Around the time I was in college, my parents — who lived in southern Illinois at the time — kept a postcard on their fridge: “17 reasons to live in the Midwest”:
- pot roast every Sunday
- best pesticide commercials in the country
- free and available parking
- wholesome, unjaded youth
- more Catholics than you can shake a stick at
- freedom from fear of falling off the edge of the continent
- access to little-known fine beers such as Schaeffer, Hudepohl and Stag
- dynamite homegrown
- birthplace and still best place for jazz
- no typhoons
- the people are mostly good eggs
- no big hills to climb so better gas mileage
- greater chance of seeing UFOs
- quaint native customs – tractor pulling, flag waving and cow tipping
- basketball is at least as important as football
- lots of silos and barns for pastoral landscape painters
- home of Bunny Bread – “That’s what ah said…”
I still think about that postcard, because so many of my experiences in the Midwest were bad: interactions with Cardinals fans (McGwire-era!), speed traps on I-55, everything about driving across Kansas, funnel cakes and fish fries, driving in a snowstorm from Chicago to Champaign-Urbana, Old Country Buffet, whites divvied up along church lines … ugh, no thanks to all of that. (YES, EVEN OLD COUNTRY BUFFET.) The Midwest isn’t bad, per se. It just wasn’t for me.
Good gas mileage, though.
Your questions:
Greetings Cap’n,
Football question then sex:
I am currently in a two QB league which I’m not super big on but it’s a league with good friends. I have a week 10 conundrum: Philip Rivers is out and I need a second QB: My other two are currently Kaepernick and Austin Davis, but I am not sold on Davis, especially against Arizona. The FA list is naturally unappealing and I feel like my best options there are Orton vs. KC or Glennon vs. ATL. What should I do?
Well, you can pick up Josh McCown to play in lieu of Glennon; the Falcons are terrible on defense and won’t be able to stop both Vincent Jackson and Mike Evans. Orton has a surprisingly good passer rating, but I don’t think he’ll put up the raw numbers against a solid KC defense to warrant a start. But, for my money, I’d grab Mark Sanchez if he’s available and give him a start. Crazy? Maybe. Or maybe CRAZY LIKE A FOX.
Sex: I graduated from college in the Midwest just over a year ago and moved East and don’t regret it at all.
Few people regret leaving the Midwest. And I don’t mean that as a slight to Heartland. It’s merely a statement that most people like living in better places.
However, I am going to be back next week in Illinois for just under a month before heading back to DC and am going to spend some time partying at my old college town with some friends.
Enjoy it now. The moment this year’s class graduates, you become Creepy Guy Who Should Make Some Adult Friends.
Before I moved away I had a sex buddies arrangement with someone a few years younger than me who is still in college, and I want to check in with her and see if she wants to catch up and also bang. We have a ton of close mutual friends and I believe she is currently single. We ended on good terms (I had graduated and was moving away). We even talked/flirted for about eight months until it faded away, including me waking up to a drunk sext last Valentine’s Day.
Awwww, modern romance.
Without to going on too long, what is the most graceful way to see if she is still interested? My plan has been to ask one of her/my best friends if she is still single and then just ask her if she is free at all that weekend for dinner or drinks or sex.
Sincerely, A Fellow Southern Illinois Ex-Pat
If you’re going to put feelers out about whether she’s single, just make sure your contact is loyal to you first, and not her. If word got to her before you could ask her out (or not ask her out, if she’s seeing someone), it might appear unseemly if you were asking around about her instead of just asking her yourself.
Once you get that sussed out — or even if you choose not to — ask her to dinner. You’re a man of the world now, grown up and moved away. You have a job, a nascent career arc, a source of income. So treat her like a lady, not some college piece of ass to tide you over (even if, you know, the latter is closer to the truth). Appearances matter, and if you enjoy her company outside of the bedroom, you may as well spend some time being a gentleman; the investment tends to pay off with richer dividends at the end of the night.
Did I use that financial metaphor right? I’m terrible with money.
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Hi Cap, congrats on the little human.
