Posted by Ben Stecker

Ben Stecker is a native of Colville, Washington. An avid sports and fantasy fan, he occasionally contributes his commentary here at Herring Bone Sports. Ben is passionate follower of the Denver Broncos, Washington State University, and the Seattle Mariners. Ben works on national campaign media in Washington, DC. Previous articles from Ben can be found below.

CRUSHED FANTASIES

I really thought I knew sports. I watch a ton of football, baseball, and college basketball every year. I don’t watch much NBA, but I can tell you plenty about a lot of players and hold a fairly intelligent conversation about who is good, bad or ugly (Joakim Noah). My confidence in my sports knowledge, however, took a devastating blow the other night. You see, I participated in an NCAA Fantasy Football Draft that included the ENTIRE NCAA UNIVERSE of players.

How do you even start to prepare for that? Even if I brushed up on my seldom used Ball State University recruiting knowledge and offensive projections, I still wouldn’t have a clue Cobi Hamilton would be the #1 pick of the 3rd round. Don’t worry, Christine Michael went #14 overall… yeah, I thought it was a girl too and I had a moment of panic that the league had rosters spots for cheerleaders and I’d failed to properly research the Big 12 squads.

I’m a Washington State Cougar fan and I wouldn’t have ever imagined that Jeff Tuel and Marquess Wilson were projected as the #1 fantasy QB and WR in the entire NCAA. I mean, I love Mike Leach, but that’s getting just a bit carried away. And once we got into the 5th round, all bets were off and I had no clue who 90% of the guys being drafted were. I just went into default mode and started grabbing up PAC 12 guys.

Despite shattering my comfortable little bubble of NCAA football knowledge, I do think I handled my own:

• QB – Keith Price, UW
• RB – Kenjon Barner, ORE
• RB – Giovani Bernard, UNC
• WR – Marquess Wilson, WSU
• WR – Markus Wheaton, ORST
• WR – Kasen Williams, UW
• TE – Austin Sefarian-Jenkins, UW
• K – Dustin Hopkins, FSU
• D/ST – Alabama
• Bench – Ricky Galvin (RB, WSU), Perry Jones (RB, UVA), Tobias Palmer (WR, NCST), Dallin Rogers (TE, UTAH), BJ Daniels (QB, SFLA)

(Yeah, those of you who know me know - my soul died inside a little thanks to having to pull the trigger on three Huskies. But hey, I don’t live in a cave, their offense can play and Keith Price can throw.)

Outside of the obvious purple cosmetic blemish, I though I did pretty well and have solid depth on my bench. Jones and Galvin are dual threat options out of the backfield that should get plenty of touches, making them great backups for Barner and Bernard who will be focal points of their respective offenses in weak defensive leagues. I went homerriffic and took Wilson, but the guy is a machine. I was particularly pleased with my selection of Hopkins- well, I was after my buddy who is a Florida State fan explained to me that he’s REALLY good. I even went off the grid and grabbed up South Florida signal caller BJ Daniels on the whim that his running prowess and passing growth could boost him to fantasy greatness.

I wanted to compare my fantastic team to that of my opponents within the league and bask in the glow of my cleverness, so I started perusing the lineups. I got about three players into the first lineup when I just gave up and decided I needed to read the 2012 NCAA Players Almanac in order to even have a clue who anyone was. Regardless, this was a fun experience with the only drawback being that it was run through CBS, which is roughly the same as trying to play Madden NFL 2013 on a Pentium Processer. One day ESPN and Yahoo will join the party and revolutionize NCAA Fantasy Football. I just hope that by then, I’ll be able to successfully name at least 10 players outside the PAC 12.