Room for Failure

I've been a bad Commish lately. I organized the first fantasy football league that I ever joined, but after that I took an owner-only role until Zealots 34 formed in 2005. The league is now in its fifth year. In these years, I have yet to master the complicated free agent process.

It's a bit of a hybrid league in that it's mainly draft-based except when it comes to free agency. The majority of your zbucks goes to keeping your "restricted" free agents. It used to be the responsibility of my deadbeat vice commish (the truth hurts), but I decided to take it over this year.

Early in the process Brett Ratliff took over the top spot as the highest paid free agent ever. He went for z7200. Early Doucet, a second-round pick for the Cardinals who didn't crack the teams top four this year, beat Ratliff. The final bid was z13900. One team pulled a Dan Snyder thinking that Doucet might be the slot guy this year, or maybe even an eventual starter if Steve Breaston falters.

The "Houston, we have a problem" moment came when one of our owners noticed that in setting up the auction process, I had neglected to set the system up to automatically deduct zbucks as owners won players. The owner who won Doucet didn't have the cash to make the transaction. It turned out that the runner-up also was overcredited by an embarrassing 10,000 zbucks. Not my finest moment. This disaster happened on a day when I did not check the Web. I spent a couple of Sunday hours getting things organized, and so far, there have been no complaints.

I have a problem with failure. I feel that I have no room for failure, and I will be dismissed if I make but one mistake. I also don't like to own up when I do fail.

I'll be back in a sec for Zach's book review.