Oh yeah…it’s fantasy football time.

So there’s a buncha things going on right now in the sporting world.The Olympics are going on, baseball’s pennant races are heating up, and the NFL is gearing up for a new season. Gotta love watching random Olympic events that I would never otherwise pay attention to/know anything about. Although..you can’t go wrong with women’s beach volleyball.

But it’s really time for fantasy football. Last year was my 1st year playing and uhhh, I can’t believe I waited that long to start. It really is one of the greatest things ever. It’s awesome to play with friends and helps you meet new people (like that one kid who kept out screaming “F@^#” whenever someone drafted his “sleeper pick”). It’s great – it turns meaningless week 16 games involving the bills, the texans, the raiders, (etc.) into huuuuuuuuuuuuuuge games for your playoffs. It leads to constantly updating 7 different stat trackers and trying to calculate scores if you’re too cheap to buy the automatic score updater. Good stuff. Check out espn’s the talented mr. roto (matthew berry) for an interesting article on how the fantasy landscape has changed with more teams using multiple running backs and teams running pass-happy offenses.

But of course..this post would not be complete without a mention of Olympic basketball – Team USA’s first game starts tomorrow against host country China. THE REDEEM TEAM!

blast from the past

In an interview with KCAL 9 (local LA news station), when answering a question about how reacted to Shaq’s rap about him, Kobe Bryant said he had more important things on his mind – the Olympics. “This is basketball,” he said. “This is our game.”

I’m just glad Kobe sees it that way, too.

The next 1.43.86

The Olympics are coming up real soon, which means Michael Phelps is in the news an awful lot. But what’s drawing more attention than Phelps’ performance is what he’s wearing – the new Speedo LZR RACER suit.

Already responsible for 44 of the 46 new world records since the suit’s debut in February, the LZR suit has less drag, is faster at starts, sprints and turns, and has 5% better oxygen efficiency than the best suits on the current market, like the Adidas Tech Fit Powerweb and the TYR Sport, Inc. “Tracer Light”. Speedo was so motivated to outdo the competition that it performed research with NASA when designing the product. So, naturally, this is raising some eyebrows from international swimming federations – mainly because the starting asking price for the suit is a whopping 320 euros, or about $500. Throw in the fact that some swimmers are sponsored by other companies and can’t legally wear the LZR racer, and houston, we have a problem. We’ll call it “technological doping.”

The US Olympic team is sponsored by Speedo, and American swimmers have been told to wear the LZR for the Olympic trials or else they’ll probably be watching the Beijing games from the comfort of their own couch. Clearly, there is a competitive advantage to the suit. Phelps says, “It feels like a spacesuit” and he feels like a rocket coming off the wall. World record holder Natalie Coughlin likewise deemed the LZR “incredible” and Libby Trickett says, “It feels like I’m swimming downhill.” The suit is perfectly in line with Olympic rules and Japanese athletes have just been given the green light to buy their LZR’s. But even Americans agree there can be a problem. Trickett’s teammate Kieren Perkins worries that the high-tech suits are creating “a slippery slope when you create a haves and haves-not society in the sport.”

Why the LZR has raised so much more controversy than prior suits is a little unclear. Speedo came out with a Fastskin FS Pro that was donned by many swimmers during last year’s world championships, including 15 of the 16 that set world records. So why the buzz over the newest look?

Furthermore, skeptics are claiming that Phelps’ Olympic performance will be tainted somehow if he breaks Mark Spitz’ record of 7 gold medals. But, even if Spitz was wearing an itsy-bitsy speedo, the rest of his competition was, too. So while it may be justified to raise caution when Phelps’ times are compared to the marks of swimmers in the past, if the Baltimore native wins 8 gold medals, he’ll have beaten swimmers also wearing the LZR racer. No problem, right?

In 1972, Mark Spitz and his tiny speedo made a huge splash in the pool. Thirty-some years later, the LZR racer doesn’t splash on the water – it just glides. But it’s made a remarkable splash on the sports scene nonetheless.