The smell of fall is in the air and that means two things- football and harvest. Many of you are also excited to have kicked off the fantasy football season. With 30 million people having their drafts over and teams picked, you hope for the best this football season to win that large pot of cash at the end.

For some reason, it seems that no matter how much you know about the NFL football players and their stats from their previous season, what can seem like a perfect pick before the season starts, one small factor can throw everything off. Accurate, high-quality fantasy football projections are difficult to make, mostly because there are too many variables involved that can make or break a season. What can be even more frustrating is your competition picks their winning team based off the uniforms and their favorite colors and win! How does this happen? How can a plan that seems so perfect by looking off of performance last year flop on the ground?

We see this same thing year after year when farmers put together a crop plan that seems to be the seed dream team based off of their yields from the current season and what new rookie has the most hype as a new player. What we need to remember is that there are no two growing seasons alike, just like there are no two football seasons that are the same. There are numerous factors that go into play for a successful season- this is why we see such varying results from harvest to harvest and from field to field. We are seeing more volatility in the farming industry more than ever before, so it is not uncommon for us to be looking for the perfect answer on how to grow a great crop.

The perfect answer doesn’t lie within the perfect seed variety, but what it takes to consistently get better and have the best chance at earning the largest pot of money in the end is management and execution.  Just as it takes a great manager to form a great football team, skill alone won’t win it. We can’t control the weather, market prices and adverse growing seasons. But what we can control is how we plant the crop, manage the crop and execute strategies, which in turn spreads our risk. No matter what happens after that first kickoff is made, is it up to the grower to finish the year strong and do everything in his power to go after the big win. Even though this is not a foolproof solution, it is still the awareness of your management practices and the drive to be better that will have the largest long term impact on your operation.

As we have watched things gear up for this special time of the year, there has been much anticipation to see what the performance actually looks like. Everyone has seen their fair share of bumps in the road, but every team depends on the manager to guide them in the right direction, and it’s his job not to give up after the star player gets hurt. You know there is more potential in a team when he has the ability to look at the different strengths of each of his players and makes management changes as he needs to throughout the season to get the team to perform to the best of their ability through the end. After so long in the league, different variables start to take effect and the game starts to wear on each player. Same goes for the lifespan of a hybrid. In the past we used to see a certain kind of seed on the market for decade, now that lifespan has decreased to an average of a couple years in the field before it’s taken off the market. Change is inevitable and players will come and go. It’s up to the manager to make adaptations needed to move forward and continue to grow. What experts are you listening to as you create your 2013 game plan?