Stats in Fantasy Football... or Fantasy football in Stats?

School starts in a couple of weeks, and I am in the classroom getting ready.  One thing that I would like to do this year is incorporate Fantasy Football into my Stats class.  I am not all in on making it happen yet, but I am getting there.  I'm thinking about having this run parallel with our class and have a day where we apply the concepts we are learning  to our analysis of our football team. Here are the things that I am thinking about:

(1)  Some students are going to be really into it and will be heavily invested from the beginning, but what about the kids that are not into fantasy football?
(2)  I have some content that I am excited about using with it (Standard Deviation, correlation, Value Above Replacement, z-scores) but do I have enough to justify?
(3)  I do not want the football aspect of it to use up our class time.  I want the statistics part to dominate our time as a class.



What I am excited about though, is that we will have a data set that will continue to grow throughout the unit that we will be able to do analysis of and the students will be invested in it... I hope they will be invested.

I'm looking for any ideas anyone might have on how to make this unit good, rigorous, engaging, and useful for the students.  Share em if you got em.

February

It is February and we are plugging along.  This week has gone well, but I feel like I am in danger of the pit.  Yes the pit.  The one that I would go into, spending excessive amounts of time on topics that 70% of the students have, 20% will get when the pressure of moving on is introduced, and 10% aren't willing to put the work into no matter how much time I spend.  Why go into the pit?  Because I feel like the 20% should have it before we go on, and it is my job to "inspire" the 10% to "get it."  I don't like the pit.

Starting the School year 2010

School is starting in approximately two weeks.  If you had asked me in July how I felt about the upcoming school year, I would have told you that I was ahead of the game.  I felt more prepared for the upcoming school year than I ever have before.  But now, now I'm scared.  OK, not scared but definitely feeling like there is a lot I have to get done.  Seven preps this year, and I'm trying really hard to make them all good ones.  Like,  no more living from section 3.4 to 3.5 to 3.6 to test review, to test, to 4.1 to 4.2 ... you think kids ever get bored?  I want to make math class this year matter to problem solving ten years down the road, and I am struggling to know how to make this happen.  Part of me wants to say... one class at a time, one year at a time.  I'm thinking "Get Algebra I set this year and do Geometry next."  But this year's 8th graders will only be 8th graders once (hopefully) and they should get a great education that one time that they are.  I just don't know how to do it.  NONE THE LESS (dat da dat da daaaaa) I'm going to try to make it happen... I'll talk to you in June