The inaugural season of RapidDraft has now come to a close, and a remarkably close finish hinged on one very big dropped touchdown pass.  Snakeinthegrass David Girard beat Pump Mark Pumphrey by six points and claimed the first ever $250,000 Grand Prize awarded by RapidDraft.  It was a close call in the end.  The $250,000 could have ended up in the hands of the runner-up had Baltimore Ravens WR Derrick Mason been able to catch a wide open touchdown pass from Joe Flacco!


The winning of $250K or $25K in a national contest is something that we all look at from a distance with a certain amount of detachment.  There goes someone other than me pocketing some big cash.  However, the manner in which this payout happened is something that fantasy football players can relate to.  Missed opportunity!  To have a quarter of a million dollars within your grasp, and then to watch it slip away in the form of a dropped ball by a fairly sure-handed receiver who happened to be wide open in the end zone is tough to take.  Then again, there are times when we are on the receiving end of a gift from the football gods.  A few years ago the fact that Jason Witten went without a catch in the second half of a Sunday night game worked out quite well for me.  That is why we love this game, and that is why this game also drives us crazy.  In the end, that is certainly why we keep coming back every year, in greater numbers, with better games and ever increasing cutting edge technology (see www.rapiddraft.com).


I asked our runner-up, Mark Pumphrey, to put into words what it felt like to be that close to the big money and then lose it all because of a dropped ball.  His answer was surprising:


"I have a different take on this one play costing me $250,000. I have been playing fantasy football for many years, and I know that for you to win a contest like RapidDraft many things have to happen. You can say if Derrick Mason catches that TD pass I win. So, you can also say that if Chad Ochocinco doesn't make a great TD catch in the last minutes of the Cincinnati game, I would have won. To be honest, I didn't feel like I was the strongest team going into the final weekend. The other 2 top teams had much better match ups then I did. So, I figured that I had to have some good things fall my way to win. And it almost did! I do feel fortunate to get second and $25,000. I feel for the third place team, since I beat him by 2 points, and he had Kris Brown not score a single point in the 2nd half after scoring 12 in the first. Dallas Clark getting pulled in the third quarter and DeSean Jackson getting shut out in the second half. So, it could have turn out differently for all of us. Bottom line, I was more fortunate to get second, than I was unfortunate to get first. Finally, the team that won had a better season average than my team, and also had a higher score in 4 out the 5 weeks in the playoffs than my team. So, his team was well deserving of winning the RapidDraft championship and I congratulate him on his win. I enjoyed playing Rapid Draft and look forward to next year."


That, my friends, is class…pure and simple.  I’d still be pissed at Mason.