I asked you previously about flipping Sammy Watkins or Odell Beckham for an upgrade at TE. You advised against it and the recent evidence suggests you were correct.
Hooray!
I’m riding Travis Kelce now and am OK with it.
As you should be! Once Andy Reid starts giving him more snaps, he’ll be a fantasy juggernaut.
My question concerns Arian Foster who I am worried may be done as an effective every-week guy for the year. My RB/WR group consists of Foster, L Bell, Ellington, T West and Calvin, Jeffery, Watkins, Beckham, T Smith. Should I be looking for another RB if that means trading away WR depth?
-Barney Noble
No. Bell and Ellington are a perfectly excellent starting pair of RBs, and Foster expects to play Week 11 after the Texans’ bye. The only possible concern would be Week 12, if Foster happened to get re-injured when Bell’s on bye. To guard against having to start Terrance West, I’d pick up Alfred Blue as a free agent this week. It’s unlikely he’s owned during the bye week, but if you HAD to trade for him, you wouldn’t have to give away any blue-chip players.
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Dear Cap,
Congratulations on your new daughter! While I’m sure the Seahawks are a bit of a downer, I am guessing that those two at least cancel out.
I’m actually okay with the Seahawks at 5-3 halfway through the season, given three factors: (1) they haven’t played a complete game looking like the NFL champs since Week 1; (2) they’ve suffered a rash of injuries to key starters who are finally getting healthy, and (3) even when they’ve been outplayed, they’ve had realistic — painfully realistic — chances to win in the final two minutes. They’re not atop anyone’s power rankings, but they’re 4th in the league in DVOA. I still think they have a good chance to win the division.
Anyway, enough homerism. Having a baby is okay, too.
Fantasy: I’m in a league that’s been running for 3 or 4 years now which is mostly made up of fraternity alums. It’s one way to keep in touch now that we’ve spread out a bit, but some of the stupid political infighting still happens. For instance, the GM and one of the past league members had a falling out, and the former member was no longer invited to the league. I liked the shunned guy a lot, but I wanted to keep in touch with friends and figured I’d weather the storm. Last year my girlfriend joined the league (she had been close friends with the guys in college) and immediately the GM started making and encouraging really public comments about collusion when we made a trade. I respect her and my friends too much to cheat, and while I understood why people were making those comments, it still got under my skin.
Sounds like the GM is a real piece of shit.
A week ago I started talking a trade with another league member and I ended up trading Smith Sr. and Ertz for Julius Thomas. It’s a full point PPR league and the idea was that I was trading a potential higher ceiling to the other team for a more consistent single producer who was a little down. We both wanted to trade and trust each other, so I sent him a few options and he picked this one.
I see this as a good, fair trade.
His team is pretty awful (Starting WRs PRK in the 50s and 60s) and the owner wanted to gamble in a ditch effort to make the playoffs. This morning the trade was vetoed by 4 people. I’m currently working in Iraq and the rest of the league lives on the north side of Chicago, so many of the league members spend weekends hanging out while I’m out of the loop,
Literally! Because Chicago has the Loop? Anyway, it’s a public transit/geography joke. Tough room.
and I feel like I really got screwed. We’ve never had a trade veto in the history of the league, and my feeling is that trade vetoes should only be used in cases of collusion and/or someone dumping their team when they’re out of contention.
Also — and I’m just spitballin’ here — maybe decent people don’t go out of their way to dick over the poor son of a bitch who’s living in Iraq?
This definition was more or less stated at the beginning of the season. My trade partner is one of my 2 or 3 closest friends and I would never send him a trade I thought was unfair. Am I justified in being upset about the trade vetoes?
Yes.
I know from talking to some other people in the league that they’re not happy with how things have been going, and I’ve been planning on starting my own league (with blackjack…and hookers!) since this season started. I sent a rather unhappy note to the league and resubmitted the trade. My plan is to leave the league if the trade is vetoed again. I’ll stay in touch with my closest friends even without a league, and FF is supposed to be fun. You see more fantasy BS than anyone else, so I thought you could help me get some perspective.
