Disclaimer: links used in this post apply to the 2015 fantasy football season. If you're reading this post in the future, take a minute to find the current versions of the pages I talk about.
Congratulations, football fan. You've successfully made it through the offseason and now as training camps begin, you're counting down the days until the new season is officially underway. While this time of the year is all about seeing what newly drafted rookies are made of and players fighting for NFL roster spots, it also marks the start of a different kind of football: fantasy football. That's right, the beloved game within a sport that's played by millions is also getting underway, and whether you're a league commissioner, veteran, or newcomer, you know that there is one rapidly approaching day which will play a large role in determining the fate of your season: draft day.
While many fantasy football players will call their draft one of their favorite events of the year, it is also a very nerve-wracking one, as it seems near impossible to predict the performance of hundreds of players in the upcoming season. However, if your goal is to end the season hoisting a trophy, earning bragging rights, or even collecting a cash prize, it's no secret that you're going to need a strong draft. But how exactly do you make sure you end up with a roster that will lead you to glory? Well, that's where I come in.
I've been around fantasy football since I was six, and owned my first team when I was eight, giving me about ten years of experience with the game. During these years I've learned a lot, but perhaps no lesson has been more valuable than this: there is no surefire way to have success at fantasy football. I'm sorry to break it to you, but some players have breakout seasons, while others become bust, become injured, or even suspended. For instance, Adrian Peterson's 2014 season was cut to just one game after he was suspended for child abuse. This meant that every fantasy owner who drafted him in the first round saw their season blow up in their face. My goal is to give you the information you need to draft intelligently so you end up with a competitive, fun team. We all like winning, but just as important is having a team of players you like that you will enjoy cheering for.
One last thing before we get underway, though. This is not going to be about which players I like and hate or think could surprise people or tear an ACL in week 1 warmups. I'll let you do your own research and discover your diamonds in the rough. This will be more about tips on what you should do to prepare for the draft, what positions you should take in certain rounds, what to do with rookies, and so on. Additionally, not limiting my information to players I like at the time of writing makes the guide timeless, as the tips given should be as helpful in 2015 as in 2025 and beyond.
The very first thing you should do to prepare for your draft is simply to know what kind of league you are playing in. How many players are in your league? An 8-team league is very different from a 12-team league. For instance, if both leagues had a standard 15-round draft, the 12-team league would draft 60 more players, meaning much more emphasis is placed on players in later rounds. Does your league start two quarterbacks? Is there a flex position, and if so, can you start a running back there or just a wide receiver or tight end? Is it a PPR, or point per reception league? If so, slot receivers and pass-catching backs become much more valuable. Do you start defensive players, or just a team defense? Do you start two wide receivers or three? Are there yardage bonuses for players? All these questions could influence which kind of players you should draft, or when you should draft them.
Once you know all the specifics about your roster and points system, the next step is actually doing some research on players. Trust me, this does not need to be super extensive, and sometimes superfluous information can just make everything more confusing. However, you should definitely know things like who the starting running back is on each team, or the members and order of the committee if multiple backs are expected to receive carries. You should have an idea of the important moves in free agency, and which teams the big name players switched to. For instance, if a star wide receiver has gone from a Super Bowl contender to a bottom-feeder, his value will not be the same as in prior years. You should also check up on all the injured players in the league, to make sure you don't draft someone who won't be playing for most of the year. If a player has no timetable for return, generally he should be avoided unless he is a true superstar, in which case he becomes an option if he starts slipping through the cracks during the draft.
With a basic idea of the changes from last season to the current one, now you should start making a gameplan by coming up with a list of guys you want to draft. What I like to do is make a list of guys in the four main positions (QB, RB, WR, TE) that are potential targets, and list out where you believe they will each go in the draft. You should have an idea of how many of each position you want to draft, and then create different tiers of players. For instance, here's how I would make plans for drafting two quarterbacks. I would take the top couple quarterbacks in the league and put them into my star category, and list where I think they will be drafted. Estimates of where players are drafted can be found at a number of places, such as the Yahoo draft analysis page: http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/f1/draftanalysis?pos=ALL, and the ESPN live draft results page: http://games.espn.go.com/ffl/livedraftresults?position=ALL. For instance, if I'm in a 10-team league, and my top quarterback seems to be going around pick 15, I'll label him as a 2. If my next quarterback is around pick 20, I'll label him a 2/3, since he could either go in the second or third round depending on the draft. After I do this for my best couple QBs, I'll move on to my solid starter category. If I don't get one of the top quarterbacks, I'll still be happy starting these guys. Then I'll make a list of backup quarterbacks. For this group, you're looking at guys that probably won't end up as someone's starter. In a 10-team league, this means the 11th best quarterback and below.
