Gathering Speed

There’s a reason so many people play fantasy football and Madden more than their equivalents in baseball, basketball, and hockey. A huge part is the draft, which is treated like a college graduation and taken about as seriously as a heart attack. Honestly, this is the adult equivalent of playing dress up, it really is. You’ve got the guy whose office you’re using, doing the “it’s my house, so I get the sweet chair” move, the acting commissioner of your league, who’s having a good time until someone a) takes too long to make a pick; or b) grabs the player he wanted just before him. Then he’s Pol Pot. Everyone’s wearing a player’s jersey that might as well be a big sign that says, “If you want to piss me off, pick this guy.” It’s a day that begins with so much promise and everyone pissed at each other at the end. Like in fantasy baseball (and other sports), you get to make the decision. This is the major reason people get into fantasy sports; they get to simulate running a team just like the pros.

But something makes football different…and it’s that Fantasy is not like the pros.

The General Managers in the NFL are the best in all of sports. No team, regardless of owner or fanbase or anything, has any financial advantage; even playing field means Dan Snyder can’t buy every free agent every year, although he tries. It’s not that hard being Brian Cashman or any big-market baseball GM. Just go get a player. That’s the first thing you do in a franchise for Madden: go get all the free agents who didn’t sign before the game came out. In the NFL, there also are almost never blockbuster trades. The NBA sees superstars changing uniforms all the time and often, one side gets, to use a technical term, fucked. You’ve got Kareen Abdul Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Robert Parrish and the pick that became Kevin McHale all changing hands for virtually nothing. Baseball’s Red Sox sold the Babe and the Edmonton Oilers gave Wayne Gretzky away to promote hockey in the sun belt. That hardly ever happens in the NFL, because these guys are too smart and too good at evaluating scenarios and players in the draft.

The biggest trade in history was just set in stone yesterday, a mere six years after the fact. The #1 choice in the 2001 draft for the #5 and two others.

Everyone thought San Diego was out of their goddamn mind, namely because they were 1-15 and the absolute doormat of the league. While Cleveland, Houston, and Oakland have all had abysmal years since then, none of them were as bad as San Diego was. Everyone and their mother bet against them, they were a sure thing every week. Even Dan Fouts was giving the points. If you liked money, you bet against San Diego in 2000. This team is so bad…and a player no one has ever seen before was sitting there…the amazing Michael Vick was a phone call away from being a Charger.

The trade itself was, frankly, even. LaDainian Tomlinson for Michael Vick (the other picks didn’t really pan out). Tomlinson is arguably the best player in the game and Vick single handedly made the Falcons competitive. I don’t really include Drew Brees in the trade, even though I could, since not taking Vick allowed the Chargers to take a cheaper quarterback later. Brees, for the record, is the fifth best quarterback in the game.

Fast forward to now, with Michael Vick getting indicted. Everyone ran over to the Chargers and declared a winner. But the issue goes way beyond that…not for the teams, but for Vick himself.

If the San Diego Chargers had drafted Michael Vick, he would not be getting indicted right now.

I’ve never been to Atlanta, but I have seen a map. It’s the only major metropolis for hundreds of miles, surrounded entirely by the deepest of the Deep South. You often hear people from rural areas say, “We had to make our own fun.” Usually, this means tire swings and throwin’ a makeshift boat in a crick. But if you’ve got a few million dollars, the options open up (it is important to know that Vick’s puppy fights started his rookie year, right after he got the first big paycheck). Make no mistake, Michael Vick is straight country having grown up in Virginia, and Atlanta isn’t some Southern Jonestown where Yankees walk in Wall Street suits and out the other side with tattered suspenders and nothing else on. Vick could have gone a lot of places and still be down with the whole dogfighting thing.

But not San Diego.

The city also known as The Whale’s Vagina is an absolute paradise. Ridiculous beaches with ridiculous surfing and the hottest surfer chicks you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s like Miami, but cleaner. It’s like LA, but about 20 degrees cooler in August. It’s like Gary, Indiana, but not hell on Earth. Everyone I know there says they will never leave, not even for vacation. Michael Vick would have been the king of San Diego and all of Southern California. He’d have a huge beachfront house and roll up to Los Angeles for the club scene and have hundreds of millions of ways to spend his hundreds of millions of dollars.

Plus, if he ever wanted to gamble, Vegas is right there. If he ever had a bloodlust, he could always drive down to Tijuana and bet on cockfights. It’s in Mexico, so no one would have cared or known about it. They’re chickens, and don’t tell PETA, but people don’t give a shit about animals they eat. Plus, he could nail a couple transsexual hookers and do lines of crushed-up over the counter Vicodin while he was watching (that’s Baja multitasking).

They say the draft is the most important day of a player’s life, and this has never been more true than it is for Michael Vick. Bet the Falcons wish they still had Matt Schaub…speaking of which:

If you like money, bet against Atlanta in 2007.