Fantasy football!

While sick, I couldn't find it in me to provide my weekly Fantasy Football update. With all apologies for those who waited impatiently last week, I will provide a mid-weekend update on the fortunes of both my beloved teams, Monkey Knife Fight and Rodent Passion.

Of course, those who read the comments will know that Rodent Passion fell to the hapless Popeye's Nephews (thanks, Steve) last week, while producing the lowest scoring output in our league's 3.5 year history, largely due to bye weeks and injuries to many of my top players. As those injuries continued to this week, RP fortunes look no better. Barring a super-human effort tonight by Jacksonville tight end Marcedes Lewis (say, his going for 150 yards and 3 TDs), RP will suffer its 3rd consecutive loss. Still on track for a play-off berth, but our players must get healthy (and stay off the weed) if RP is to recover from this slide.

MKF, meanwhile, is on a little run, thanks largely to the unexpected explosion of the fantasy powerhouse Wes Welker of the New England Patriots. He has produced 30+ points for MKF on consecutive weeks, helping to pull out an unlikely victory one week ago, and putting MKF in position for another this week. Heading into tonight's Monday Night Football game between Indianapolis and Jacksonville, MKF finds itself down 7 to the Brookside Bulldogs, with Indy RB Joseph Addai and Jacksonville TE Marcedes Lewis still to play. The Bulldogs counter with Jacksonville QB David Garrard. A close one that could go either way, I like our chances should Addai come back strong from his recent injury.

In football talk, unrelated to fantasy football, I find it interesting how often the subject of character in adversity arises. Just this morning, listening to Mike and Mike on ESPN radio, I don't recall who, but someone was making the comment that "adversity does not build character, it reveals it". I have seen variations on this theme in many contexts, but like I say, it comes up often in football. What do I think of this? Personally, I think both. I'll snoop through my copy of The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Sienna to get her agreement, but I am convinced that suffering both builds and reveals character. While we are born, I believe, with a certain supply of instinctual virtue (if such can really be said -- perhaps it's better to say we are inclined toward certain good behaviors naturally, while others we develop and choose), trials of all kinds -- whether cancer, or merely suffering through going to school as kids -- build in us wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance, if we choose. Later trials reveal the extent to which these virtues have blossomed, while allowing them further feed on which they will be nourished and grow.

I think to suggest that trial merely reveals character denies the very possibility that character may be developed. How else might character be developed except by trial? I suppose there are some, who by the exercise of their wills, grow in wisdom and the other virtues, without ever having to suffer trials. Most, however, have to be forced to grow, the way children are forced to go to school. And this "force" comes by way of the trials placed upon us by life.

Edit (10/24/07) to add the weekend's final scores:
MKF (3-4) 110 over Brookside Bulldogs 108
NP (4-3) 54 loses to KC Masterpiece 85