This edition of Fantasy Sports Expertise is brought to you by Scratcho-brand Anti-Itch medication! Just rub it anywhere, and ignore the permanent scarring!

It's time for me to share with all of you why I am the fantasy football king. Okay, I haven't won a championship since 2001. Okay, I've been steadily getting worse and worse every year. (I expect to finish roughly 17th in our league, which only has 14 teams, because of a variety of penalty appoints associated with stealing draft picks from people because I built the web application that handles the draft. Hehe, just kidding, guys! As far as you know.) And sure, my draft so far this year has been less than stellar, mainly because of Brigadoon related lack of preparation.

HOWEVER. The fact that I have finished an average of 2nd place for the last three seasons means that I am completely qualified to dispense advice, particularly in my area of expertise, The Draft. I'm kind of like Mel Kiper, Jr.! Only without all the amphetamines, ESPN contracts, access to players, research staff, and money. Anyway, here we go:

• The standard practice in Fantasy Drafts is to go for running backs first. The rationale behind this is that there are a very few top tier running backs in the NFL, and a great number of decent QBs and wide receivers. In the immortal words of Jet Li in some crappy Kung Fu movie, "That . . . mumble mistake."

  Watch Sportscenter some time. How many highlights do you see of running backs? Maybe one or two per week, when some random guy manages to punch through a defense and score a fluke 97 yard touchdown. Do you know how often that actually happens? Well let me tell you: almost never! On the other hand, how many highlights do you see of guys like Randy Moss making a spectacular catch, sprinting 50 yards for the touchdown, and then running over a traffic cop on the way home with weed in the glove compartment of his Bentley? Roughly 39,473 times per week.

  Nobody uses running backs anymore, except in the college game, and then only in the "option offense," which you'll note has not won an NCAA Championship game since 1877, just like the Wishbone and the dime defense. What you want are wide receivers and quarterbacks, and lots of 'em, closely followed by as many tight ends as you can pack on your bench.

• In the middle to late rounds (like round 2 or 3, maybe even as late as 4) it's probably a good idea to start looking for sleepers. You know, guys like Donte Hall, who usually got picked late in fantasy drafts, and then scored on kick returns in something like 47 straight games (for 5 different teams) last fall.

  My favorite kind of sleepers to find are recent retirees. The NFL is very much like prison: a lot of drug use, frequent rape, and, most importantly, a great deal of recividism, which is a hoity-toity term for guys that get out of the NFL/state penitentiary and go straight back in, either because they killed a rival drug dealer, ran out of money, or just couldn't handle it on the outside.

  Look for Ricky Williams and Shannon Sharpe to be picked up by teams with a lot of salary cap space by week 4 or 5. Technically, because they filed their retirement papers, they wouldn't be eligible to return until 2005, but technically, Ricky Williams is high on weed right now! So go with your best instinct there.

• Defenses aren't even worth drafting, not even the really good ones like the Bengals and Jets. The reason for this is that with even a good defense, every time they allow a touchdown you LOSE points! Don't draft them, and FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE PLEASE DON'T START THEM. You'll thank me when your opponent posts a negative score for the week when the vaunted New England Defense loses 73-2 and the Texans defense you didn't even bother to draft does nothing to hurt you!
• One thing you have to be careful to plan for is injury. For example, Fred Taylor was picked up by one of my leaguemates late in the first round; a strong pick if Fred stays healthy, which I believe he will. Many people were concerned that Fred's groin will be injured again, as it has been in almost every season except the last, but the way I look at it, hey! He's had it operated on, what, 7 times in the past decade? It'll be bionic at this point! It's gotta be stronger than ever!

  In a related story, the thought of having a doctor poking a sharp implement at anything within 15 miles of my own groin has caused me to throw up into my sinuses.

• Another thing that you have to try and balance with your team is how many crackheads you want. From one perspective, a crackhead is good to have on your team, if only because if he's freshly smoked up he'll be 3 times faster than anyone else on the field. (Michael Irvin, despite his advanced years, was recently clocked at under 3 seconds in the 40 because of residual cocaine in his system that he snorted off Troy Aikman's wife's butt in 1992. And by "40," I mean he drank a 40-ounce bottle of Olde Englishe in under 3 seconds.)

  On the other hand, if your crackhead player forgets to inject another man's urine into his bladder before each drug test, or screws up and injects urine containing steroid byproducts, he may be suspended for as many as two quarters of the following game and fined something like .05% of his monthly income for the rest of the season. And that could lose you some points on game day.

• You may have heard things about Peyton and Eli Manning, but if they get snatched up by greedy leaguemates in the early rounds, don't be afraid to pick their equally-talented older brother Archie Manning. His lifetime stats are simply beyond compare, and despite a few decades of not performing, he's still a solid pick.
• While we're on the subject of brothers, if you miss out on Todd Heap, his younger brother Uriah is another great pick, even as a rookie. He may be playing backup now, but he'll be a starter by midseason.
• Michael Vick will be on the sidelines in a full body cast by week 4, have no fear.

Well, that's about all the advice I have for you this week. I don't want to give too much away, or I'll find everybody beating me! And that would make me cry. So don't do it.