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Bonfire! The Draftby Lonnie Bernarde ~ January 31st, 2008. Filed under: Bonfire!. |
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I told you a few weeks ago that you probably wouldn’t get much out of my articles as far as any type of fantasy racing information. That might have been true a few weeks ago, but I broke down and decided to give you the lo-down on BONFIRE’s draft and give you my highly confidential rankings. |
Whatever you do though, please keep that information a secret! I’d hate to let that get into the wrong hands, especially Craig (my Marine brother) and Darryl (two-time champ).
There are many different fantasy games floating around the web with some very good and some of those are even free, i.e. race4cash.com, espn.com. Then again some you’ll pay so much to play that you could actually put your name on the hood of the 24 car as a major sponsor.
As far as everyone’s “favorite” (NA$CAR.COM), I cannot tell you if they got back into mainstream and are offering free games like most other major sporting sites. The reason I can’t tell you is that I have this conspiracy theory in the making. I cannot get their website to come up on my computer. I pretty much did everything I could as far as maintenance on my computer, but for some very strange reason I cannot get that site to show up anymore. I get every other favorite website to come up, but NA$CAR.COM keeps coming up with an error stating that Internet Explorer cannot display this website. Is it just me and my imagination or are they mad at me for calling them greedy last week? Oh, there I go on a tangent again. Sorry.
As I talked about last week our league BONFIRE is based on simplicity and is very low maintenance. We have a draft similar to most fantasy football leagues, with the main difference is each driver can be drafted up to four times in our 20 team Nascar league versus one player in fantasy football.
For those of you who have a draft type league my info should help some. But even for those leagues that use a salary cap, driver category, match-up or other format, you’ll get a quick idea on who the hot driver might be or the one that could be overlooked.
Not surprising with their COT success last year, Hendrick Motorsport’s drivers Johnson, Gordon and Earnhardt were drafted twelve of the first fifteen picks. Matt Kenseth was the number one overall, but that was probably due to him being a Ford driver and Kevin (my Uncle) in our league pretty much focuses on the blue oval. After each of the four available picks of those Hendrick cars were gone, Kenseth was the next one to be taken off the board. Tony Stewart was picked toward the end of the first round and that reason is quite obvious as his new manufacturer has some people spooked. There was huge doubt on his worth so early in the draft no matter how good of a driver he is because of the unknowns with Toyota again this year.
There was a mixture of the other top drivers sprinkled throughout the second round, but as round three came about, there were still three Hamlin’s available. Kinda surprising since the 11 car was a chase contender last year. But once again I think the Toyota thing worried some people.
A couple of years ago when Kahne won six races, he was snagged up in the draft the following year almost as fast as the Hendrick cars did this year. One of this year’s surprises was that he was still available in the fourth round. Evernham????? I don’t think even Budweiser’s money can turn that real life soap opera around.
Besides Kahne, the other overall surprise was the fact that McMurray was available almost at the end. Can you say “Silly Season” in the making with the 26 sled? The other thing that caught me a little off guard was all four Blaney’s were taken by time the final bell was rung.
Sleepers! What about Paul Menard? That 15 car wasn’t even looked at in our draft. He has his daddy’s money and you have to keep the DEI organization in mind. They didn’t do half-bad considering DEI’s internal problems in 2007 and he was a rookie. Gilliland? Forget about that organization. Mikey? Maybe, Maybe not!
What am I saying about all this draft info? I don’t know, you decide when you are picking your fantasy team. I’m just the messenger, please don’t kill me, I hate pain. Use at your own risk as I have this unique power to jinx. Keep the fire burning!
1-Jimmy Johnson 11-Clint Bowyer 21-Paul Menard 2-Jeff Gordon 12-Casey Mears 22-Jamie McMurray 3-Matt Kenseth 13-Martin Truex 23-David Ragan 4-Kurt Busch 14-Ryan Newman 24-Elliott Sadler 5-Tony Stewart 15-Greg Biffle 25-Dave Blaney 6-Kevin Harvick 16-Denny Hamlin 26-Sam Hornish 7-Jeff Burton 17-Kasey Kahne 27-Dario Franchitti 8-Dale, Jr. 18-Bobby Labonte 28-JJ Yeley 9-Kyle Busch 19-Juan Montoya 29-Robby Gordon 10-Carl Edwards 20-Reed Sorenson 30-Mikey (believe it or not)
