Passed Time for the Pastime

July was a good month – in reality and in fantasy.

In the reality category, my family took a wonderful vacation to the big island of Hawaii in July where we snorkeled with turtles, attended a luau, swam in tropical waters, visited a coffee farm, and jumped off a 40 foot cliff into the ocean at the southernmost point in the US. It was the first vacation we’ve had in a while (forever?) where not a single person was ready to come home. I think a few of you also had memorable moments in July – it would be fun to hear about them in the comment section below!

In fantasy, July was also a good month for the EFL. We had 7 teams finish the month .500 or above and 3 teams that with one more win would have finished .500. That’s a good month! Maybe not for competitive balance as the commissioner so often touts as a marker for the health of our league, but for feeling like we know what we are doing, it is a pretty good indication.

And now we get to see how August is going – in both reality and fantasy. For those of us in higher education, August is like stepping on a poisonous sea urchin while snorkeling in the tropical waters of Hawaii. It didn’t happen to any Johnsons, thankfully, but I did witness one guy who did happen to do so. He went from blissfully swimming alongside turtles and tropical fish to screaming in pain and barely being able to walk. August comes to us in much the same way, unfortunately.

But here we are, 10 days into August and not a single game has been entered into the win or loss column for any EFL team. What an incredibly long time to wait and see what exactly will unfold as the season is winding down and the race in the EFL is heating up. One of the best things about Hawaii that has nothing to do with tropical waters was the time difference. HST is three hours behind PST, which meant from the moment I woke up to sit on my lanai overlooking the hawaiian coast line, I could listen to a baseball game. I poured over box scores, tallied up stats in my head, and wondered whether or not, once standings were finally published, I would be any closer to first place.

And now, here we are! About to see how our teams fared in reality and how we were able to manipulate our allocations to maximize these first 9 days of the season to make our fantasies come true (or to see them fall woefully short). Without further ado, the first August standings…