When I'm looking at backups, I have a couple things in mind. First, my starting quarterback should be projected to do a good bit better than my backup, so my backup will probably only end up starting on my starter's bye week, if my starter plays the league's best defense, or if the backup plays the worst defense. So for a guy who will only start a couple times at most, I can be a little more lenient on my player selection. I'll typically go for either my favorite team's quarterback, a good quarterback coming off a poor season, or a rising star who could end up a top-10 QB by the end of the year. There's no point in settling for someone who's an average signal caller in the league year after year. This a definitely a position to take a chance.
So once quarterbacks are done, I would do the same for the other positions, starting with tight end. Why tight end next? Well, they're pretty similar to quarterbacks in terms of fantasy football. Most league's start one, a roster should never have more than two of them (excluding 2-QB leagues), and there's typically a couple a small group of elite ones that separate themselves from the pack. So again, take the elite tight ends (usually not more than two here), and the other solid top-10 or 12 or however big your league is, and group them and note their draft positions. If you want a second tight end, do the same for backups, although I don't advocate drafting two because there simply aren't enough good ones, and on your starting tight end's bye week you can simply drop your worst bench player to pick up a tight end to play for one week.
Running backs and wide receivers are slightly different just because there are much more of them starting in the league and more will be drafted. For instance, if a fantasy team has two quarterbacks and one tight end, it may also have four running backs and six wide receivers. This means that instead of just having a couple players in a couple different tiers, many more players must be sorted. For these positions, I prefer more of a continuous list of players I want to draft rather than specific tiers. So I'll end up with a list of maybe 20 running backs and 25 wide receivers again by projected draft round. However, what I'll do now is take my big list and divide it into a couple sections. My first section will contain players that I want to be the best RB or WR on my team. The next grouping will be for my RB2 and WR2s, followed by a group of RB3s and WR3s and so on.
What I'll end up with is a guide so when I'm drafting I make sure to grab someone in each group. If other people in my league undervalue my players, and I have a chance to grab two RB2s, that's great, and it means I'll only need one player out of the RB3/RB4 group. However, if most of my WR3s are being taken and I don't have one yet, I know that my next pick should be one of those receivers before I fall behind.
The end goal with these groups of quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends is to give flexibility during the draft so we don't have to scramble and pick someone we don't want to. If we're in round five, we should be able to look at our rankings and have players from a couple of different positions available that we feel comfortable selecting. Then all we have to do is see what positions we've already drafted and select our next player according to our needs. Sure, it takes some work, but nothing worth having comes easy.
The last thing I would advise to do before drafting is going online and practicing through a mock draft. There are many different places to mock draft online, and I've found that participating in mocks can be very helpful because it's one thing to have a plan, but executing it against other real people while under a time limit is another thing entirely. It'll help you get used to the process and adapting to different situations.
When entering a mock draft, try to pick one as close as possible to your league settings. This means joining a draft with as many people as are in your league, and with as similar rosters as possible. Additionally, if you know ahead of time what draft pick you will have in your actual draft, make sure you choose that spot in your mock. If you aren't sure where you will pick, it may be helpful to try mocking from a couple different positions to get a feel for what will be available in multiple spots.
Finally, the day has come. You've prepared all you can, and now you're actually drafting. After all the waiting, it's your pick in the first round. Who are you taking? Here's the answer: with your first pick, you should almost always choose a running back. There are some circumstances where if you're one of the two or three last picks of the round you could consider other options, but especially if you're in the first half of the first round, it simply has to be a running back.
The reasoning behind this is that running backs are the most important position in fantasy football since they can get points for rushing yards, rushing touchdowns, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns, and because there isn't a ton of really good ones. There is usually a group of around ten or so top running backs that can be expected to receive all of their team's carries and then a lot of weaker starting running backs and members of committees behind them. Simply put, you need one of those top running backs as your RB1, or else you miss out on a consistent high number of points every week. Wide receivers can have great games and terrible games, but these backs will almost always around 20 carries and a couple receptions. If you pick 3rd in a 10-team league, for example, and you don't choose a running back, by the time you pick again 18th, all the top-10 running backs will be off the board and you'll have to settle with a poor group of running backs. Many people will even choose running backs with their first two picks, hoping to get a second solid starting running back. Since the quality of running backs goes down quickly after the first wave of them are taken, it's vital not to miss out.
