Tired of falling short, Seanor enters new season on a mission

DENVER, Colo. — There are no such things as moral victories; not in Grant Seanor’s organization, anyway. Evidence of that is obvious after Seanor’s last two seasons in the Tiger Township Fantasy Football League. Seanor has accomplished it all lately, double-digit wins, No. 1 seeds, bye weeks and legitimate opportunities to win it all. However, the one thing missing is the accolade he, as well as the rest of the TTFFL, covets the most: A spot on the Guy Julian Memorial Trophy. And without that, Seanor believes he has more work to do as he enters another fresh start. “It hurts, it really does,” Seanor told Chibby’s Corner in an exclusive, tell-all interview. “If you look at the last two years, I was a defense away the first year and I ran into a buzzsaw in the semifinal (last year), where (Casey) Roo (Irwin) was such a pansy throughout the entire day talking about how he was going to lose. … Long story short, I’ve put together two great squads, I’m going to keep doing that moving forward, and we’re going to take it one year at a time.” Seanor was simply dominant during the 2017 regular season, winning 11 games and easily leading the league in scoring. Led by a potent attack of No. 1 quarterback Russell Wilson, No. 2 receiver De’Andre Hopkins, No. 1 tight end Travis Kelce and others, Seanor scored 170 or more points seven times, including an impressive run of six weeks-in-a-row at one point. He won seven consecutive games to end the regular season, firmly cementing himself at the top of the bracket going into the TTFFL Playoffs. Seanor’s postseason was short-lived, however, falling to his old nemesis, fifth-seeded and eventual back-to-back champion Casey Irwin in an epic semifinal. Seanor dropped 172.8 points, only to fall to Irwin, who exploded with a 217.8-point output, by 45 points. It’s believed to be the highest-scoring playoff game in TTFFL history. He went on to take third place after a consolation win over Stefano Faiella. “You hate dumb luck,” Seanor said. “You hate when the ‘best four teams’ are up and the two best don’t advance. It’s just unfortunate. You just have to grin and bear it because there’s nothing you can do about it. My team showed up.” The historic semifinal loss stung on multiple levels for Seanor. Not only was he eliminated by Irwin for the second consecutive year, but he also became the sixth No. 1 seed since 2010 to end the season empty-handed, and the fifth to fail to advance to the championship game altogether. Those unfortunate facts have left Seanor in a sour mood all offseason. “I understood that my team had holes, but I was the best team that was out there until the Commish went out and did some dumb (stuff),” Seanor said. Credit is due for the Miami University graduate for being able to duplicate the amount of regular-season success he had last fall after a special 2016 campaign, another season that was capped by disappointment. He avoided the lulls a second-place finish can have on teams, and instead, picked himself up for another productive season. Seanor, though, doesn’t see it that way. In his mind, he’s tired of not being able to finish the deal, and he’s been known to shrug off the results of his recent performances. “Those are the types of things that just don’t make a difference to me,” Seanor said. “I know we talk about average place finish in this league. No. At the end of the day, I had two good teams that haven’t won it all. So, do I talk about being good? No, because I haven’t won anything.” As Seanor enters the highly anticipated 2018 season, he does so with a history of unique roster management practices. He admits he enjoys tinkering with his lineup — he made nine trades in 2017 — a sediment that’s more commonly tagged to Cee Jay Julian’s organization. He says that style of building and maintaining a team isn’t going away any time soon. Always the draft-day wild card, it's only a guess as to which strategy he'll bring with him to Las Vegas later this month as well. One thing Seanor does hope to change, however, is the fashion in which his season ends. Quickly becoming the bridesmaid but never the bride, it’s an important year for him to finish off a terrific multiple-year run. For an owner that won his lone title in perhaps the most awkward time in TTFFL history from a documentation standpoint, his 2009 championship is known but not recorded. Seanor’s mission is to make his next one count. “It’s a championship or bust mentality,” Seanor said. “We go out there, and we compete. If you make the playoffs, then yeah, there’s a certain threshold there. If you make the championship, then there’s a threshold there, and if you make the championship, there’s another one there. But I’m not content with being in the top three if my name isn’t on the trophy. That’s just not how I operate.”