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EA
Sports Fantasy Football Service
 Romey
might be very disappointed in me right now, and that’s
because I have joined the ranks of one of the groups that he
has taken to task on his radio show for years now. No, I
haven’t gone out and bought a glove along with the spikes,
baseball pants and eye black and transformed myself into
“Softball Guy”. Although God knows that at one point in my
life I have played softball and have seen some of the freaks
that he has mentioned. No, I have gone and done something that
is even worse than that…
I
have now become a rotisserie geek.
But
not just any rotisserie geek. I have taken advantage of an
offer from EA Sports to try out their new Fantasy Football
service. Since I am a part-owner of this site they extended an
offer to try their service for free. Since I still don’t
have a paying yob how could I turn down a free offer? So I
went for it and signed myself up for the service.
At
first glance it looks as if EA Sports has scored a touchdown
with their service. When I signed up I opted to be a League
Manager instead of a League Commissioner because I didn’t
want to have to deal with the potential headaches that go
along with running a league. Since I am a novice rotisserie
geek I wanted to go in on the ground floor and work my way up.
The way that EA Sports has this service set up it looks very
organized and easy to use once you click onto the different
choices you have and see what’s what.
One
of the first things I did was to change the name of my team.
Somehow
going into a league as “Team Gandolfo” made me fell like
more of a geek than I was already becoming. So as soon as I
got the hang of changing my settings, I resurrected the XFL
Champion Los Angeles Xtreme. You can even upload a team logo
if you wish, and I took advantage of this option and got my
100x71 logo up for my team.
The
next thing that I had to do was join a league. This is a
simple process as you are provided a list of leagues you may
join, and if there is any room in that league or not. I wanted
to join a league that had a good number of teams in it already
as I didn’t want to have to join another one if we
couldn’t get enough teams before the deadline. So I looked
for a league that had a high number of teams that held their
draft after the 13th. I found a league called East
Coast FF that had 9 of 12 slots filled, that is holding its
Live draft on the 29th at 5:30pm Eastern Time
(that’s 3:30 Mountain Time for me). Joining a league was
easy as a mouse click, so I will be conducting my draft later
this month which will enable me to do some more homework on
who I should pick.
Lord,
I sound like Jim Rome’s worst nightmare.
 The
engine for the service is being provided by STATS Inc, which
is a huge advantage because when it comes to managing stats
there is no one better at it. At first glance it looks as if
the association of EA Sports and STATS Inc should be a
successful one. But that may depend on how many people
actually take advantage of the service. If it proves to be as
popular as EA Sports is hoping, then we may be seeing this
service return every year, and possibly expanded into other
sports. I for one
would like to see them expand into fantasy baseball for next
year, and although it may sound far-fetched for some, fantasy
NASCAR leagues have popped up around the country and are very
popular.
I
really like the setup of the service so far as it is simple to
use and it doesn’t treat a rotisserie novice like me as an
idiot. The service gives you a ranking of players that you can
re-arrange to your liking and can use on draft day. The list
consists of 995 NFL players, including many of the players
from this year’s NFL Draft. So you can choose to have Eli
Manning or Roy Williams on your team if you so desire.
Although considering the news coming out of
Arizona
, it looks like Larry Fitzgerald might be a steal if he is
still on the board.
All
in all the service looks like it will be a lot of fun if you
are into this sort of thing.
I know that a lot of people who play Madden in Online Leagues
have been doing this sort of thing for years, but this way
someone else handles the scheduling and the games for you
instead of you having to be in front of your computer in order
to play the game. Besides, a chance to go to
Hawaii
for the Pro Bowl is not a bad prize to give to somebody. The
bragging rights would not be too shabby either.
If
you want to try out the service for yourself, then click here
to get to the service, or click on one of the banners at the
top or left of the page.
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