When choosing running backs after the first round, I would suggest taking a running back in the second round if it's good value. Don't feel like you have to reach to get a running back and pass up taking one of the league's best receivers. However, I would definitely want two running backs in the first four rounds. If you are unsure of who to take with your third or fourth running backs, here's the rule I usually go by. No matter how bad the team they play for is, take a guaranteed starter over a running back in a committee. With running backs who will end up as either flex plays or backups, there's no use in picking someone who you know will split carries with one or two other guys, and may not end up the starter. Go for someone who will get guaranteed touches, even if his team is bad. Usually bad teams have poor quarterbacks, which means they will utilize the run game more, which is good for these mediocre backs.
Now, we all have a favorite team in the NFL, and naturally want some players from that team to be on the fantasy team. Here's my rule for this: don't have three players in your starting lineup on your favorite team, or really any team for that matter. One or two is fine, and will definitely help you root for your fantasy team, but more than that and you become too dependent on the success of your NFL team, and when they lose, so does your fantasy team. Additionally, many players from one team can kill you come that team's bye week. One last thing about this: never draft your favorite team's kicker. To score a high amount of points, kickers have to kick a lot of field goals, and if your favorite team is kicking lots of field goals, they aren't scoring touchdowns. You don't want to root against your favorite team scoring TDs, so just don't take their kicker.
Speaking of bye weeks, how do we plan for that annoying period midseason where every player becomes inactive for a week? I have two rules when it comes to byes. My first rule is that you should never have a week where you cannot start enough quarterbacks, running backs, or wide receivers. This means that your two quarterbacks should have different bye weeks. Additionally, if you have to start two running backs, two wide receivers, and a flex, make sure you will always have at least five of these players every week, making sure at least two are running backs and two are wide receivers. The second rule is that at the offensive positions (QB/RB/WR/TE), you should never have more than three starters with a single bye week. If you do, your team will require so many bench players that you will have a very low chance of winning in that week.
To keep track of your players' bye weeks, I recommend either keeping a tally of your bye weeks if you are live drafting, or paying close attention to your roster's bye weeks if drafting online. This way you should never run into trouble.
To finish off, here are five more quick tips.
1) Stay away from rookies. I find rookies are way too risky and are busts more often than they are steals.
2) You should have only one defense and one kicker, and you should draft them at the end. Defenses should be chosen in the second or third-to-last round, while kickers should be taken exclusively in the last round. This is because these positions are unpredictable and there isn't a huge difference between a great one and a decent one in terms of points. Why waste a pick on one early when you could get another running back or tight end?
3) When in doubt, choose a running back or wide receiver. These positions are highly matchup-dependent, meaning it's good to have many options on who to start in a given week.
4) You can afford to wait on tight ends. If you don't get the #1 or #2 tight end, don't feel like your getting a steal by taking the highest ranked tight end that isn't a superstar. Don't jump the gun in the fourth round when you can get someone just as good in the sixth.
5) Always be aware of value picks. It doesn't matter if there's a receiver that you don't particularly love. If he's a top-10 guy and he's still available in the fifth round, he's a steal! Always be aware if any top talents are falling a little too far down the board.
Well, hopefully after you read this you'll have all the tools you'll need to kill your next draft. Good luck, and have fun!
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Monday, July 27, 2015
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Gripes with Sports Fans: Bandwagon Crucifiers
Fair-weather fans. They love their sports teams when they are championship contenders, and aren't going to let you forget for one second how many wins they've had in a row, or simply how much better they are than your team. However, when things aren't looking so bright, they'll easily just move on to the next rising team, and cheer for them just as loud as they did the previous contender, while adamantly stating that they had been a fan all along. They'll even show you their brand new jersey of the star player to prove it. The more common term used when referring to these people is "bandwagoner."
Any one team that looks championship caliber is fair game to one of these fans, and for that reason these fans are constantly under scrutiny from other sports-watchers. However, I believe the term "bandwagon fan" is used in an insulting manner often when it is unnecessary or unfair.
Now I want to make one point very clear before I "defend" some people who face criticism for seeming to like the best teams out of nowhere. I hate bandwagon fans. Listen closely. I hate sports fans who follow their sports every season, yet every year seem to be cheering for a different team, one who always ends up competing for a title. That's because I believe that you should have a real allegiance to the team you support. But here's the deal. Usually, when someone is called a bandwagon fan, they actually aren't one. These people are misunderstood so often that it has come to the point where I hate people who go around falsely accusing others of being bandwagon fans just as much as I hate the allegiance-switchers themselves. That's why these "bandwagon crucifiers" are the subject of this edition of Gripes with Sports Fans.
