Did you know 40 percent of Vince Young’s career wins are fourth quarter comebacks?

I Know How Kevin Smith Feels

I was going to play football today for the first time in 22 years – an annual post-Turkey day contest in the neighborhood where I grew up. Then I started running last week. Before you get the wrong idea, I’ve been biking 10 miles a day for nearly six months so I’m in decent cardiovascular shape.

I learned that your knees also need to work up to the pounding.  I actually thought I was doing that. A month ago I would occasionally fore go the bike and walk five miles. Then I got the bright idea to run.

I successfully worked my way into running five miles with intermittent walking every 3/4-1 mile of my route. Once I could run the entire five miles without stopping I got a little overzealous and ran four days in a row. By that fourth day the spring in my knees was gone and I strained a glute (yeah, I know).

It has been a week and I’m just beginning to regain the spring in my step. Maybe I’ll be ready to play in next year’s game. I kind of know how Kevin Smith must have felt today. Sorry Tres, I ain’t gonna make it.

Giving Thanks

Every Friday I thank you for frequenting my blog. Here’s my post-Thanksgiving list.

All of you reading this blog and those of you who purchase the Rookie Scouting Portfolio. If you haven’t read the Rookie Scouting Portfolio before then consider it for 2012. A labor of love since 2006, the publication is available the first of April (no joke) and you can get back issues by emailing me.

My wife Alicia, who probably won’t be reading this, but it doesn’t matter. Alicia makes my life easy. She’s a huge reason why I can put in the hours I do to research, write, and publish the RSP, write for Footballguys.com, maintain this blog, and still hold down a day job. Every time I get a thank you for whatever value I provide, you should know you’re also thanking my wife. On the flip side, if we had a son that played in the NFL and my wife instilled her mentality about the game into him, we’d be feeling a bit sheepish about our son Ndamukong Suh this morning. More about this in a future post.

My daughter Chandler, who is smart, creative, poised, and someone I just enjoy hanging out with when we get the chance now that she’s a sophomore in college. Loving your family is one thing, liking who they are is something I’m more thankful for than most of you will ever understand.

My friend, former co-worker, and current FantasyThrowdown.com business partner Mike MacGregor. He’s one of the most inventive minds in the fantasy football industry. He’s responsible for two ground-breaking applications that several leading fantasy sites stole. I say “stole” with a smile because I mean it in the way a musician stole a great lick from another. Mike is the reason I’m even writing about football.

Joe Bryant and David Dodds at Footballguys.com. As a business owner or manager of a team, it can be very difficult to know when to provide firm direction and when to just get out of the way and let your people do what they do. These two have managed to figure out how to strike that balance more times than not. Footballguys.com is a great fantasy site because of numerous people, but the buck stops with them. Both of them deserve any positive recognition they get in the fantasy sports industry.

Sigmund Bloom, Cecil Lammey, and Jene Bramel. All three of these guys are passionate about football and express that love for the game and the hobby of fantasy sports in some of the more informative, imaginative, and enjoyable ways you’ll find on the Internet. The weekly conversations I have with Bloom (which we probably should tape some of them) inspire a lot of ideas I write about here.

Lammey not only knows the game, but he makes talking about it fun. He deserves the successes that continue to come his way. I appreciate both of them for giving me an opportunity to join them on Thursday nights for the Audible Roundtable.Working with him at the Senior Bowl for the past two years has been a labor of love. When I say labor of love, I mean it.

It’s quite a week that you can only fully appreciate when you imagine Lammey, Andrew Garda, and me consolidating our work at 2am in an IHOP in Mobile, Alabama and then roaming the empty streets of the town in the middle of the night with Garda using his cell phone to check for wireless availability, only to find it at an empty Hooter’s parking lot so we could email our reports ahead of our deadline.

Bramel is one of my favorite people I’ve met at Footballguys and the person I’d want to have my back when things go wrong a Vegas poker table. I’m sure his patients feel the same way. Anything he writes for this blog is getting posted as fast as can get it.

Parag thanks for the generosity of your knowledge this month. I felt like I was trying to learn how to throw a football and a neighbor dropped by to give me pointers only to find out that neighbor is Tom Brady. When I said you’re my hero for the week, I meant it.

Reads, Listens, Views

Football

Kevin Smith sparks Lions in a big way. by Jason Cole of Yahoo!

Colt McCoy develops thick Skin after rookie hazing by Michael Silver of Yahoo!

Fantasy Football

Fantasy Football Librarian Sara Holladay’s great info blog for the latest free articles all over the Internet.

Non-Football

What George Orwell Cam Teach Us About Occupy Wall Street And Policy Brutality former office Conor Friedersdorf draws upon his own experiences to explore the psychology behind the actions we saw on YouTube last weekend.

Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story? I admittedly lean more left than right when it comes to politics in our country today, but there are many issues where neither end of the political spectrum has our best interests in mind, including our civil liberties.