FTT Off Topic: Stupid Personal Honor

In which we discuss things that aren't really entirely about sports, under the theory that if you come here often enough, you just like my writing, or something, and I can spread my little wings and learn to fly. Or, more likely, just pump up the sad impression count for the advertisers. Moving on.

In my fantasy football roto league, I own both Oakland running backs (Darrin McFadden and Michael Bush). McFadden was a flat out stud for the first month of the year, then suffered a hamstring pull (he's prone to that) and hit the bench for Bush. Bush is actually a pretty great back in his own right, but McFadden is more explosive and the better play for fantasy. After last week's game, in which Bush got the ball a lot but didn't do much with it due to the Niners selling out to stop the power game, I was resolute. As soon as McFadden was healthy, he was going back in to the starting lineup, but with the back himself only saying that he was 70% for this week's game in Denver, I hesitatingly put him on my bench, but reserved the right to change things on Sunday afternoon.

Fast forward to yesterday. With the Fox Cablevision Armageddon, I watched the Eagles (my laundry) at my gym, and did a 3-hour cardio session during the game that I'll probably be paying for over the better part of this week. (Two words: Oww, Owww, Owwwwwww. OK, three.) So I didn't get back to my computer in time to put McFadden in for Bush, the way I probably would have, had I been sitting at my computer around 3:30pm, rather than being at the gym.

Then the game starts in Denver, and McFadden becomes the biggest scorer in fantasy football last week, with 4 touchdowns and 40+ points in a startling Raider runaway. The road team goes for something like 325 yards on the ground, and at least Bush picks up a garbage time score to keep me from finding a bottle of pills.

And this scenario is more or less an ordinary fantasy sports bad beat story, and about as interesting as any other... until I click on the Commish Tools section of my league.

You see, I'm the commish of my league. And being as such, I Haz Powers to fix problems, or even (the horror) retroactively change the starting roster. And yes, the technology works just fine. I'm not even sure that the other owners in my league would have noticed. And had McFadden's owner (provided, of course, that person wasn't me) got in touch with me and swore up and down that he meant to run the better back...

Well, it would have probably gone to a vote, with much puling from the hard cases in my league, and maybe a new rule put in place, and yada yada yada. The long and short of it is that I have the ability, provided I am devious and quick, to sneak my bet into the stack and claim that I was holding these mucked cards all the while, for a monster pot.

And no, I left Bush right where he was, because I'm just not wired to take the short cut, no matter how tempting it might be. But that doesn't mean I wasn't tempted, or kind of mad at myself for not being wired that way...