(Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

As much as it pains me to write this article, I am the owner and sole proprietor of the worst fantasy football team ever. In the history of the world. And I know it. And it sucks.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking there’s no way that my team could be worse than your team from back in the day. At some point in time we’ve all been victimized by some bad fantasy teams. Maybe we pooched the draft, or started the wrong guys, or simply were plagued by bad luck or injuries. We’ve all had our ups and downs from season to season, but no one—I assure you, nobody—has had a season as bad as the 2009 Compton Honkies.

It’s not for lack of trying. Heck, some guys realize their teams suck early on and abandon them like a newborn Chinese daughter. They fail to respond to trade offers, refuse to update their lineup, and generally bring down the entire league with their lack of participation.

I’m the complete opposite of that. I’m in a league with 11 of my friends (it’s a keeper league, as well, so we retain three players from year-to-year) and we treat our teams with the same care and precision as real-life NFL owners.

We post upwards of 100 messages a week on our league message board, issue “press releases” via email to our fellow owners, trade draft picks years in advance, and keep the incentive up by playing for money. We’re basically nerds, and we’re okay with that. Everyone needs to be passionate about certain things, and it’s probably better that we’re into fantasy football and not Magic cards or something. At least we can still maintain wives and girlfriends through all this. Not so, in the world of Dungeons and Dragons.

So here we are, six weeks into the season, and my Honkies are winless. This has to be some sort of aberration. A year ago, my team played for the PFL (Pearce Fantasy League) championship. The year before that we finished in fourth place. We’re not bad, we’re just unlucky. To the Nth degree. Let’s try and understand how we got to this point.

From the very beginning, I made some bad decisions. First off, I went to the grocery store and purchased a fantasy football preview magazine. In 11 years of playing fantasy sports, I had never once spent money on a fantasy publication. For whatever reason, I changed my tactic this year and emptied my wallet on the reading material.

To make matters worse, after I finished reading Sports Illustrated’s preview magazine, I went and bought the ESPN version, as well. Two fantasy football previews, both of which trumped the likes of Josh Morgan as a candidate for Sleeper of the Year. He’s still asleep, so does that mean he’s winning?

After six weeks of games, I’m upset at the Matthew Berrys of the world for getting paid to make ridiculous prognostications that have little basis and end up being flat wrong. At the end of the year, it’d be nice if SI and ESPN could print retraction issues that simply list all the fantasy players they were dead wrong about. Put Morgan on the cover, along with a shot of the Titans defense, Kevin Boss, Anthony Gonzalez, and Derrick Ward and you have your Fantasy Football Recap: We’re Really Sorry edition.

More than that, however, I’m mad at myself for not trusting my own judgment. Sometimes we put these highly-paid journalists on a pedestal. We shouldn’t. In my experience, these guys are just like us, except in most cases they’re a little socially retarded. In other words, they can write, but they can’t necessarily interact with humans. Does that make them useless fantasy football experts? Maybe. It means they might have trouble taking a quote or some verbal dialogue from a conversation with a team or player and translating it to the pages of a preview mag, and that should be enough to convince us to stay away.

I mean, let’s face it. I knew Anthony Gonzalez would suck. I knew it. And I drafted him anyways. And then he got hurt. He might end up being a fine receiver in the long run, but this year is a bust, no matter what he does from here on out. My best judgment said, “Don’t draft Gonzalez.” But the preview magazines were so high on him that I couldn’t resist. Idiot. The same can be said about Josh Morgan and Derrick Ward. I flat-out blew it.

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