Grab that rookie….or not….
When drafting for your fantasy football league, the thought always comes up….whether or not to draft that high-ranking rookie. You know the one. The one that has all the potential to be a breakout star.
I’ll give you some food for thought if you’re considering picking one of these “can’t miss kids” up for your team. Hesitate.
Normally the highest draft picks, no matter how good they may have been in college, and no matter how good they may be in the pros, get drafted by the worst teams. That right there is enough for me to balk at selecting them. If it’s a running back you covet, think about whether that team has the offensive lne to open holes for him. Think about the quarterback- is he good enough to spread the field and prevent teams from “stacking the box” against the run?
Another thing to think about is “hitting the wall”. If given the chance to step right in and start, the production of rookie players drops dramatically as the long season wears on them. Again, not a good scenario, especially when you consider that the end of the year is where you’ll need production the most.
If you’re playing in a keeper league, then rookies are a good idea for your future, especially if you know that the team that drafted that player is adament about building a quality team around them. Otherwise, I’d personally let the next guy draft him.
Draft strategy scenarios
Everybody has their favorite draft day strategy when it comes to picking the next fantasy football league champ. I’ll review a couple here, and go over a few pros and cons.
First up is the RB first strategy. This strategy hordes a quality RB with your first pick, and second if your draft allows. The idea here is that RB’s suffer a much more dramatic loss of production as you go down the list. Not so for, say, Quarterbacks. Their production is tied more closely to each other, meaning a QB drafting in the first round of your draft, theoretically, will not do much greater than a QB drafted in the third round. Obviously, there are arguments to be made. Peyton Manning is a good example (season of ‘04) of this.
The best athlete strategy states that you draft the best player available, regardless of position. This can seem like a real good strategy, but watch out when you try to fill position holes later in the draft. You stand a good chance of a very unbalanced team.
The starting team strategy dwells in the wisdom that you pay close attention to your starting lineup- fielding and drafting the best players at every position. While this is definately a good way to go, watch out for your bench. Remember, you will need them during the season, so having the cupboard empty is not good. In other words, if you hav ethe chance to grab a very good WR, and your strategy says it’s Tight End time, by all means grab the WR for your bench.
Some other notes: Tight End is another feast of famine position. There usually are four or five good tight ends, and not much else. Also keep in mind the type of offense a team runs. Some never hit the TE, and don’t see them as much more than a blocking force.
Rob Moore operates HIWAY-play.com, a site featuring fantasy sports reviews, and where many great folks play online games free
I Don’t Need to Advertise, Do I?
To experts who say, “I do not need to advertise; I have all the business I need,” I quote Confucius, “Dig the well before you thirst.” In fact, one of the most perilous times in a business is when the business seems to have finally taken off, with a sufficient amount of work to be solvent and profitable. Murphy’s Law being immutable, after the current business engagements are handled, the business may dry up without warning and, seemingly, with no explanation.
In my many years of working with expert witnesses, even after pointing to tort reform or the threat thereof, recession economies, and other vagaries, sometimes there seems to be no reasonable explanation for calls from attorneys having slowed or even stopped. The expert who has his name and credentials “out there” will suffer less in these times. Advertising will keep a stream of business coming in during the slow times, especially if done in conjunction with networking and other forms of marketing.
Some experts are understandably wary of advertising. I see forensic advertising that I consider objectionable, advertising that a skilled attorney could use to impeach an expert witness. On the other hand, the fact that one advertises is not in itself objectionable. Advertising is not the basis of being viewed as a “hired gun.” That results, instead, from the prostituting of oneself by shaping the facts and opinions rendered to produce a desired conclusion.
If you are concerned about how you will look when answering questions about advertising your expert services, remember that the attorney cross-examining you is probably listed in local, state, and national bar association publications; Martindale-Hubbell®; local, state, and national legal magazines and newspapers; the Yellow Pages; and his child’s athletic booster directory, as was the judge when he practiced law as an attorney! Do not take the questioning personally. Your responses to the questions, rather than the questions themselves, will determine jurors’ and even judges’ attitude toward you. You should practice maintaining your poise and articulating prepared responses to purposely emotion-loaded questions.
Many successful experts tell me they let questions about their advertising “bother them all the way to the bank.” They feel that questions regarding advertising comprise only one of many issues on the cross-examination list, and they answer them simply and truthfully.
My advice is to keep your advertising professional, conservative, and in good taste. You should also read “how-to” expert witness books and attend expert witness conferences and workshops in order to learn techniques for handling cross-examination questions in deposition and in court. After all, the opposing attorney has an obligation to ask every question that might even remotely discredit you to the jury. Sometimes this process takes the form of asking benign questions or questions with benign answers, but in phraseology or a tone of voice that attempts to evoke an emotional response from you. Giving a matter-of-fact answer, using a normal tone of voice in a poised manner of speaking, will defuse such questions.
