It all comes down to this…

They said fantasy football’s inherently boring to civilians. I saw that as a podcast challenge

No matter what you read or hear in this post, the main takeaway should be that I drafted last in my brainiac fantasy football league and still made the championship matchup. This, and that first pick was a secretly over-the-hill Travis Kelce.

Just sit with that for a sec.

I’m writing this bad boy pre-dawn in lovely and suburban Beaverton, Oregon—on a bus bench that’s blocks from the Nike campus, to be exact. It’s from here that, before we go deep on The Coastal Elite league and its brainy football motherfuckers, I want to impart the day’s non-NFL thought:

From San Diego to Seattle, the weather changes, the topography varies. Legal weed prices fluctuate wildly. The constant? Each morning around 5, brown humans are out readying the world your ass is fixin’ to use.

Check it out sometime at your nearest 7-11.

This week’s podcast episode features playoff competitors from my fantasy football league, The Coastal Elite League. Now, some would have you believe that fantasy sports can’t be entertaining for other people who aren’t taking part in your league. But these players happen to be exceptionally entertaining humans.

First among today’s guests is Lev Anderson, whom I met at the 2010 LA Film Festival. (He had the Fishbone documentary Everyday Sunshine and I had the Dock Ellis short.) Lev’s team is the Gridiron Grapplers. We hang out when I’m in Portland and plan to watch the afternoon game at the Spirit of ‘77 on Sunday. Stop by if you’re in town.

Our other guest will not be making an appearance at Spirit of ’77 this weekend. That’s because Jordan Rubin is, along with being the publicity-shy playoff contender of God Is Dead, an East Coast CEL player. The Jersey boy’s team is Bizzaro Blitz, named for Rubin’s synthetic drugs book, Bizzaro.

Dominic Corva is originator of Humboldt Poly’s cannabis studies program and owner of a mediocre CEL team called The Weed Professors. He astutely observed that the new league has been bereft of smack talk, considering that it includes mouthy player-owners such as Ngaio “Smoke a Super bowl” Bealum and WeedWeek’s Alex Halperin, whose woeful team could be facing relegation.

Corva’s right, with the exception of Jordan Rubin.

I wish I could share this man’s screenshots. The hubris, the disrespect. Rubin is a former prosecutor and an MSNBC legal analyst, and… I don’t want to spoil the podcast’s unreasonably interesting fantasy football playoff talk. Let’s just say I had a lot of fun making whatever happened happen.

That’s about all of the set-up you can probably stand, so let’s have at it: Lev Anderson, Jordan Rubin, and me. Three men go into a Zoom session, one gets out with the ability to frame the discussion.

Let’s go!