A funny thing happened while brainstorming topics for my next fantasy football article. Our fearless Armchair leader Geoff Lambert put together a Twitter tournament for writers with fewer than 1,000 followers. A mix of 32 fantasy football crazies to battle it out, head to head in five rounds, voted on through Twitter polls, for… hmm… some sort of ultimate glory I guess.
Actually @GeoffLambert77 declared he would invite the winner to join him for a segment on a future podcast, but the main purpose of this Supreme Battle Royale was to create interest and generate excitement for these 32 fantasy football writers to help build their Twitter following. I qualified for the field and hopped on to an unexpected wild ride.
There are a couple of things you should know about me before I get into the details of what transpired. First off I hate losing, no matter how trivial the competition. Secondly, I hate Twitter even more than I hate losing. The site is a virtual cesspool of stupidity, where people can hide behind a keyboard (with anonymity if they choose) and spread a wealth of hate and disinformation with no repercussions. I mention this because I saw the number of people following my Twitter handle jump from around 120 to 200, while I’m still only following a mere 22 accounts. I understand there’s an unwritten courtesy for following back, and I understand some people won’t follow those who don’t follow back. This doesn’t matter to me. I own the consequences of my actions.
I’m not on Twitter to win a who’s following who contest. Anyone is welcome to follow me if they like the content I share and put forward. I use Twitter primarily for fantasy football news and to catch funny video clips of people doing stupid stuff among other things. And I really miss the Perry Ellis and Conner Frankamp jokes from NCAA tournament yesteryears. One of my biggest pet peeves is reading up on sports only to see politics junking up the feed. I use the “lists” feature to separate content, and many of these new followers are on my “Fantasy Football” list. The fantasy football community on Twitter is a fun group, and to Geoff’s goal of growing this fraternity the tournament was clearly a huge success.
Round One: @RobertBlock07 versus @jerschwob. This poll generated a total of 193 votes, and I managed to get 56% of them. I truly don’t know how many of them came from the fantasy football community, or friends I texted and shared the link with. But my mind was racing. How could I impact this final outcome? Who could I ask to share the link that could give me an edge, and maybe that bump or surge to put me over the top?
One of my annual vacations for the past near decade has been to Mets Fantasy Camp. I love playing baseball and it’s the best week of the year every year for me. Many repeat campers will say, the first camp is about the experience, the second is about the competition (because you learned from the first camp how it goes), and the third, fourth, fifth trips, etc. are about the friendships and camaraderie. It’s true and because of my six camp experiences, I’ve become friends with several former major league ballplayers I had the thrill to watch play while growing up.
Enter Lenny Harris. Not only did Lenny play for the Mets in the early 2000’s, but he’s also MLB’s all time leader in pinch hits with 212. Thus the nickname “All Time”. I was lucky enough to have Lenny coach my assigned camp team in 2019, and he’s truly one of the good guys. He has that ability to make everyone around him smile, simply by smiling himself. We stay in touch throughout the year, so I texted him and asked him to retweet the poll which he graciously did. My rookie Twitter mistake was not asking him to suggest to his followers who to vote for in the poll. No harm no foul, but an important lesson learned for the next day.
Round Two: @RobertBlock07 versus @NickDynastyff. This poll generated a total of 253 votes, and I grabbed a 57% share. In the early hours I was down a pretty good margin. My son made an interesting observation too. No doubt Nick had the better Twitter handle for those fantasy football fans voting blindly. I needed to step up the texting to friends, and even started reaching out to those I hadn’t seen or heard from in quite sometime. Still, I needed another big push.
Enter Dwight Gooden. Yes, you read that right. Could I actually get Doc to RT with a plug for Yours Truly? What would the other writers think? This idea was as crazy as it was exciting and tempting. Understand something here. Doc was my favorite player in my teenage years. To be just 13 years old when he was 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA, lights out virtually every time he took the mound. I didn’t even need to look up those numbers. Yeah, I wore the #16 jersey proudly to school often. And now as a 48 year old no longer viewing him as a rockstar, just proud to consider him a friend.
Doc loves talking baseball with the fantasy campers, enjoys offering pitching tips on the field, and is genuine with his kindness every step of the way. The writers in our group chat were going nuts. “What’s Block got planned for the next round? A RT from Michael Jordan or Elvis?” Yes, this was definitely fun. Geoff’s tournament was generating the excitement intended. Yet part of me also felt a bit guilty. @NickDynastyff had a lot of support and was keeping the poll close. I scrolled through his Twitter account and was extremely impressed. His content was strong, very detailed, and to be quite honest much better than anything I can put together. I kind of felt bad I didn’t vote for him myself.
Round Three: @RobertBlock07 versus @toiletstotitles. Yes, what would Block have planned for this round? And who was this toilet guy? Was I going up against a Mr. Clean factory worker when he wasn’t churning out fantasy football content in his spare time? Full disclosure, there were several other celebrities I have connections with who declined my overtures. Completely understandable for something as trivial as this, yet I still had another ace up my sleeve.
“Do me a favor Jody Mac!” That was the phrase sports talk radio callers would use back in the 90’s when calling into Jody McDonald’s show on WFAN. I used it many times myself in the wee hours of his overnight program. Then I had the privilege of working with him at Sports Talk 950 WPEN in the mid-2000’s when I was selling radio and he was the afternoon drive host. Jody is a standup guy and a rather solid poker player as well.
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Yet the plumber-to-FF-champion was a formidable opponent. Every time I surged in the poll with a round of texting friends, he came over the top with a surge of his own. We had some good jokes going back and forth in the Twitter comment sections about burner accounts and bot farms. In the end I was flushed out of the tournament in the Elite Eight with just a 45% clip of the 408 total votes. @toiletstotitles then met his demise in the semifinals losing to @FFMiz1 by just two votes 203-201. And @FFMiz1 was blown to smithereens by tournament champion Tom Bombadil, with @BombadilFantasy dropping his infamous #TomBombs to take the crown.
All in all this GoingFor2.com June Madness Fun Fest was a tremendous success. We all had a lot of fun with it, shared some laughs and increased the exposure for aspiring writers in the fantasy football community. I hope you enjoyed this read and recommend you follow these worthy participants on Twitter. And you can also find them all on the “Fantasy Football” public list on my account:
@al_FF_red, @BombadilFantasy, @ClubFantasyFFL, @CoachStevenP, @DannyFootball59, @doubleFdoubleG, @EagleDanFF, @Engage8Fantasy, @FantasyMikeBBF, @FantasyTriage, @FFB_BBQ, @FFDudeistPriest, @FFMiz1, @FF_LeapOfFaith, @FootballStock, @FusionFFB, @Gasdoc_Spit, @Generally_Aware, @Jamie_byromKM, @jerschwob, @JorgeBEdwards, @NateMarcum, @NateNFL, @NickDynastyFF, @RayRayMarz, @RobertBlock07, @SupaDupaFlex, @TheFantasyZohan, @therealtrevt, @tntFtyrell, @toiletstotitles, @_FootballJesus_
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