Here's a fairly common scenario. Let's say someone wants to start following a sport, let's say baseball (although I'm not sure if anyone does that anymore). To follow baseball, this person will have to pick a team to support. Now who are they going to pick? Well, there's basically three ways this situation could go, and two out of three could result in this person being labeled a bandwagon fan. The first solution is choosing to be a fan of the team in the city where they live, or their family lives, or the closest team to them. Essentially, this is rooting for the hometown team. In cities with professional teams, this is very common. So if this person lives in Pittsburgh, then they will likely become a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. However, most cities in the United States aren't really close to an MLB team.
The second possible scenario is deciding to root for either the team who either won the championship in the previous season, or at least one of the best teams in the league. After all, everyone wants to be a fan of a winning team, so no one would intentionally choose to support a bad team if they didn't have a connection to it. This would lead our new baseball fan to choose the reigning World Series Champion San Francisco Giants, or one of the league's best other teams such as the Kansas City Royals or St. Louis Cardinals.
Lastly, they could choose to pick one of the historically great teams, or super-popular teams coming from big cities. In the MLB, this means rooting for teams like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, or Los Angeles Dodgers. These teams all have very large fanbases and have historically won many World Series. These are the first teams people usually think of when they think of baseball teams, and the teams people who don't follow the sport are likely to still know.
Since cheering for a top team and rooting for someone like the Yankees could both be seen as bandwagoning, since one is a current contender and the other is a perennial superpower. However, from the perspective of a new fan, these are exactly the teams easiest to latch onto. No one wants to pick an obscure, bottom-feeder franchise. People want to root for teams that win and draw lots of media attention. They want to associate with the big name players talked about on ESPN that draw sellout crowds to their home games. That's what's appealing. People can not be blamed for making a reasonable decision.
Additionally, some people view themselves not as much fans of teams, but rather fans of individual players. While I have teams I support, I also have many players I like and enjoy watching from other teams as well, and I don't see any problem with that. Obviously, I'm not going to be a fan of anyone on the Philadelphia Eagles or Dallas Cowboys since I'm die-hard New York Giants, but some of my favorite players in the league don't play for the G-Men.
The Miami Heat from the 2010-11 to 2013-14 season were probably the most bandwagoned team of all-time, and definitely had the most vocal critics slamming the team's non-Miami resident fans for hopping on the bandwagon that I've ever seen. While I know that many of these fans just decided that their team was in rebuild mode and that the Heat would be winning, I'm also well aware that a large percentage of the Heat fans during that time span were really just LeBron fans. While I'm not a fan of King James personally, he's the best basketball player alive and one of the most recognizable sports figures on the planet. He has tons of fans and those fans instantly became Heat fans when he changed teams. Now, they're all Cavaliers fans. It's perfectly fine for them to go back and forth as long as they are fans of LeBron. It's not continuous bandwagoning to the best team in the East, it's supporting a favorite player.
But seriously, to the people that even go to the trouble of pointing out bandwagon fans, I have a question to ask. Why? You root for the team you want to root for, so why can't everyone else? What makes you so special that you can go around telling people who they can or cannot root for? You aren't God, and no one assigned you to be chairman of the fan police. Many of these people think that the fact that they have been a fan of their team for their entire life means they are better than newer fans of their same team. In fact, if their team wins the championship and their team gets tons of new fans, some of them will criticize their own team's fans! As a Giants fan, I welcome with open arms any potential new Giants fans. I want the camaraderie of having friends who are Giants fans, and I want someone to share our successes and failures with. Plus, fans sell tickets, buy jerseys, and give their teams revenue, which allows them to continue playing!
There wouldn't be sports at all without new fans and bandwagon fans! The only way sports grow is by having popular teams and players that interest people unfamiliar with sports, getting them to watch games and become fans. That's what it's all about!
I said earlier that I hate bandwagon fans, which I maintain, but I don't call people out or criticize others for it because people usually have their reasons for liking who they like, and almost all of the time it isn't strictly just to cheer for the best team.
Some people will say that if their favorite team is eliminated from the playoffs, then they will root for their second favorite team, usually someone in the opposite conference, to win. Some will say that it is not right to show loyalties to teams other than your favorite, but I think that's just ridiculous. Even I am a subscriber to this method of thinking. When the Giants are eliminated from the playoffs (which actually isn't often because they're usually missing the playoffs completely or winning the Super Bowl), I root for the team that knocks them out of the playoffs to win the Super Bowl (assuming it isn't an NFC East team). It makes me feel a little better about my team losing if I know that they fell to the eventual champions. When the Rockets fell to the Warriors in the NBA's Western Conference Finals, I knew I would root for the Warriors in the Finals (although to be fair, they were playing LeBron and Co., so it wasn't a hard decision for me).
