Mixed Signals at CBS (and Others)

Most people who play fantasy football don’t set their teams the way we do here with polls like this one. Instead, they turn to expert opinions from TV shows, magazines, and Web sites. In fact, the author of the blog Collegiatelivin asked me recently if there was a site I could recommend to help make lineup decisions.

My advice on that front is this: You shouldn’t depend on a single site for your expert advice. Each one is as likely as the other to be right on any given call on any given Sunday. And sometime the site may not even agree with itself.

To illustrate what I mean, I’m going to describe the fantasy football site at CBS Sportsline. (And I could just as easily be discussing many other sites, so don’t interpret this as a rant against CBS.) Each week CBS Sportsline assigns a “Guru” score for each player. What does that mean? I’ll let CBS Sportsline itself answer that:

“The Guru is not a person, but rather our top-secret statistical formula that takes into account each player’s past performance, injury status and upcoming NFL opponent to predict the number of fantasy points that player will score this week, based on your scoring system.”

CBS Sportsline also offers “Fantasy Analysis” for each player from CBS Sports experts. And sometimes this analysis…well, it seems as if whoever’s doing this analysis was not involved in coming up with the Guru score. The left hand of the Web site doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

In setting my lineup for a fantasy team in a CBS Sportsline league, I looked up three wide receivers available on the waiver wire at the time. Here’s what the Guru and the Fantasy Analysis said about each one:

Sidney Rice, Minnesota Vikings. Guru score: 3 fantasy points this week. Fantasy Analysis: “He’s definitely getting more and more comfortable with Favre throwing passes and who wouldn’t? Rice is quickly becoming one of Favre’s favorite targets and that should increase his Fantasy value heading into Week 5 at St. Louis.”

Kenny Britt, Tennessee Titans. Guru score: 8. Fantasy Analysis: “The Titans host the Colts in Week 5, and Collins could be forced to throw the ball quite a bit in that game, so you could do worse than taking a shot with Britt as a flier flex option in deeper leagues.”

Miles Austin, Dallas Cowboys. Guru score: 10. Fantasy Analysis: “Austin has some sleeper potential, but the Cowboys don’t seem interested in making him an integral part of the passing attack. Until he finds some consistency, you can leave him on waivers.”

Follow along with me here. The player becoming one of Brett Favre’s favorite targets (and the one I added to my lineup this week) was predicted by the Guru to score 3 points, while the one who, according to CBS Sports experts, should be left alone (and the one who, as of Wednesday afternoon, was still available in my league) was predicted by the Guru to score 10.

No wonder fantasy football sometimes makes people want to do this.

Remember to vote on the waiver poll, which closes tonight.