Now you’ve watched some preseason, you’ve read from the insiders or analysis of mock drafts of mocking mock drafts. You have a discernible plan, but most likely, you don’t have advise from poets on these matters. Not until today. What better way to start it off then with an oldie, but a good. The first stanza in William Butler Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” is chocked full with hearty fantasy advice:
1)”That is no country for old men.”- first line, first great advice. Yeats seems to be saying here, Kurt Warner will get injured sometime this year.
2)”The young/In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations – at their song,”- Those dying generations of fantasy football past, where you could pick a top 7 running back and envision consistent production. Yeats is hearkening back to bygone days, halcyon days, when back by committee seemed like a fad a few teams used.
3)”The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,/ Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long/ Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.”- Yeats is reminiscing on the Wildcat formation and doesn’t seem to buy one bit Ronnie Brown or any other dolphin/fish-based player as being legit. That was all so last year.
4)”Caught in that sensual music all neglect/ Monuments of unaging intellect.” -The sensual music are the experts picks and the monuments of unaging intellect are the employers of those experts (CBS, ESPN, etc.). There’s always a consensus top 10, and those are never the top 10. Yeats ends the first stanza by calling out all fantasy football team owners and telling them to think outside the box.
Or so I gleaned.
