Former college journalism major furious with fantasy football leaguemates due to lack of appreciation of weekly newsletter

PHOENIX – Drama arose Wednesday on the message boards of the Mike Vick’s Kennel Club Fantasy League not because of what was said, but because of what wasn’t.

Every Tuesday morning for the last 15 weeks, Doug Petersen, a junior account executive for a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based ad agency, has spent a few hours of company time creating a weekly newsletter for his fantasy league, a newsletter that the author feels has gone unappreciated.

“With all the writing experience I had from college, I figured it was just natural to report the league news and report on trends that I noticed,” said Petersen. “The Petersen Post comes out Wednesday morning to a subscription list of 12. It’s free, though we do offer advertising for sale. But nobody has bought one yet.”

The Post is not simply a re-hashing of the weekend’s events, Petersen said. “It also contains opinion columns, a gossip column with trade rumors, and an editorial cartoon section which I mostly use to make fun of Gordon [Steinhammer]. Oh, yeah, and we do a weekly name-that-caption contest … at least we used to.”

Petersen said he’s had to cancel the name-that-caption contest because the participation by the leaguemates has been so sporadic and lackluster that he was simply having to choose the headlines himself.

“I haven’t had a ‘reply all’ from these jerks in weeks,” Petersen said. “Let alone someone writing in with a story idea or an interview submission. People think this stuff grows on trees; they have no idea how long it takes to do a 4,000 word feature looking back at the crucial fourth round of this year’s draft. I guess that’s why I’m the pro, though, because I understand how hard journalism is.”

Petersen, currently in 9th place in the Mike Vick’s Kennel Club Fantasy League, pursued journalism professionally after receiving his degree from Arizona State University. But after a frustrating season covering the Arizona Sting Lacrosse Team, he gave up the dream of writing about sports professionally and became a salesman. The weekly fantasy newsletter, he said, was a great outlet for him to utilize long dormant skills.

“Doug is a good guy and we’re all glad to have him in the league but seriously, the newsletter was funny at first, but now it’s just too much,” said league-mate Jim Dougan. “It’s like Doug Petersen and David Plouffe are having a race to see who can annoy the shit out of me more.”

Dougan said he has not read even one of Petersen’s emails in the last five weeks.

“The other day, Doug came and stood by my desk, right after he sent out the weekly newsletter,” Dougan said. “I know he was just waiting to see if I was reading it. So I faked it. I just started randomly laughing in certain places, and he’d be like, ‘What part?’ and I’d go, ‘That thing you said about Jason,’ and he’d laugh and go, ‘Yeah, isn’t that hilarious?’ I feel bad lying, but seriously, I can’t read another one of these things.”

The final straw came for Petersen when one of his leaguemates emailed him with a trade offer recently, having obviously not read Petersen’s recent editorial in which he declared that he’d never, ever, under any circumstances be interested in Ben Roethlisberger.

“I get this message from Pauly, and I’m thinking it’s going to be a comment on the newsletter,” Petersen said. “Instead, it’s a trade offer, and it’s one that he’d have never made had he even read the freaking newsletter! It’s like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I honestly thought about saying, ‘Screw it,’ and canceling the newsletter entirely. But I can’t do that to the rest of the guys who really do care about the newsletter. I just wish these guys realized how hard it is to make a Cryptoquote every week.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!