EDIT..as I was working on this post Sunday morning, I received the news that my uncle, Ralph Straley, passed away on Saturday at 91. He was the inspiration for our league (see the first entry below), our 'Godfather' as it were. RIP Ralph. I'm mulling over an appropriate way to honor him.
As I was renewing the league for our 46th season, I was thinking about some of the more interesting moments in our history. I've started a similar Hughes News article on several occasions over the years, but always discarded it as it felt so much like a 'good-bye' post. But I recently came across a file of 'story notes' I've been keeping, and thought that this may be a good time to flesh them out and publish them. These are in no particular order.
Floating the idea, 1980 (the softball game)... In the summer of 1980, I took my usual vacation trip to Baltimore. As always, it consisted of a couple of weeks of Orioles games, crab feasts, and shuffleboard at the local corner bar. But on this trip, as I've mentioned over the years, my uncle Ralph asked me to make him a 'cheat sheet' for his upcoming fantasy football draft. Now I was aware of the concept through some Sports Illustrated stories about the Raiders employee who is credited with inventing it. But I had never gotten involved with it until that afternoon.
I went to the nearby market and bought one of those 'pulp', printed in June, football mags off the newsstand and got to work. I was back in Houston before my uncle had his draft, but the idea had intrigued me. At our next softball game, I brought up putting together the draft list. It sounded interesting to several of the guys. One thing led to another, and we had a draft of our own scheduled.
The birth of the Hughes League 45 years ago sometimes feels like yesterday. At other times, it feels like a really long time ago.
Moving The Line...Our old friend Gary Hamman started a day late in the league, but he wasn't a dollar short. He formed his team, the Organs, from the 'free agents' available the day after our first draft in 1980. And he did pretty well with them, too. He won two weeks, more than Kuhlmann, Sam, or Fauser/Andrich could manage.
Gary got pretty involved in the league during his time with us. And that led to the first 'constitutional crisis' that I can remember. We were a keeper league, and we started by keeping eight players going into Year Two (1981). I decided to change the number of keepers at some point (either after that first keeper draft or the next), much to Gary's chagrin. I recall discussing it over beers at Griff's and Gary getting frustrated that I wouldn't see it his way. He kept telling me I was 'moving the line, dammit!' and I kept asking him WTF he meant by that. It got intense but not ugly, and I don't even remember what the end result was, but I suspect I did what I wanted to do with the keepers. I miss Gary; he was a troubled soul. RIP
The Marino Factor... Beginning in 1984 and running through 1990 we crowned seven champions. Of those seven, six had one thing in common...they had Dan Marino as their primary quarterback. Here is the list:
- 1984 Giants
- 1985 Blizzard
- 1986 Sticks
- 1988 Attica
- 1989 Heroes
- 1990 Flyers
Pretty amazing.. or maybe not when you consider that we were a TD-only league and Marino was the most prolific TD-tosser of the era (maybe any era). Interestingly, the Giants, Blizzard, and Sticks ('84-'86) had one more thing in common... they all had Marino's two favorite targets, Clayton and Duper, aka The Marks Brothers, on their roster.
What was up in 1987? Glad you asked. The Blizzard had Marino and finished 3-6-1 in our second strike-shortened season. Hogan won the title that year with Randall Cunningham (and Mark Clayton)..
David Overstreet & Jarvis Redwine... Jarvis Redwine, then a rookie running back with the Vikings, was Gary Hamman's first pick in 1981. I doubt he was on anyone else's radar at that point. But looking back, in that moment, it wasn't as terrible a pick as we've always claimed.
For one thing, the ''first round' was roughly equivalent to a 9th round since we kept eight players that season. And looking at Gary's keepers, it is obvious he needed a running back.
The Vikings' running game was headed by fullback Ted Brown and the mediocre Rickey Young. Redwine was a 2nd-round pick by the Vikes and had been a Heisman contender his senior season at Nebraska until a rib injury slowed him. He had an opportunity to take the lead back job. It never panned out for him. He started one game in his three-year NFL career and totaled less than 100 yards. He served as the Vikes' kickoff return guy in '83 and then was out of the league.
But no matter how one views the Redwine pick, the David Overstreet choice in 1984, which we've chronicled many times, was inexcusable. After all, he was, well, dead.
Where's My Money?... In 1983 Sam's Bombers beat the Nats in Hughes Bowl 3, 38-6. I was happy for him, I knew he put a lot of worry into his weekly lineups. I decided that he deserved a trophy (that would be the first time a Hughes champ would receive one). I bought a nice one, had it engraved appropriately, and looked forward to presenting it to him in front of a bunch of friends (including most of the league) at that Spring's OB Open afterparty.
