So here we are, four weeks and two rounds into our co-contest with FanDuel Insider. You who have stuck with the process are now more hardened, more calloused of fingers from your furious typing and quite possibly more insane from all the reading and re-reading you’ve had to do to make sure your affections for Cam Newton didn’t sound as creepy as your wife said it was. You are becoming a seasoned fantasy football writer, a person who is lauded by his peers and mocked by people who just don’t understand your need to make sexual innuendos about how much you want to draft Trent Richardson this year. Of course, for those who haven’t turned one in over the first two rounds or have missed a round, you still have hope. This is a five round deal here, folks, and we realize that the disgusting thing people call ‘the real world’ rears its ugly head and gets in the way of our fantasy football life from time to time. What I’m telling you here is, if you have been submitting but haven’t yet won a round, don’t give up hope and if you haven’t submitted at all or have missed a round, you’ve still got a chance. So what are you waiting for? Do it already! Sorry, got caught up in the moment. Overall, don’t give up hope just because you haven’t seen your name in bold yet. For those who are new to the contest, I’m going to direct you back to the start of it all so you can get just what the heck we’re doing here and why you should want to do it. With that said, every round has to have some winners so lets get to how round two shaped up.
Honorable Mentions
Before we list the runner-ups and the winner, I’d like to take a moment and do some honorable mentions by sharing some snippets of fantasy writing gold. Just remember, even if you don’t see your name here, it doesn’t mean we didn’t like you; it just means you’re facing some stiff competition. Well, that and if I honorably mentioned everyone, you’d be asleep before you knew the winners and what the next topic was.
Michael Parrino – Your idea of treating your article like a yearbook was great and made for a solid outline on how to read your article. It was also extremely informative with stats and you backed up your arguments really well with them. The only underlying issue we had was – outside your intro – we were looking for some more humor and it was a little thin in that department. That said, it’s clear you have a great idea on how to structure your arguments so we’d like to see you stick around for another round!
Alex Kantecki – Alright, you win the ‘you made me laugh out loud this round the best’ trophy with this little ditty about Newton:
‘Off the field, Cam will be fine. A starting quarterback in the NFL can snap his fingers and, poof, beautiful women. Well…maybe not Joe Flacco. Shave that unibrow already’
With lines like that and with a 3rd place finish last week, it’s clear we think you’ve got the potential to fit in really well here so we kindly encourage you to keep on submitting.
2nd Runner-Up: Zoran Maleganovski
First off, you have the humor moxee down pat. I can count at least three times I smiled out loud…sorry, was reading it late and didn’t want to wake my wife up. Of course, that’s what happens when you write things like this about Torrey Smith:
‘I owned him last year and I was convinced he was the one who lead me to the championship game. He was a great locker room guy for my other fantasy receivers. I’m drafting him early in 2012 and giving him the position as team captain.’
We really don’t have anything bad to say other than you had two other guys that ranked higher than you. Hint: that means we’d really like to see you for a round three follow-up even if it means I might have to fight autocorrect and type that last name again.
1st Runner-Up: Jeff Loudon
Your idea to utilize movies and Hollywood sequels as your framing was great. Your analogies were spot on and were a great way of explaining your stance on players. Making Andy Dalton into The Hangover II by saying he won’t be bad, just not quite as good as he was the first time around? I tip my bowler hat to you, sir.
Winner: Kevin Kumpf
Yes, Kevin has won the first two rounds though it was almost Loudon this week. Josh and I had a thumb war to see who’d get it as he was for Kevin and I was for Jeff. Unfortunately, I didn’t know he had hypermobile thumbs or else we would’ve just gone with The Big Lebowski Drinking Game like I originally wanted to do; whoever could no longer walk to the fridge and get the next beer was declared the loser. And yes, that’s an ehow link. I’m just as surprised as you are. That said, Kevin paced himself quite well just as he did last week with his solid writing skills and great sense of timing with his humor. We have been wanting to get his round one results up on the site and now that our 2012 fantasy football rankings are done we’ll get a chance next week to showcase it. Stay tuned!
Alright, two rounds down and three more to go. For returners and for the people who are just starting, here’s the next topic:
Three Crocks & Three Locks
I didn’t want to rehash topics from last year but this one was too good. I mean, it rhymes and it has the number three in it, you know? Like the previous submissions, try and put a 1500 word cap on yourself or we’ll put a cap in your…due to legal issues we weren’t allowed to complete this sentence. However, we are extending the deadline for entries this week to Sunday, July 22nd to make sure you guys get two weekends to organize around. We love you that much. Please submit your write ups to both Josh and I at:
Sky ~ sky[at]razzball.com
Josh ~ joshv1991[at]snet.net
The winner of round three will be declared Friday, July 27th along with the topic for round four so stay tuned and good luck!
