Maj to have a realistic shot at the playoffs.  Late in the week, with Brandon Jacobs looking iffy for the Arizona game, I plug in Derrick Ward for LenDale White, who’ll be facing the run-tough Jets.  Eight minutes before kickoff, the word is that Jacobs will play, and I see that 67% of Yahoo players are starting LenDale, considerably higher than the percentage starting Ward.  I freak out and make a knee-jerk switch.  White gets 1 touch and zero points.  Jacobs doesn’t play, and Ward gets 15 points.  I lose by 12.  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

In the end, with a miraculous Week 13 win against league points leader Behrens, I jumped ahead of three teams to make the playoffs at 6-7, despite my best efforts to fuck everything up.  And who cares what happens in the playoffs, man.  All I care is that I’m playing.  That’s all I want out of fantasy football, every week, 52 weeks a year.  Just to have an added rooting interest in the games.  GIVE IT TO FORTE YOU STUPID FUCK LOVIE!

I’m going to be suicidal come Week 17.

This week, we’re holding the second annual KsK Kares Kharity Drive for Fisher House, which helps build temp housing for disabled veterans and their families. You can donate directly to FH here.

I played in five fantasy football leagues this year; I didn’t make the playoffs in any of them. I bought the magazines and everything, did the research, had discussions about certain players with my friends. And now, All my minutes of waiver wire shopping and proposing shitty trades to Rob Iracane seem to have gone for naught, and so now I’m out $200 and wondering why I didn’t just roll those fantasy mags into a bonfire and throw myself on top of it.

Some people think fantasy sports are just glorified gambling, while others have said that such practices run on websites actually infringe on proprietary information of the NFL. Fuck those people, I say. They’re overlooking the greatest injustice of all: that fantasy football can make somebody like me, a guy who does nothing but watch football, feel like a total football idiot.

Football is, now more than ever, my life. I’ve watched more action in 2008 than I ever watched in the 80s, 90s, or aughts…combined. I write about it, I think about it, I study it. How the fuck could I be so bad at this? Why can’t this just be like sex, where I could just stay drunk the whole time and receive insincere compliments the next morning?

The prime issue might be that I just pour hours of prep into my draft board and then, once that process of picking my cadre of statistical fuckups is over, I take the rest of the fall off. In other words, I run my team exactly the way Mike Brown runs the Bengals. Maybe I should hire a general manager, too.

So now I have to watch everyone else in the leagues I FUCKING RUN AS COMMISSIONER chase that virtual championship, while I sit idly by with my dick in my hand and think of new rules that will fuck everybody over next year. Did you fucks even pay your league fees? I hate this shit.

Oh, but congrats to everyone that made the playoffs in their leagues. I hope you choke on each other’s cocks.