Speaking of the NBA Finals, if you weren't a fan of the Warriors or Cavaliers during the season, and you rooted for one of the teams in the Finals, then by a very loose definition, you hopped onto the bandwagon of the team you chose, even if it was just for two weeks. Everybody is, to an extent, a bandwagon fan. There is no one in the world who has been impartial to every game not involving one of their teams. This includes those who call others bandwagoners.
The point is, we all have teams we root for, and we should all be respectful of others' choices. If you've been a fan of the same team for your whole life, that's great. No one can take that away from you, and you have every right to be proud of that fact. Just don't belittle others who feel differently. If someone wants to root for the teams of the players on their fantasy team, then they can do that. If another person picks a team from every division to cheer on, tell them to have at it. Heck, if someone decides that they'll root exclusively for teams that wear blue, it shouldn't really matter. There's no need to go on some kind of moral crusade against people that like a different team than they did a couple years ago, or couldn't even name five football teams before the season started. The point of sports is to have fun, so just be happy cheering on whoever you want to.
But seriously, if you are someone who exclusively cheers for reigning champions, try rooting for a dark horse next time. Sure they might not win it all, but when they do, even if it takes years and years, man is it a great feeling knowing you cheered them on the whole way through their rise to greatness.
Now I want to make one point very clear before I "defend" some people who face criticism for seeming to like the best teams out of nowhere. I hate bandwagon fans. Listen closely. I hate sports fans who follow their sports every season, yet every year seem to be cheering for a different team, one who always ends up competing for a title. That's because I believe that you should have a real allegiance to the team you support. But here's the deal. Usually, when someone is called a bandwagon fan, they actually aren't one. These people are misunderstood so often that it has come to the point where I hate people who go around falsely accusing others of being bandwagon fans just as much as I hate the allegiance-switchers themselves. That's why these "bandwagon crucifiers" are the subject of this edition of Gripes with Sports Fans.
Here's a fairly common scenario. Let's say someone wants to start following a sport, let's say baseball (although I'm not sure if anyone does that anymore). To follow baseball, this person will have to pick a team to support. Now who are they going to pick? Well, there's basically three ways this situation could go, and two out of three could result in this person being labeled a bandwagon fan. The first solution is choosing to be a fan of the team in the city where they live, or their family lives, or the closest team to them. Essentially, this is rooting for the hometown team. In cities with professional teams, this is very common. So if this person lives in Pittsburgh, then they will likely become a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. However, most cities in the United States aren't really close to an MLB team.
The second possible scenario is deciding to root for either the team who either won the championship in the previous season, or at least one of the best teams in the league. After all, everyone wants to be a fan of a winning team, so no one would intentionally choose to support a bad team if they didn't have a connection to it. This would lead our new baseball fan to choose the reigning World Series Champion San Francisco Giants, or one of the league's best other teams such as the Kansas City Royals or St. Louis Cardinals.
Lastly, they could choose to pick one of the historically great teams, or super-popular teams coming from big cities. In the MLB, this means rooting for teams like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, or Los Angeles Dodgers. These teams all have very large fanbases and have historically won many World Series. These are the first teams people usually think of when they think of baseball teams, and the teams people who don't follow the sport are likely to still know.
Since cheering for a top team and rooting for someone like the Yankees could both be seen as bandwagoning, since one is a current contender and the other is a perennial superpower. However, from the perspective of a new fan, these are exactly the teams easiest to latch onto. No one wants to pick an obscure, bottom-feeder franchise. People want to root for teams that win and draw lots of media attention. They want to associate with the big name players talked about on ESPN that draw sellout crowds to their home games. That's what's appealing. People can not be blamed for making a reasonable decision.
Additionally, some people view themselves not as much fans of teams, but rather fans of individual players. While I have teams I support, I also have many players I like and enjoy watching from other teams as well, and I don't see any problem with that. Obviously, I'm not going to be a fan of anyone on the Philadelphia Eagles or Dallas Cowboys since I'm die-hard New York Giants, but some of my favorite players in the league don't play for the G-Men.
The Miami Heat from the 2010-11 to 2013-14 season were probably the most bandwagoned team of all-time, and definitely had the most vocal critics slamming the team's non-Miami resident fans for hopping on the bandwagon that I've ever seen. While I know that many of these fans just decided that their team was in rebuild mode and that the Heat would be winning, I'm also well aware that a large percentage of the Heat fans during that time span were really just LeBron fans. While I'm not a fan of King James personally, he's the best basketball player alive and one of the most recognizable sports figures on the planet. He has tons of fans and those fans instantly became Heat fans when he changed teams. Now, they're all Cavaliers fans. It's perfectly fine for them to go back and forth as long as they are fans of LeBron. It's not continuous bandwagoning to the best team in the East, it's supporting a favorite player.
