A few months ago, I was cruising the Compton Public Library (because that's how I roll), when I purchased a couple of literary gems for 25 cents each from their book sale. I'll get to the second one at another time, but for now I want to take you back to 1990, when fantasy football was scoffed at by most respectable people and left to the hardcore sports nerds. And if you wanted to get information to prepare you for your upcoming fantasy season, there was Internet for you to turn to with their pages of Big Boards, and you sure as shooting couldn't just head down to your local magazine rack to find a half-dozen in-depth preview magazines.
No, you had to track down books written by the early fantasy experts. These men were no Matthew Berry come latelies. These were the Wild West days of fantasy sports prognostication. The people who did devote themselves full-time to these endeavors were rugged individualists, blazing a new trail for lonely, obsessed sports fans everywhere. With nothing but steely determination, a bottle of rye and a stack of statistics the size of the US budget, these men lived rough lives, all in order to bring a very small percentage of the population their fantasy sports news. These were groundbreaking, risk-taking men. Men like...Cliff Charpentier.
Yup. Your "leading" fantasy football expert in 1990 was, in all likelihood, some sort of French-Canadian. As my partner McLane noted, that would explain the New Orleans Saint on the cover - he probably had a requirement to place a Saint on the cover every year, because of the deep, ethnic ties between the Quebecois and the Cajuns. (Alternate 1990 cover boy: Bobby Hebert!) You have every right to be skeptical of any fantasy football guide written by Cliff Charpentier, unless it's a CFL guide. I bet Cliff Charpentier was all over the Montreal Alouettes in 1990.
The first thing you'll notice is the cover boy, the "1989 Fantasy Player of the Year" - Saints RB Dalton Hilliard. Which blew me away - he was the 1989 version of Ladanlian Tomlinson? It seems ludicrous. But looking at his 1989 numbers, and they are pretty amazing: 1,776 total rushing and receiving yards and 18 total touchdowns. That's pretty impressive stuff, especially for someone on the freakin' Saints in 1989.
The back cover promises to answer many burning questions that fantasy players will have heading into the 1990 NFL season, including "Can Hilliard repeat his Saintly 1989 performance?" Allow me to answer that one for you: no. How does 409 total yards and one lousy touchdown strike you. All this for some that the esteemed Mr. Charpentier ranked as the No. 4 RB available in 1990.
Or No. 7, depending on which list you believe. Because way back in 1990 (a time when people still listened to, if you can believe this, cassette tapes!), there wasn't one method of scoring fantasy sports like we have now. Instead, French Charpentier listed rankings for the three most popular methods:
- The Basic Scoring Method: players earn points for how many points they score during a game (six for a TD, three for a field goal, etc.) with no consideration for yardage gained.
- The Performance Point Method: players earn points for yardage gained (one point for 20 yards rushing/receiving or 50 yards passing) with no consideration for points scored.
- The Distance Scoring Method: some sort of Byzantine method of scoring which involves calculating points based on the yardage gained by each player for each scoring play. Even mathematicians at MIT are stumped by this method.
What we use today is a basic combination of the first two methods (the third one clearly having been created by French-Canadians set on secretly introducing the Metric system to unsuspecting NFL fans). Again, it blows my mind that even though it was all the way back in 1990 (when people only had 30 or 35 different cable channels - imagine!) no one had thought to combine the two methods. Or, that at least no one had informed Charpentier if they did. I honestly don't know - I was 14 at the time, and the only fantasy anything I did involved me locking myself in the bathroom with a stolen copy of my brother's Hustler magazines.
So how did the missing Fabulous Rougeau do with his 1990 selections. Let's take a look with the help of hindsight (and Pro Football Reference). I've averaged the rankings he had for the Basic Scoring and Performance Point Methods to get a sense of where he would rank them in today's, modern scoring method.
Top 5 Running Backs:
- Neal Anderson, Chicago Bears: After having gained 1,051, 1,477 and 1,709 yards over the past three seasons, Charpentier sees this climb "continuing as he remains the Bears' primary offensive weapon." And he had a very good year: 1,562 total yards and 13 TDs, both in the Top 5 in the NFL. Which makes you wonder if the Bears could convince Neal Anderson to come out of retirement - even today he'd be an upgrade over the slabs of meat they have running the ball.
- Barry Sanders, Detroit Lions: He was the 1989 Fantasy Rookie of the Year, and Charpentier boldy predicted that there was "no lid for his 1990 fantasy potential". No kidding. How about 1784 yards from scrimmage and an NFL-leading 16 touchdowns? Not bad for a second-year player.
- Eric Dickerson, Indianapolis Colts: Charpentier was willing to bet that Dickerson would rebound from the hamstring injury that "limited" him to 1,522 yards and eight touchdowns in 1989. Big mistake. Injuries weren't the problem in 1990 - it was attitude. He and the Colts engaged in a drawn-out, stupid feud that would led to him missing the first seven games and essentially killing his career. 769 yards and four TDs equals Frenchy Fuqua's first major gaffe.
- Dalton Hilliard, New Orleans Saints: As mentioned earlier, flame out city. Reuben Mays returned healthy in 1990 from the injuries that cost him the previous season, and Dalton HIlliard went back to being a reserve.
- Christian Okoye, Kansas City Chiefs: The "Nigerian Nightmare" was a nightmare for fantasy owners, with knee injuries limited his production in 1990 to 828 yards and seven TDs, down from 1,492 yards and 12 TDs a year before. This was also the season that Steve Atwater destroyed him on a Monday Night game with a hit that basically made Atwater's reputation as the game's pre-eminent heavy hitter and drove Okoye all the way to whatever the hell that Pirate Master TV show he did a few years ago.
Next time, we'll see how well our French friend did picking the QBs. Hint: Don Majkowski is in the Top 5. This is not a good sign.
