Bringing Sexy Back To Your Fantasy Draft.

Every year in one of my leagues, the same friend and I analyze each of the newly drafted teams for hours, debating which owners have the strongest potential line-ups and looking for weaknesses to leverage trades. And it never fails: before we're finished he's convinced himself that my team is better than his and offers to trade his whole roster for mine straight-up, and every time he's dead serious. Because I draft sexy.

The world is full of rules about sexy that apply to everything from clothes to cars to body parts, to yes, even fantasy drafts. Only crazy good genetic randomness and a handful of people with sexy-smarts get to determine the rules of sexy for everyone else. The rest of us just try to follow along. A few, give...up...completely. (Borat hammocks, man boobs and bull-on-bull crime—never sexy. Although in defense of the man-boobs photo, if you squint your eyes a bit and use your hand to cover up his face....I should just stop.)

I'll be the first to admit that the rules of sexy fantasy drafting aren't always clear (you either get it or you don't). Like surviving junior-high, sometimes drafting sexy is just about knowing what not to do. With neutral-sexy you can fly under the radar, but negative-sexy will start the drunkards at your draft howling with glee and insulting your intelligence/johnson (not Calvin) for seasons to come. So to keep your draft roster as sexy as possible, let me mention one guiding rule for avoiding negative draft-sexy—an illustration if you will—of the general team look you should be avoiding in order to preserve your draft-sexy:

Don't draft Thomas Jones.

That's not fantasy advice for winning your league championship. It's just a truth of a sexy post-draft roster. If draft night is prom night for grown-ups then Thomas Jones does for your roster sexy what lip moles and braided belts do to your chances of getting laid.

Now the unsexy of Jones on your post-draft fantasy team has nothing to do with the current uncertainty of his role in New York due to his contact situation, or the presence of Leon Washington and Shonn Greene. Fact is, even last year when Jones laid down 1,500 yards and 15 TDs you weren't really excited about having him on your team. He's just never been fantasy-sexy, not then, now or ever. You could say the same thing about the entire New York Jets roster (yes, even you Jet-Fan). Long before Jones ever arrived in New York there was already a team-wide Jet unsexy (Jet-Fan nodding along). In fact last year that same guy who always tries to trade rosters with me—due to a mid-season trade—he accidentally ended up with two Jets on his team at the same time and then complained the rest of the season that it stung when he peed.

And yet he ended up finally winning our league. Which brings me to an ugly truth about drafting sexy: Maybe everything I'm saying about Jones'/Jet's only applies to post-draft roster ego, and has nothing to do with winning fantasy championships. Maybe pre-draft sexy is just cool-kid bias that hinders in-season success, causing us to hold onto certain popular players a little too long while we ignore valuable emerging free agents until it's too late. Maybe I've just turned my whole draft-sexy thesis on its head. Maybe now I'm drafting Feely in the 9^th round. Maybe you should just stop reading this right now and return to TMZ stat. (No link provided.)

Think about it: at some point during the 2008 season it's highly likely you uttered the question, “Who the hell is Thigpen?” and then did nothing about it. Why would you even consider Tyler Thigpen at QB? You were satisfied enough with your Eli Manning, Matt Ryan, Brett Favre or Ben Roethlisberger weekly play. Blinded by their big-name sexy, you didn't even notice that Thigpen outscored them all in two less games played. Thigpen in 2008, effective, but definitely not sexy.

Even coaches on professional teams allow sexy-bias to get in the way, so what makes you think your fantasy roster is safe? Case in point: Some years ago a couple of economists analyzed the relationship between player statistics and minutes played in the NBA (Staw & Hoang). They looked at scoring, field-goal percentage, free-throw shooting, rebounds, blocks, assists and steals, to see which were the biggest determinants of the number of minutes a player spent on the court. Obviously, scoring had an influence, however the other stats—rebounds, blocks, assists and steals—“had virtually no relationship to the number of minutes a player got to play.” In fact the biggest determinant (by far) in the amount of minutes a player stays on the court in the NBA is the order in which he was drafted. In other words, in the NBA something other than on-court production often determines playing time. (The unsexy of a player's draft day suit had no correlation.)

The moral here is that the rules of draft-sexy don't always coincide with in-season reality and in the NBA second rounders aren't sexy. Maybe sexy has always been more about perception than fact anyway. Which begs the question: in your fantasy league what is determining which players you draft, which players you sit and start each week, which free agents you do and do not pick up, or which trades you do and do not make?

I haven't been picking on Thomas Jones or the Jets, I've been picking on you. Fantasy sexist.

Jones' role in New York might be a little shaky this year so I'm not advocating you draft him high, I'm just making a point. The guy has been a consistent fantasy RB since 2004, never fumbles, plays through injury and you have never even appreciated him. (And the two TD season in 2007-08 excuse isn't going to fly. He had over 1,300 yards that year. Two TDs is just fluky for that many yards. Plus he rebounded nicely the following year.) Basically, Thomas Jones has been the attractive chick that reads good books, likes all the same movies/music as you, watches sports and for years has been ready and willing to put-out at a moment's notice...with you of all people dammit! And all you can say to your friends, who just shake their heads in disbelief, is she's just not sexy enough for you.

Bastard.

And I'm a big, fat hypocrite. In addition to Jets (and former Jets who wear Wranglers...not that Favre was ever really a Jet...more like an NFC North professor on Sabbatical, complete with gray stubble and tenured douchyness), I struggle with all-things Buccaneers and Browns. Doesn't matter that Antonio Bryant was a 1200-yard beast last year. In the dessert-only buffet that is a fantasy football draft, Bryant is my perfectly over-cooked last scoop of greasy bread pudding: tempting, but probably not enough to put it on my plate before man-boobs does. (Gotcha again! You're doing the squint thing aren't you? You're so gross.)

In short, each of us has our biases of where a player's value lies and drafting on pure sexy might be a sign that we're undervaluing true draft day steals. Remember how that guy from my league with two Jets on his team finally ended up winning the championship? Maybe this time when he offers to trade me rosters after our draft, I'll do it.

Sexy.