But seriously, to the people that even go to the trouble of pointing out bandwagon fans, I have a question to ask. Why? You root for the team you want to root for, so why can't everyone else? What makes you so special that you can go around telling people who they can or cannot root for? You aren't God, and no one assigned you to be chairman of the fan police. Many of these people think that the fact that they have been a fan of their team for their entire life means they are better than newer fans of their same team. In fact, if their team wins the championship and their team gets tons of new fans, some of them will criticize their own team's fans! As a Giants fan, I welcome with open arms any potential new Giants fans. I want the camaraderie of having friends who are Giants fans, and I want someone to share our successes and failures with. Plus, fans sell tickets, buy jerseys, and give their teams revenue, which allows them to continue playing!
There wouldn't be sports at all without new fans and bandwagon fans! The only way sports grow is by having popular teams and players that interest people unfamiliar with sports, getting them to watch games and become fans. That's what it's all about!
I said earlier that I hate bandwagon fans, which I maintain, but I don't call people out or criticize others for it because people usually have their reasons for liking who they like, and almost all of the time it isn't strictly just to cheer for the best team.
Some people will say that if their favorite team is eliminated from the playoffs, then they will root for their second favorite team, usually someone in the opposite conference, to win. Some will say that it is not right to show loyalties to teams other than your favorite, but I think that's just ridiculous. Even I am a subscriber to this method of thinking. When the Giants are eliminated from the playoffs (which actually isn't often because they're usually missing the playoffs completely or winning the Super Bowl), I root for the team that knocks them out of the playoffs to win the Super Bowl (assuming it isn't an NFC East team). It makes me feel a little better about my team losing if I know that they fell to the eventual champions. When the Rockets fell to the Warriors in the NBA's Western Conference Finals, I knew I would root for the Warriors in the Finals (although to be fair, they were playing LeBron and Co., so it wasn't a hard decision for me).
Speaking of the NBA Finals, if you weren't a fan of the Warriors or Cavaliers during the season, and you rooted for one of the teams in the Finals, then by a very loose definition, you hopped onto the bandwagon of the team you chose, even if it was just for two weeks. Everybody is, to an extent, a bandwagon fan. There is no one in the world who has been impartial to every game not involving one of their teams. This includes those who call others bandwagoners.
The point is, we all have teams we root for, and we should all be respectful of others' choices. If you've been a fan of the same team for your whole life, that's great. No one can take that away from you, and you have every right to be proud of that fact. Just don't belittle others who feel differently. If someone wants to root for the teams of the players on their fantasy team, then they can do that. If another person picks a team from every division to cheer on, tell them to have at it. Heck, if someone decides that they'll root exclusively for teams that wear blue, it shouldn't really matter. There's no need to go on some kind of moral crusade against people that like a different team than they did a couple years ago, or couldn't even name five football teams before the season started. The point of sports is to have fun, so just be happy cheering on whoever you want to.
But seriously, if you are someone who exclusively cheers for reigning champions, try rooting for a dark horse next time. Sure they might not win it all, but when they do, even if it takes years and years, man is it a great feeling knowing you cheered them on the whole way through their rise to greatness.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
The Insane Wealth of Floyd Mayweather
Floyd Mayweather is one rich man. If the fact that his nickname is "Money" didn't tip you off to that already, then all the news stories about his ridiculous purchases and bets sure have. To give just a few examples, he owns an estimated $50 million in cars, at least $6 million in watches, and pays a personal chef $1,000 for every meal. He has made several bets of over a million dollars on sporting events, including a $5.9 million dollar bet on the Miami Heat back in 2013. When he signed the official contract to fight Manny Pacquiao in the "Fight of the Century", he did so with an 18-karat gold pen worth about $4,000. Even crazier is that he claims he will never use the pen again.
So yes, Floyd Mayweather has more money than all but a select few people in the world could ever dream of having. However, is it deserved? Over the last twelve months, Forbes reported that Mayweather earned roughly $300 million dollars, making him the highest paid athlete in the world...by $120 million dollars. It is also the largest amount of money any sports figure has made in one year ever. I don't blame you if at first you thought you read that incorrectly. That is the actual figure. But surely that must come from several fights and tons of sponsorship deals, right? Wrong. Over the period of June 2014-May 2015, the timespan Forbes used for this report, Mayweather participated in just two fights, a rematch against Marcos Maidana in September, and the legendary bout with Pacquiao, who ended up comfortably in second place in Forbes' list. How comfortably? Well, Pac-Man's earnings doubled that of third place Cristiano Ronaldo. However, Money Mayweather still topped him by $120 million, primarily due to the 60/40 split on revenue from their fight.