More often than objectionable advertising, I see advertising that is not cost-effective. Advertising is too costly for you to be careless in your selections. Beware, particularly, of using an advertising agency that is not familiar with the legal market. Ad agencies will almost certainly steer you to run display ads, which are effective for only a small percentage of expert witnesses, and only in specific situations. Agencies love to create display ads, because they tap their creative juices and usually merit large commissions.
How Much to Spend on Advertising
You will experience greater results from your advertising outlay if you regard it as a long-range investment rather than an immediate expense. Experts’ budgets for advertising range from zero to approximately 15% of revenue and occasionally more. In the beginning of your practice, before you have much revenue, advertising is pure investment.
No one can advise you exactly how much to spend on advertising. Although you should notice where your competitors advertise, do not fall into the trap of matching their outlay. Your practice is unique. You may concentrate on other forms of marketing, such as building a superior referral system, or working twice as hard at networking.
Be diligent in asking others what works for them, and learn as you build your practice. It requires investigation and experience to determine what works for your professional practice area, your personality, your geographic region, and your target audience. And, like everything else in life, it can change over time.
Types of Advertising
The most cost-effective advertising for expert witnesses is advertising with an extended shelf life such as resume directories, and advertising that provides frequent and consistent exposure, such as classified ads and Internet advertising. Directory listings are so important that a complete chapter is devoted to them. Internet marketing also is discussed in its own chapter.
Standard advertising is of two primary types - display and classified. It runs in newspapers, magazines, journals, and specialty publications such as jury verdict reports. Display and classified ads are different from each other in both purpose and design, which will be covered in Part 2 of this series.
About the Author
by Rosalie Hamilton, the Expert on Expert Witness Marketing and author of The Expert Witness Marketing Book.
Other articles on this and related topics can be found at www.expertcommunications.com
The Internet and Tom Robbins are both windows into new realities, realities that are prone to incite laughter and ludicrous behaviorisms.
These days I go on to the Internet not having any clue as to what is going to grab my interest on that particular day. What is slowly seeping into my subconscious like sludge into the sewer is the idea that I’m probably going to learn something new of interest to my already strange and twisted human existence. Whether the information turns out to be credible is another issue altogether seeing that my fellow human weirdoes are prone to the occasional exaggeration and ‘white lie’. Nonetheless, every time I go for a so-called ’surf’ into the deep blue waves of social consciousness I seem to find myself sitting on some new island of information that inevitably causes a smile to crack across my crystallized serious Internet writer’s faade that I must present to my colleagues so that they don’t uncover my secret true identity, that being that I’m a Sweet Medicine Clown from the planet Zepton. That last sentence’s structure is dedicated to the mastery of Tom Robbins.
Today’s particular Internet search was triggered by memories of laughter caused by the reading of books by a fellow named Tom Robbins. Although this guy has written eight awesome novels, most people I ask have never heard of him. After searching for sites dedicated to him I did discover that a lot of other people have read his stuff and actually feel very strongly about it. The main site I found was called the AFTRLife at http://www.rain.org/~da5e/tom_robbins.html. The real buzz I experienced was the biographical information I learnt about Robbins’ personal history, I mean it’s one thing to really be affected by someone’s fictional writing, but another dimension altogether to read about what they supposedly got up to in their life.
With names like: Another Roadside Attraction 1971, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues 1976, Still Life with Woodpecker1980 Jitterbug Perfume1984 Skinny Legs and All 1990, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas1994, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates 2000, and Villa Incognito 2003 you might get a little insight into the style of this writer. I say you might, because you’ve really got to read it to believe it. In his biography it said that a copy of “Another Roadside Attraction” was found on the floor next to Elvis Presley when he died on the toilet. Maybe Elvis laughed just a little bit too hard! You’ve got to be careful reading these books; they just might bend your so-called ‘normal’ brain into a warped device with unimaginable powers…
It is alleged that he was thrown out of his university fraternity for throwing biscuits at his housemother. Are you catching my drift here? This guy really likes to look at reality from a different angle, actually multiple angles. The first book I read, “Skinny Legs and All” was written from first-person narrative perspectives of inanimate objects like a can of beans, a conch shell and a painted stick- I think there was a spoon in there somewhere as well! Have you ever thought about how a can of beans would perceive the world?
Having made it back from Timbuktu alive and with a son named Fleetwood Star Robbins, Tom Robbins proves to be my kind of human: original and fun. Perusing the Internet has once again added depth to my experience and to my reality. It really is fun learning more about people, places and things that I was already interested in. I’m a sponge soaking up the rays of the sun and then washing the windscreen of the Universe!
Jesse S. Somer, M6.Net
http://www.m6.net
Jesse S. Somer is a fish swimming through the muddy waters of the human condition.