I back you 100%. There is no reason too small for leaving a fantasy league if it’s not enjoyable to you. I’ve left fantasy/pick ’em/suicide leagues for various reasons: the price point was too high, I didn’t like the time commitment, the commissioner was a jerk … fantasy football occupies one of the most valuable parts of your life: your free time. If it’s not fun, don’t do it.
I don’t have any relationship problems; my girlfriend is great and while short-term long distance sucks, 8 years in we’re not going to let 6k miles and 6 months stop us from being happy. She’s a huge football and basketball fan, and I love that she’s competitive every year in fantasy and pick ‘em.
-Blondie in Babylon
Yay! Next question.
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El Capitan:
Greetings and salutations. Easy FFB question, awkward sex question, so buckle in.
FFB first. Let’s take a hypothetical person. They drafted Adrian Peterson in round one, picked up Romo in the sixth, and had a reliable keeper in Reggie Bush from the 8th round the previous year. Pretty good team! And then the season happened. Now, said hypothetical person is 2-6 in the league and in dead last, 14th place, with little to no hope. Would this hypothetical person (who is me), be perfectly fine with pulling a Cutler and giving the rest of the season the ol’ “DONNNNN’TTTTT CAAAAARRRRREEEEE”? I’m not saying leave the team in the shitter, but don’t actively look for ways to trade up, or maybe let the waiver wire go for a week or two to focus on the other three teams I have (kill me). Thoughts?
I can’t really fault you for any of that. One of my six teams is 2-7 (thanks, Montee Ball), and I’m staying diligent about the lineup and grabbing what I can on the waiver wire, but my heart’s not really in it. If it were real life, I’d be fired and Tony Sparano would take my place and keep losing with that garbage collection of failures.
Sex. Well, relationships, really.
I have a friend who has been spending an awful lot of time at work lately. Now I’m sure a lot of this is the fact that he has a demanding job and it requires a great deal of his time and efforts. He is also in his 30s, and his company typically hires about 6 years younger than he is for a lot of positions. Younger and blonder, if we’re being honest. And hot. That, too.
Brass tacks: a few of us in the friend group we’re all in are almost sure he’s cheating on his wife of 4 years. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence, nothing concrete, but a lot of speculation, and it’s reaching a fever pitch and a boiling point at the same time. Now, I’m his best friend (was his best man at their wedding), and it’s starting to feel like there’s an expectation on me to do something or say something. Do you think there is, and, if there is, what the fuck am I supposed to say?
-Bob
OOH. Eesh. Well.
About that.
Part of me wants to support you as Chivalrous Friend Who Saves Pal’s Marriage. In the Ideal Mantopia Scenario, you sit down with your best friend over drinks and say something like, “You’ve been working a lot recently.”
“Yep.”
“Lotta fine women at your work.”
“Yep.”
“You’re not doing anything stupid, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, had to ask.” Then you clink beer bottles and drink, safe with the knowledge that you said what you needed to say, and he’d either stay or return to the straight and narrow. I would hope that something nice and low-key unfolded like that.
But in that scenario, you run the risk of everything NOT going well. What if he gets angry at the line of questioning and you lose his trust? What if he unburdens his infidelity on you? What if he makes you promise not to tell his wife? What if you end up in the middle of bad marriage? Do you tell his wife anyway? What if your knowledge of his (alleged) infidelity ultimately hurts your standing in the group?
So, here’s what I propose: let other people’s relationships unfold as they will. He is either cheating or he isn’t. She will either find out or she won’t. They will either stay together or break up. There is no part of that that you need to be involved in. And as good of a friend as you’d be to warn him away of doing stupid things, an even better friend will help him through his stupid mistakes.
I dunno, perhaps there’s a gray area between getting involved and staying out of it altogether — a way to tell him what people are saying without you getting directly involved. I’ll leave that to your judgment. But me? I’ve seen too many well-meaning people get burned by trying to be the good friend in the middle of a bad relationship.
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