Endorsements only contribute $15 million, or just 5 percent of the $300 million number. The only other athlete in the top 10 of the earnings list with fewer money from endorsements is Pacquaio. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is that boxing just isn't near as big of a sport as it once was, while many other sports are only growing in popularity. The other reason is that Mayweather has a horrible reputation, having plead guilty to domestic violence charges three times, and has been arrested or given a citation on at least seven occasions. Not many companies want someone like that as the face of their brand.
So at the end of the day, Mayweather has made $285 million from two 36-minute fights, and $15 million from endorsements, for a grand total of $300 million. That number is higher than the COMBINED earnings of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, LeBron James, and Roger Federer, owners of spots 3-6 on the list, who's combine earning total roughly $285.2 million. However, if we only consider salaries and discard endorsements altogether, Mayweather's $285 million eclipse that of the four aforementioned players, plus Kevin Durant, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Ben Roethlisberger, Rory McIlroy, Novak Djokovic, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, everyone from #3-#14 on the list, with over $26 million to spare. These are twelve of the best athletes on the planet. Does it really make a lot of sense for a fellow athlete to make have a higher salary than all of them combined? I understand that Mayweather is constantly training to be in peak physical condition, but aren't all athletes? I understand that the majority of his payment comes from people buying his fights on Pay-Per View, but no one should make that much money for what in the end totals 72 minutes of actual performance.
Let's look at this from a different angle. Tim Duncan is a no-doubt first-ballot Hall-of-Famer when he retires, and his career makes a strong case for him to be labeled one of the 10 best basketball players of all-time. During his 18-year career so far (he is returning for another season, even at age 39), he has won five NBA Championships, is a 3 time NBA Finals MVP, 2 time NBA MVP, and 15 time All-Star, among many other achievements. According to spotrac.com, he has earned $230,381,050 in his NBA playing career (salary, not including endorsements). In the Mayweather-Pacquaio fight alone, Money Mayweather earned somewhere between $220-230 million. We'll use $225 million for the upcoming calculations. And yes, this does mean that Mayweather's one fight was almost worth more than Old Man Riverwalk's 1,572 career games played.
If Mayweather's $225 million is divided by the 36 minutes the fight lasted, then for each minute of the fight, Mayweather made $6.25 million. Tim Duncan has played 54,984 minutes in his career. When this is divided by his career salary, we can say each minute of Duncan's career has been worth $4,189.97. Lastly, if we divide Mayweather's per-minute earnings by Duncan's, we can conclude that one minute of Floyd Mayweather fighting Manny Pacquiao is worth roughly 1,492 times more than a minute of Tim Duncan playing basketball in the NBA. This is a seriously jaw-dropping number.
I wanted to take this a little further though, and calculate using the average salaries for players in the 5 major North American sports leagues how long it took Mayweather in that fight to eclipse the average annual salary for players in each league. The result is this graph.
So as you can see, even the NBA, which boasts the largest average salary of any professional sports league in the world, just can't compete with Floyd Mayweather for even a single minute. And poor MLS, Floyd Mayweather had earned more than the average MLS player does in a year just three seconds into his fight. I feel these numbers show better than any other how much more Mayweather makes comparatively versus fellow athletes. They all dedicate their lives to training and practicing, but Mayweather just isn't even in the same universe as anyone else.
Here's one last statistic sure to blow your mind. As I've already stated, Mayweather made roughly $225 million off his fight with Manny Pacquiao. According to International Monetary Fund, in 2014 there were THREE ENTIRE COUNTRIES with a lower GDP in terms of purchasing power: Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu. So basically, in 36 minutes, Mayweather made more than three countries did in a year. And while these are very small countries, Kiribati has a population of over 100,000 people. It may be understandable with someone like Bill Gates, who has had a tremendous impact on the world, but for an athlete to make more than a country? It's absurd to think about it.
So to conclude, Floyd Mayweather is one very wealthy person, and while I don't believe he should have as much money as he does, I can't argue with his dominance and popularity within his sport, doing more than his fair share to keep boxing alive. I just wish he could toss me a couple million.
