NCAA Football 09 (2)

Whether you choose to export or not has no bearing on your current game. Next you see if anyone wants to transfer to your school. The majority of the time, no one does want to transfer. Next on the agenda is off-season recruiting. If you were able to sign 25 players during the season, the next 5 weeks is dedicated solely to that purpose. At the end of the 5 weeks you are given a recruiting class grade, and you can see how you compared to other schools. Now, you have your players for next year, you get the option to change a player’s position to fit holes in your rosters. Once you are satisfied with that it’s on to training camp. All the players that weren’t in the last recruiting class go through training camp to improve their skills. Just like in real life some player gain more attributes than others, afterwards you get to review the stats and see who made the big breakthrough.

NCAA Football 09 (1)

My favorite game to play on my Xbox360 is NCAA Football 09. Specifically, I love playing dynasty mode. In dynasty mode, you pick a school and take them through years. During the time you can recruit players to make your program better, as well as playing the games in hopes of getting you team to the national championship. At the end of every year you are given job offers based on you performance to other schools wanting to acquire you services. You can choose to ignore these offers and stay with your current team, or take one the offers and try and build that program up. After you make that decision, you get tossed into the off-season schedule, with you first task is graduating your seniors and trying to convince underclassmen not to transfer or go to the NFL Draft. After you spend some time doing that, the game will ask if you want to export the draft class for use in the NFL counterpart Madden 09.

Fantasy Football (5)

So, facing the team that started my downward descent last time, I wasn’t going to let that happen. I was an early favorite through the projected scores. The game on Thursday put me quickly behind as he racked up a quick 18 point lead. The early games on Sunday brought me further away from victory, has he continue to lead 61 to 32. By late Sunday he had reached out to an 83-59 lead, and he still had one player left to play while I had two players still awaiting their games. One of which would play Sunday night, and one player on Monday night. At the end of Sunday, I had only brought the margin to 83-63. With both teams still with one player to play, for me a wide receiver and his kicker were still on the board. So I’m thinking my season is pretty well over with, I didn’t even watch the game. I get online at 11 pm and see some people talking in the chat room, one of them was my opponent, saying the game needed to end. So I scroll down to see the score, and my receiver was having a breakthrough career day, and ended with 200 yards receiving and 2 touchdowns. This brought my score to 95, and his kicker only netted him 5 points to bring his total to 88. So, with the luck I have had the past 5 weeks the playoffs should be interesting going in the number 2 seed with a 9-5 record.

Fantasy Football (4)

Unfortunately the player didn’t repeat for any of the next three weeks as I suffered three consecutive losses. This would bring my record to 4-5 and below .500 for the first time this year. This was the first major turn of my season, the second however was much more inviting. With the return of my superstar, and me picking up a new defensive unit, brought me to a lucky streak. I would go on to with 4 weeks straight, some of them by sheer luck, but hey a win is a win, and it’s good to get lucky sometimes. So sitting at 8-5, with just one game left in the regular season, and a playoff berth already clinched, I was set to face my division rival who beat me back in week 7 to start my downward spin. I got to looking, and for me to have a chance at winning in the playoffs, the victory here would be crucial to keep my momentum.

Fantasy Football (3)

This year I was invited to return to the league. So I got the chance to draft my own players this year, and get a team I wanted. With my team set I headed into week 1 with high expectations. I accumulated the 2nd highest point total of any team, that week and soared to 1-0, only to get wiped in week 2. So sitting at 1-1, I came roaring back with the 2 highest scores of the next two weeks, moving me up to 3-1. Before finally having some back luck, with my superstar getting injured, and a horrible performance by some other players led to a week 5 loss to the worst team at the time. With my superstar out for the next 4 weeks, I had to find someone to fill his shoes, I picked up a player off free agency, and it was the right pick as he blasted away giving me a narrow victory in week 6, bring me to 4-2.

Fantasy Football (2)

Last year, I was approach by my best friend’s father. He knew my interest in fantasy football, and was in a league with other people from our community. One of which was my youth pastor, who had very little knowledge of the NFL, nor the time needed to commit to fantasy football. I was asked to help out and co-own the team. I accepted and took over with 5 games left in the regular season. The team was 2-7, but I had a couple of superstars, to work with. I quickly made a trade, dishing out one of my superstars for 2 good players and 1 decent player. I held on to my other star, and made a change picking up a more solid defense. 3 weeks later, after gaining 3 wins, I decide to trade away the other star to get some more depths as I tried to make the playoffs. I won the 4th week after I took over, but lost the 5th by 2 points thus crushing my chances at the playoffs with a 6-8 record, which was one game out of the playoffs.

Fantasy Football (1)

Every fall since 2003, I get online with eager anticipation of the football season. I love to play fantasy football, and have done so each year on yahoo.com. Fantasy football is a game where you draft real NFL players and get points based on their performance in their actual games. They get points for yards gained, touchdowns scored and various other things. My first year in 2003, I created to different teams, and had great success. My first team took 1^st place in the tournament at the end of the year after being the lowest seed in the tournament. My second team took 2^nd place in the tournament, after being the top seed at the end of the regular season. So, being so successful my first year, means it can only get worse right? Well it did but not much, and in 2004 I took 3^rd place and 4^th place. This trend continued in 2005 as I took on an addition team, and got a 3^rd place team, and two 4^th place teams.