👋 Farewell To An Institution

In this week's P.O. Box:

The massively popular Around The NFL podcast—hosted by Dan Hanzus, Marc Sessler, Gregg Rosenthal and the late Chris Wesseling—came to an abrupt end earlier this week after running for more than a decade.

Nothing lasts forever, but it’s still jarring to see an institution in the football media space cease to exist.

I became intimately familiar with the show six years ago when Pat Kerrane and I made our Fantasyland episode about Wesseling’s battle with cancer.

In working on that audio documentary about Wess, we quickly learned that the story of Wess’s battle was also the story of ATN…

His co-hosts became his best friends.

His co-worker became his wife.

His fans became an international support network.

As Chris fought through multiple rounds of cancer treatments, his ATN family was quite literally at his side.

I recommend checking out that episode if you haven’t done so yet. It’s still probably the piece of “content” that I’m most proud of making.

The original Fantasyland podcast feed has long-been defunct, but the archives exist on that Rotoviz feed where they re-ran them back in 2019 and 2020.

Here’s to ATN on a legendary run. Excited to see where they all heed the call going forward.

🤯 A draft structure combo so crazy that it might be genius. The fantasy wunderkind, Ron Stewart, shares his favorite way to attack drafts on Underdog Fantasy. Then, we hop in a Best Ball Mania V draft where we pull off a rare draft structure with big upside. Check it out on the Deposit Kingdom channel.

🏅 Forget Ranks: Tiers & Humility-Based Drafting are the Way. This week on Fantasy Life, I shared an expensive lesson I learned a few years ago and how it informs how I draft today.

🎡 Randomizer Draft w/ Jon Warner. Jon battles the Randomizer wheel while failing his Canadian citizenship test, scrolling way the eff down, and getting intimate with Tony Pollard

🥃 Best Ball After Dark w/ Jon Warner. Talked all things best ball ecosystem with Jon, including ideas for an Underdog expo event.

☕️ Best Ball Breakfast: The Truth About ADP. Four more drafts on BBB this week, including ones with Shawn Siegele, Pat Kerrane, and Chris Spags. Topics discussed: making correlated bets on contingent players, locking up QB stacks when there isn't a clear ADP value or player target, the value of RB/WR pairings. Also: PREVIOUSLY ON BEST BALL BREAKFAST.

🏆️ Fantasy Life roundup. This week we launched a fresh-look newsletter, new website, and a premium offering on Fantasy Life. I also wrote about De’Von Achane buzz and rookie derangement syndrome.

☣️ Using Toy Games To Master DFS Concepts. Pete and Bric are joined by NerdyTenor to discuss the End Game Syndicate launch, demo a toy game on the site, and to discuss the difficulties of "solving" season long best ball.

🚢 The Ship Chasing Roast Draft (Can You Handle The Heat?). The crew host a private draft with the Youtube members and then sauce the teams at the end. Special guest judge David Kitchen joins.

🍾 Blasting Off On Best Ball with DeeZe. The Club is joined by NFT end boss and best ball grinder, DeeZe, to discuss his favorite players in 2024 drafts and strategy for Underdog's Sprint contest.

💪 The Swolecast Drafts A BBMV Team. The one where we Kitchen shares streaming tips and I weigh in on the CMC wedding dress drama.

⏰ Bold Predictions For 2024 Drafts. This week on Off & On The Clock, we each share some hot takes for 2024 before hopping in a BBM draft with a high-t build.

📈 The Next Great Late-Round Tight End? (ADP Chasing). Kerrane, Davis, and Sam go hunting for the next Trey McBride.

🍕 A BBM Draft w/ Ron Stewart. Hopped on Ron’s channel to talk through Underdog drafting strategies.

🕵️ Book #11 for June (COMPLETE): The Hunter by Tana French

Finished this over the weekend and thought the slow burn start fully paid off.

Also came away from it super impressed with French as a writer. She manages a tightrope walk of painting a vivid scene (her descriptions of the mountain seemed almost fantastical at times) while moving along the mystery/Western elements at a pace that prevents you from ever getting bored.

It’s a testament to her character development that she could sit on the murder teased in the log line until the final third of the book without alienating the reader.

Next time I need a good beach read I’ll be dipping into her archives.

⛰️ Book #12 for June (20%): Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
🤠 Book #13 for June (Haven’t Started): True Grit by Charles Portis

✅ Book #11 for June (COMPLETE): The Hunter by Tana French
✅ Book #10 for June (COMPLETE): River of Doubt by Candice Millard
✅ Book #9 for May (COMPLETE): The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
✅ Book #8 for May (COMPLETE): Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
✅ Book #7 for April (COMPLETE): Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
✅ Book #6 for April (COMPLETE): The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson
✅ Book #5 for March (COMPLETE): Recursion by Blake Crouch
✅ Book #4 for March (COMPLETE): The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
✅ Book #3 for Feb. (COMPLETE): Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk by Billy Walters
✅ Book #2 for Feb. (COMPLETE): Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
✅ Book #1 in Jan. (COMPLETE): Clear Thinking by Shane Parris

No shows this weekend, since we did a Randomzier/Best Ball After Dark double header last night, but I’ll be heading down to NYC tomorrow for this BDGE trivia event.

I think there are some tickets still available if you want to swing by:

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