So yes, Floyd Mayweather has more money than all but a select few people in the world could ever dream of having. However, is it deserved? Over the last twelve months, Forbes reported that Mayweather earned roughly $300 million dollars, making him the highest paid athlete in the world...by $120 million dollars. It is also the largest amount of money any sports figure has made in one year ever. I don't blame you if at first you thought you read that incorrectly. That is the actual figure. But surely that must come from several fights and tons of sponsorship deals, right? Wrong. Over the period of June 2014-May 2015, the timespan Forbes used for this report, Mayweather participated in just two fights, a rematch against Marcos Maidana in September, and the legendary bout with Pacquiao, who ended up comfortably in second place in Forbes' list. How comfortably? Well, Pac-Man's earnings doubled that of third place Cristiano Ronaldo. However, Money Mayweather still topped him by $120 million, primarily due to the 60/40 split on revenue from their fight.
Endorsements only contribute $15 million, or just 5 percent of the $300 million number. The only other athlete in the top 10 of the earnings list with fewer money from endorsements is Pacquaio. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is that boxing just isn't near as big of a sport as it once was, while many other sports are only growing in popularity. The other reason is that Mayweather has a horrible reputation, having plead guilty to domestic violence charges three times, and has been arrested or given a citation on at least seven occasions. Not many companies want someone like that as the face of their brand.
So at the end of the day, Mayweather has made $285 million from two 36-minute fights, and $15 million from endorsements, for a grand total of $300 million. That number is higher than the COMBINED earnings of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, LeBron James, and Roger Federer, owners of spots 3-6 on the list, who's combine earning total roughly $285.2 million. However, if we only consider salaries and discard endorsements altogether, Mayweather's $285 million eclipse that of the four aforementioned players, plus Kevin Durant, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, Ben Roethlisberger, Rory McIlroy, Novak Djokovic, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, everyone from #3-#14 on the list, with over $26 million to spare. These are twelve of the best athletes on the planet. Does it really make a lot of sense for a fellow athlete to make have a higher salary than all of them combined? I understand that Mayweather is constantly training to be in peak physical condition, but aren't all athletes? I understand that the majority of his payment comes from people buying his fights on Pay-Per View, but no one should make that much money for what in the end totals 72 minutes of actual performance.
Let's look at this from a different angle. Tim Duncan is a no-doubt first-ballot Hall-of-Famer when he retires, and his career makes a strong case for him to be labeled one of the 10 best basketball players of all-time. During his 18-year career so far (he is returning for another season, even at age 39), he has won five NBA Championships, is a 3 time NBA Finals MVP, 2 time NBA MVP, and 15 time All-Star, among many other achievements. According to spotrac.com, he has earned $230,381,050 in his NBA playing career (salary, not including endorsements). In the Mayweather-Pacquaio fight alone, Money Mayweather earned somewhere between $220-230 million. We'll use $225 million for the upcoming calculations. And yes, this does mean that Mayweather's one fight was almost worth more than Old Man Riverwalk's 1,572 career games played.
If Mayweather's $225 million is divided by the 36 minutes the fight lasted, then for each minute of the fight, Mayweather made $6.25 million. Tim Duncan has played 54,984 minutes in his career. When this is divided by his career salary, we can say each minute of Duncan's career has been worth $4,189.97. Lastly, if we divide Mayweather's per-minute earnings by Duncan's, we can conclude that one minute of Floyd Mayweather fighting Manny Pacquiao is worth roughly 1,492 times more than a minute of Tim Duncan playing basketball in the NBA. This is a seriously jaw-dropping number.
I wanted to take this a little further though, and calculate using the average salaries for players in the 5 major North American sports leagues how long it took Mayweather in that fight to eclipse the average annual salary for players in each league. The result is this graph.
So as you can see, even the NBA, which boasts the largest average salary of any professional sports league in the world, just can't compete with Floyd Mayweather for even a single minute. And poor MLS, Floyd Mayweather had earned more than the average MLS player does in a year just three seconds into his fight. I feel these numbers show better than any other how much more Mayweather makes comparatively versus fellow athletes. They all dedicate their lives to training and practicing, but Mayweather just isn't even in the same universe as anyone else.
Here's one last statistic sure to blow your mind. As I've already stated, Mayweather made roughly $225 million off his fight with Manny Pacquiao. According to International Monetary Fund, in 2014 there were THREE ENTIRE COUNTRIES with a lower GDP in terms of purchasing power: Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu. So basically, in 36 minutes, Mayweather made more than three countries did in a year. And while these are very small countries, Kiribati has a population of over 100,000 people. It may be understandable with someone like Bill Gates, who has had a tremendous impact on the world, but for an athlete to make more than a country? It's absurd to think about it.
So to conclude, Floyd Mayweather is one very wealthy person, and while I don't believe he should have as much money as he does, I can't argue with his dominance and popularity within his sport, doing more than his fair share to keep boxing alive. I just wish he could toss me a couple million.
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