That sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than the same old ESPN draft every year with luck of the draw draft position.
Yeah it does.
Nice win for the Lions. The defense is looking strong so far this season and that was a question mark going in. On offense, they actually ran the ball effectively. While no one had a huge fantasy game, as a team they played well. This is the Lions, though and I know better than to take too much away from this game but with the tough schedule they face it’s good to get a solid road win early. Next week against the Falcons should give us a better read on where the Lions really are. Hopefully, they don’t get thumped.
ps: It would be nice if fantasy football had its own thread.
Fantasy Sports Aside:
Back in the days of dial up BBSs, I played in a keeper’s league for hockey. The guy who had the last place team gave up and I took his over. That was one of the years where I really knew hockey. I knew all the players stats, who was likely to have a good year, and bad. My team had a lot of big-name veterans I felt were in the twilight of their careers. I was able to move them for bit-rate, no name players that I felt would generate the stats I needed to win: This guy gets a lot of shots of goal, this guy gets a lot of assists, etc. People thought I was nuts when I unloaded someone like Mark Messier* for what they felt was chump change.
It worked. I set two league records that year: The first, first-time manager to win the Cup; and the first time someone took a last-place team to first place.
*It may not have been Mess, but people of that name quality.
I had that same offer with DirecTV last season, and it was awesome. My son and I got to watch a lot of good out-of-market games when the in-market stuff was a crapfest.
You are correct in your assumption that it will attempt to auto-renew at the ridiculous full rate in September of next year…but you can call them and cancel in January after the season ends and they won’t hassle you about it at all. If you are interested in keeping it, you can fish for a reduced rate, but I’m not sure they will have a promotional offer available that early, you may have to wait until closer to the start of next season.
All that said, I love DirecTV. I’ve had it for 6 years now, and I’ve never paid more than $90 a month (usually much less), even when I was carrying a couple of premium channels for Game of Thrones and whatnot. The customer service is excellent…and unlike other cable companies they are not at all stingy with their promotions and discounts, even for long time customers. As an example, I just called earlier this month to cancel HBO (which I’d been paying $17 per month for, but also got Showtime free as part of a promotional deal). I told them I wanted to then add Starz so my wife could watch Outlander. I basically expected to simply switch networks, dropping the $17 HBO/Sho deal in exchange for a $14 Starz monthly. Instead the really nice CSR put me on hold for about 2 minutes, then came back and said she’d found two promotions she could put on my account, the first one giving me Starz FREE for 90 days, no obligation thereafter, and the second one dropping my monthly bill by $15 for 12 months. I wasn’t threatening to cancel or anything, I just walked away with a $15 discount and a free premium channel. This has been a fairly consistent experience for me throughout my 6 years with DirecTV…and has been the main reason I haven’t cut the cord.
The promotions have been pretty steady. When I moved to my new home and the guys at the Sam’s Club promoting it also threw in a shopping card it was a no brainer.
When I called after three months to cancel the movie channels and just keep HBO, they did something similar. They said, well, you can keep the all movies deal going for about $29 instead of the usual $50 or whatever. So I get HBO and then for about $12 more I keep all the others. They told me to call back in six months and either cancel or see what promotions are available at the time.
However sometimes they still behave like a big dumb corporation. When a buddy of mine recently wanted to switch off and go to a more competitive offer from another company, they refused to match. After two months he was unhappy with the new service and switched back to DTV…this time they gave him the new customer promotion rate and so he has a better rate than both the competitor and what he was paying before he quit the first time. Happy ending? Perhaps, but there was much wasted time and labor in between. Why do big corps like inefficiency? Because they are stupid. But so are humans and of course they are counting on most customers forgetting to call and cancel the upgraded packages, which I’m sure happens too. But I’m happy for now…decent quality and selection. I only had outages during Harvey and one or two other storms, and that I can understand.
Anyway, getting back on topic, this is my second time around with DTV and my first with the NFL package. I’d consider keeping it if it wasn’t so expensive. Every game, plus Red Zone, plus those Mix channels where you can watch four games on the same screen…looks nice on a big TV.
Aren’t you in the Detroit viewing area, Slainte? So you are saying you watched out-of-market every week?
I’m in Cincinnati. My in-market games each week were Bengals (obviously) and usually whatever Ravens/Steelers/Browns game (AFC North) was happening. With NFL Sunday Ticket we were able to choose from any game happening in that time slot, so we watched my beloved Saints (I’m originally form Mississippi) and our adopted Bucs (we have a family property in Tampa) play most weekends, and it was awesome (even though they both lost a lot).
This is a heck of a Thursday Night game. Holy cow.
Also a decent chance of ending in scorigami (a never-before-seen score).
Damn, I might actually have a chance in my fantasy league this week, with Mr Gurley putting up 65 points all by himself.
Remember that there’s a game bright and early tomorrow morning on Yahoo, live from London. 8:30am Central, so 6:30am for you West Coasters.
Well, I was wrong. When Caldwell came to Detroit, I thought he’d last maybe a year or two, before the inevitable Lions failures caught up with him. There have certainly been some failures, but nothing that’s stuck directly to Caldwell. And by all reports, everyone associated with the team loves him. Here’s hoping this is one of those rare scenarios where the ownership avoids playing blame-the-head-coach and stability elevates the team.
So quite a few of the Ravens and Jaguars kneeled during the anthem at the London game. The Twitter ball is in your court, President.
So why do they even play the national anthem at sporting events? What does a football game or baseball game have to do with the U.S.? It’s not like when my day at work starts we take a moment to salute the flag.
WHY DON’T YOU SUPPORT OUR TROOPS MARK
My wife told me the Steelers are planning to remain in the locker room during the anthem. Interesting.
Horse shit. Paid-for jingoism is a-ok, but the moment the players start to get uppity they should just STICK TO FOOTBAW
There’s no reason for the anthem, but it’s tradition, so it’s never going to stop. It does make sense when they play both anthems in international side games (i.e. Olympics, World Cup) but otherwise there’s no real reason.
It’s tradition, yes, but also:
I noticed that the Eagles and Giants stood on the sidelines with linked arms during the anthem today. I wonder if that’s a strategy to avoid having players neel.