The NFL Network is reporting that Brady is out for the season with a knee injury. This is my 6th season of fantasy football, and I can't honestly remember the last time such a highly rated player went out so early. Perhaps in '03 when Komron took Vick #7 in the first round. This year Brady went 6th in one league, and 2nd in the other.

Also in football news, who would have guessed that the Bears, Carolina and Tennessee would have put down Indy, San Diego and Jacksonville respectively? The Indy game just ended, Matt Forte look pretty darn good and Peyton looked human. Sorry, Marc - I thought Detroit was going to be a winner too. :(

As I type this, the college football season is coming to a close, on the strength of a LSU 38-24 drubbing of Ohio State. Ohio State is now 0 and 9 playing the SEC in bowl games and they have lost the last two BCS championship games by the combined score of 79 to 38. Yet people still loudly insist that The Big 10 continues to be relevent in the discussion for the national championship. The Big 10 is probably the 3rd, and maybe even the 4th strongest conference among the BCS conferences, and there are probably some non BCS conferences that can beat it pound for pound. In a perfect BCS world (and heaven knows that the BCS isn't perfect), the Big 10 winner would have to solidly demonstrate to the world why they belong in the national championship, and not a team from the SEC, PAC10 and the Big 12. Of course, that won't happen. As predictable as death and taxes, next year, Michigan or Ohio State will sit at the top of the standings, play super weak schedules, take two months off at the end of the season, and get pummeled in the national championship game. The only mystery is who will be handing down the pummeling next year? Oklahoma? USC? Florida? LSU on a repeat? I guess thats what we're reduced to guessing.

Oh, well - I'm not passionate about it, but I'm happy to see the SEC assert their authority for another year.

Brett Farve got hurt, and Aaron Rogers is in the game. And he looks great - they just drove the length of the field for a touchdown. He has obviously spent his time behind Brett sucking up knowledge. Green Bay faithful shouldn't worry when Farve hangs up his spurs - there are no worries at quarterback.

More football notes later.

Utah beats Wyoming 50 to el-zilcho. Wyoming coach Joe Glenn fires the bird at the Utah sidelines after the Utes kick a onsides kick while up by 43 points. Real classy, Kyle; don't forget - paybacks are a bitch. Pacman "I love me strip clubs" Jones is getting a plea deal. Adrian "Violet Messiah" Peterson tears a ligament; team says he'll be back in a week. Yeah, right.

Predictions gone wrong: How bad are the 49ers? The Broncos won convincingly, but I'm still not convinced. San Diego shouldn't have won, but did. Don't book your tickets to Arizona quite yet, fellas. Patriots are overpoweringly good, Indy and Dallas are really good, the Packers are unbelievably good, and everybody else is m-e-h.

Only three more regular games to go in fantasy football - qualified for the playoffs in the Buena Vista Touchdown Club behind my man Tony Romo; but doing less well in the Naked Bootleggers. At least I managed to stop a 3 game slide this week (thanks, Brian Westbrook).

The Broncos got a first class whoopin' today, measured both by the score (44-7) and the injuries. Chad Johnson got hurt. Man, you can't buy a wide receiver in fantasy football right now. Kiss my Naked Bootleggers playoff streak good bye. This just in, Purple Jesus has arrived and he is pretty good. Are the Saints back? Magic 8 ball says look out is hazy. Frank Gore was inactive today. That bandwagon burst into flames as soon as it got on the interstate. Trade Alex now and give him a chance to have a decent career.

Only three weeks until Utah-BYU. Start polishing off your cougar jokes right now.

Its been a while since I've posted - sorry about that. I have a few comments about the football games today.

But first - how much dedication and class does Brett Favre have? He got the record, hugged his teammates, hugged his wife, and then sat right down and started studying the polaroids from the previous drive. A good man's job is never done. Also, he was very complementary of Marino in his post game comments.

Virtually all of the teams I was high on at the beginning of the season are struggling: Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans, San Diego. Just goes to show, I know nothing of football. But I am excited for a few teams that are showing strong right now - namely Green Bay and Houston.

Another team that has been struggling this year is my Naked Bootleggers fantasy team. After a very promising draft, and a strong first week, I then went on to loose the next to a team that scored 180 points to my 150, and then last week I was demolished by another team that scored 178 points. I am 2 and 1, giving up a league high 497 points, 80 points clear of the next player.

But I was excited for today, because I thought I had a solid team - and then everything went wrong. Alex Smith got hurt in the first series of his game, leaving me without a strong quarterback. I went into the game this evening a full 50 points shy. I wasn't too worried - I had Brian Westbrook, Chad Johnson and Plaxico Burress against his TJ Whosyourmamma. I figured I could get 50 point out of two of them, and then Chad and TJ could go tit for tat. But what does John Madden tell me right before the kickoff - Westbrook is inactive - a game-time decision. So now Burress and Johnson have to score 50 points, plus cover whatever TJ might do, and pretty much, I'm screwed. At least I won't lose to a team scoring 180 points though....

Welcome to September. We've survived the dog days of summer, and there won't be another weekend in 2007 that doesn't have football on television. College started on Thursday, unfortunately with a Utah loss. The NFL kicks off on next Thursday with New Orleans visiting Indianapolis.

Both of my fantasy football drafts are in the books, as well. The Buena Vista Touchdown Club drafted on Wednesday, and the Naked Bootleggers got it on last night. I picked ninth in the BVTDC draft- I was marginally happy with the results, but I'm going to have bye week problems in weeks 6 and 8. I put a lot more work into crunching the numbers yesterday, and even though I was sixth in the order for the NB draft, I was far happier with the results. I was able to make better decisions on a round by round basis, and I scored a couple of excellent steals, including Baltimore in round 9, which was a full 3 rounds below the projected draft position.

This year, I've decided to go uber-nerd, and I'm going to take a scientific look at the fantasy numbers; I'll spend a lot of time working up some spreadsheets to crunch numbers and try to make better decisions. Of course, on Sunday it will still be a combination of gut feel and luck, but chance helps those who help themselves.

I'm going to detail most of this on these pages - discuss my numbers, my roster moves for the week, and the other minutia of the day to day life of the serious fantasy footballer. Thats not to say we won't also have some fun - last year I invented a power ranking system for the leagues, so I'll be keeping you up to date with the real winners and losers of both the BVTDC and the NB leagues, starting in week 3.

We'll kick things off with a look at the numbers I crunched yesterday, and then a bit more in depth look at my rosters. Stay tuned.

San Francisco has named the field at Candlestick Park after Bill Walsh. Thats a classy move all the way. I call on all sports announcers everywhere to start using "Walsh Field" to refer to the stadium in San Francisco, and not "Candlestick", or "Flandcrest Enterprises Stadium" or whatever it is named these days.

Mmm... there's nothing like chewy, tasty, just-like-grandma-used-to-make style irony to start the day off right. Check out the new, "pit bull approved" Michael Vick dog chew toy. Maybe he can get some for his new buddies in federal lockup.

With Rod Smith ailing and possibly considering retirement, talk on the intertubes turned to debate his qualifications for the Hall of Fame. After several Broncos fans complained on Hashmarks that Denver always got the shaft for the Hall of Fame, the guest blogger started doing some research. His conclusion? Yep - sure enough, when you crunch the numbers, the Broncos are among 10 teams with 300 to 399 wins, yet lag far behind the other teams in HOF inductees - the other teams average 7 a piece - the Broncos? only one. Very strange, don't you think?