The big moment arrived and I made the presentation. Sam, as only Sam could, loudly declared "Fuck this trophy, where's my money!?!" Everyone laughed but truth be told, I'm STILL not sure if he was serious or not. LOL
Our First Draft... (aka the Wendell Tyler pick, aka Tropical Storm Danielle) I've already mentioned the first discussions of starting up the Hughes League. We settled on a draft date of Friday, September 5th, two days before the NFL cranked up its 1980 season. We had a plan in place that made sense. Since most of the guys played flag football on Friday nights in Memorial Park, the draft would be at Jimmy's and my apartment, on Wescott at Washington Avenue, right next to the park. We hadn't planned on Tropical Storm Danielle coming ashore that day SSE of Houston. The winds were not terrible, but the rainfall was brutal. For some reason, the football game went on in Memorial Park, and the guys showed up afterward soaked and muddy. But that didn't stop us!
Steve Heinen (The Bustouts) made the first 'unfortunate' draft pick by taking the Rams' Wendell Tyler in the first round. Tyler had been in a car wreck in July and had dislocated his hip. I'm not sure why, but the story among our owners had always been that Tyler had two broken legs, and that's what we rubbed in Heinen's face. Either way, he was unable to walk when Heinen took him.
Tossing Pogge's Girlfriend... In 1983, thanks to an invite from Steve Barenholtz, we ventured out to draft at Barry's Pizza in the Windsor Plaza on Richmond. We had a nice private space, it seemed like a perfect setup. Joe Pogge wasn't able to make it but sent his then-girlfriend to draft for him. Which didn't happen. Two of our owners, neither of whom is still in the league, objected to this in no uncertain terms, and out the door went Joe's gf! Luckily for the league, Paz was there helping someone draft, and he immediately took the reins of Pogge's franchise and drafted. The rest is history.
The aftermath... This whole episode is something I've 'laughed' about, but it's actually a pretty crappy deal. It happened quickly; she was there, and then she was gone. I didn't instigate her getting tossed, but I could have, and should have, stopped it. I'd bump into Joe at UH events, but he didn't speak to me for nearly 20 years. And I don't blame him. We patched things up (more or less) when we met at the Texans' uniform unveiling in the fall of 2001.
The silver lining here is that Paz has been such a great owner since that night at Barry's. I just wish the circumstances had been different.
Permutation Tuesdays... Starting sometime in the late 80s/early 90s, I began doing Permutation Tuesdays. Basically, it was me, a legal pad, pencils, and a shitload of coffee sitting down on the Tuesday before the next-to-last weekend of the season. I'd plot out all possible game results for the final two weeks and calculate playoff qualifiers for each possible scenario. It was great fun, my second favorite day of the fantasy football year. I remember doing it at the McDonald's next to UH, probably in '88 or '89, when I'd return to get my teaching credentials. Other years saw me at the big Starbucks off I-10 in Baytown (I think I took a comp day to sit out there and get it done...what dedication!), the Pasadena Public Library, and once even at home! I'm not sure why I preferred doing it on the road. I think it just became a tradition for me. I gave it up at some point after we began using Myfantasyleague. They had a Projected Playoffs module that could do instantly what had taken me all damn day.
Charo! (aka Drafting With Jerry)... Our second draft (1981) began our first real tradition.. Labor Day drafting at the Parkwood Apartments on Staffordshire near the Medical Center. For six of the next seven years, we gathered at that huge apartment (residents included Hogan, Sam, Jimmy, me, and many non-Hughes guys over the years). We'd start drafting in the early afternoon, take a break to eat (steaks, pizza, etc.), and always have the TV tuned to the MDA Telethon. Jerry Lewis' goofiness and parade of cheesy 'B-listers' always kept us entertained. The highlight was the appearance of Charo, who Wikipedia describes as "...a Spanish-American actress, singer, comedian, and flamenco guitarist." That's pretty accurate, but it doesn't convey the ridiculously oddball vibe she brought to Labor Day afternoons. For the full effect, check out this clip from 1991's Telethon and stick with it to see Jerry Lewis' usual schtick:
The Reserve Team Concept, Forced Byes, and other weird shit... I can't recall what year it was, and I'm too lazy to go through the archives, but one year we had a waiver system that consisted of two drafted (or claimed) NFL teams. The idea was that you had 'exclusive' rights to the players on those teams who were not otherwise on a Hughes roster. In other words, if you needed a replacement for an injured/waived guy, you would choose a free agent from your two 'owned' NFL teams. The idea was that we could do away with weekly waiver claims, which had required me to hang out by my phone on Wednesday nights. You just let me know who you wanted to activate, and that was that. No bidding, no bother. It was a one-year thing, and it wasn't a bad idea, but it was too restrictive. I recall you could 'trade in' an NFL team for a different one, but I can't remember how that worked.
Back in our early days, before the NFL instituted the 'bye' system, I had in place a 'cap' on starts. I was trying to ensure that an owner wouldn't just set a lineup in Week One and 'let it ride' the rest of the way. I tracked player starts on graph paper. As the season wound down, usually around Week 10, I'd post the list of players who still needed to sit out a game (or two). The NFL began putting bye weeks into the schedule in 1990, and I started to use that stack of graph paper to make paper airplanes.
Seems rather quaint now when half the commercials during any given game are for DraftKings or Fan Duel and MLB and the NFL run fantasy leagues, but back in 1989, fantasy participants were getting busted for 'gambling'. LOL
We started 1985 with a week of 'exhibition' games, meaning we began the season in NFL Week 2. We played through their final regular season week, which we even then tried to avoid. I'm unsure of why we did this, but I suspect it had to do with an owner's availability for drafting. Moose must have used that exhibition week to perfect his lineup because when we cranked up the real games, he came out of the gate with a 90-point explosion. That sort of scoring was unheard of back in those TD-only days.
Giants win 3 consecutive titles... Rick took home trophies in 2019, 2020, and 2021. That's crazy tough to do under any format. In building our site every year, I poke around a bunch of other MFL sites for ideas, and I've never seen a back-to-back-to-back run other than Rick's. I joked around that I'd burn the Hughes down before I'd see Rick win that fourth one, but truth be told, I was burned out on all the machinations that went into the keeper system that we had in place. Redraft is so much easier to do.
BTW..I went back and checked on the two back-to-back runs we had before Rick's string. Both the Flyers (1996-1997) and Nats (1999-2000) went to the wildcard game following their second straight title and lost there.
Papa Joe's... Speaking of Rick, in 1980, he and Steve B. had a seafood place on Richmond near Greenway Plaza. I was working at the Houston Post, and I hit up Papa Joe's for lunch pretty frequently during that first Hughes season.
It was there at Papa Joe's bar that I turned over the management of the Flyers to Rick about midway through that inaugural season. Papa Joe's, btw, is not to be confused with Steve's Dockside, which he opened on West Alabama a few years later.
Moose's Rant... In late September of 2017 (Friday the 29th to be exact), I was with my wife and boys at the Karbach Brewery in NW Houston. We'd had dinner and were out in their back patio area waiting for the live music. I got a call from Moose. He had been trying to make a FCFS waiver claim for his Attica team. He was getting a message that said the player he was trying to drop was 'locked' and could not be dropped. I recall two things from the beginning of the conversation. It was hard to hear him, and it sounded like he'd had a few beers himself.
I quickly figured out the issue. Moose was trying to drop Bears receiver Kevin White. The problem was that the Bears had played in the Thursday Night game, and a basic rule of every fantasy football league in existence is that once a team kicks off, the players on that team are 'locked', either in or out of your lineup. I explained that to Moose. But he was having none of it. This went on for a while, but I could never get Moose to see my side of the issue. He wasn't happy, and I hate it when an owner is unhappy.
Moose left the league after the 2018 season. I don't know for sure, but I suspect the 'Kevin White Affair' had something to do with it.
The irony in this tale is that Moose won his game that week without making a roster move. He did drop Kevin White via waivers that next Wednesday and replaced him with Latavius Murray, a smart move as Murray was a strong player the rest of that season.
And finally...The News, The Post, and What's Next... I have no idea what motivated me to begin a 'newsletter' when we cranked up in 1980. I think I was just interested in stats and figured everyone else would be as well. The first issue was typed on Houston Post stationery with a handwritten stats sheet and updates, then photocopied in the Post sports department. If by chance you've never seen it, look here.
By the mid-80s, I was "publishing" the News from home on EHFL letterhead I'd ordered from Kinkos, but I still filled in the numbers on the 'Stat Sheet' by hand. We went cutting edge in the late 80s as I bought a Gateway 2000 desktop 396sx-16 with two (count 'em 2!!) mb of RAM, and a 40 mb hard drive. Add to that an AOL account, a 1440 baud dial-up modem, and we were in high damn cotton!
Things snowballed after that. Windows came along, and I used WordPerfect and Quattro Pro for newsletters and stats. Then MS Word and Excel. Somewhere along the line, I stopped mailing out results and newsletters and started emailing. We had a period when I was using an early commish software. I'd get home from my teaching job on Tuesdays and fire up the computer and download the stats file from the weekend. From that file, I could upload standing, etc. to a webpage and publish a newsletter as well.
In 2003, when I jumped into Myfantasyleague.com, life changed. Everything was done for us, instantly. I won't even attempt to put the changes the league has gone through into a timeline (TD-only, --->performance scoring, no TE ---> 2 flex spots, etc.). And I'd rather not think the late 80s and making copies at the gypsy 7-11 on Highway 90, collating those into envelopes in my car, and dropping them down a mail slot at 4:30 am on Tuesdays on my way to work.
Right now, I think we are in a sweet spot. I can't see any reason to make any changes as we (hopefully) head to our 50th season in 2029. But I never thought we'd use a TE spot, so who's to say what the future will bring?
I hope you've enjoyed this entry. I had fun putting it together and traveling down our Hughes League 'Memory Lane'. Drop a comment below if you feed the need.
See you at the draft!
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