For quarterback, go ahead and pick up Tom Brady; he's the best. Wide receiver: Get Marshall alumnus Aaron Dobson; he could be poised for a breakout (stranger things have happened), and his parents gave away Thanksgiving turkeys in Dunbar last week. And at running back, maybe grab Charles Sims. He's a backup, but it's nice to have a WVU guy on your roster.
Heed that advice or don't, but you should be OK to continue playing daily fantasy sports in West Virginia, despite the efforts of some other states to crack down on or ban the pseudo-gambling websites.
Earlier this month, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told the two leading daily fantasy sports sites - DraftKings and FanDuel - to stop accepting bets from New Yorkers. Schneiderman says the sites, which allow people to bet on the performance of individual players rather than teams, constitutes illegal gambling.
West Virginia is not about to follow New York's lead.
"We've tried to take a watchful eye on that at this point," said John Myers, acting director of the state's Lottery Commission. "Until we see how it's going to shake out in some of these other states, it's just kind of watch it and see."
In addition to New York, daily fantasy sports are considered illegal gambling in Iowa, Louisiana, Washington state, Arizona and Montana. In Nevada, the sites are considered gambling and must be regulated under state law.
On Thursday, the Massachusetts attorney general proposed new rules that would regulate the sites as gambling, with age and advertising restrictions and new disclosure requirements.
And the U.S. Justice Department is said to be in the early stages of a probe into the business model of the sites.
Myers said that any decision from the Lottery Commission would probably involve first getting an opinion from the state attorney general. His office has had no contact with Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, Myers said.
Asked about daily fantasy sports and whether the attorney general was looking at the topic, Morrisey spokesman Curtis Johnson said, "Under the law we cannot confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. Our office would be happy to discuss any legal conclusions on this topic at the appropriate time."
Fantasy sports allow fans to play at being a general manager and choose their own teams. Players choose real athletes to populate their fantasy teams. Those real athletes put up real stats in real games and those stats correspond to fantasy points which determine the winner of fantasy games.
Sports betting is illegal in the vast majority of states, but fantasy sports were specifically exempted from a 2006 law that attempted to crack down on Internet gambling.
Traditional fantasy sports, which have been around for decades, are played out over the course of a season, offering less opportunities for gambling than the more recent daily varieties, where contests are available daily.
The recent legal flareups in New York and elsewhere follow the revelation that a DraftKings employee won $350,000 in a contest on FanDuel, raising the possibility that the employee had access to insider information not available to the general public.
Jennifer Davis-Walton, the director of the Problem Gamblers Health Network of West Virginia, said that they haven't had any people call with gambling problems specifically related to fantasy sports. But she also said that they usually don't start seeing the effects of a new gambling trend until about nine months after it gets big.
She said she was recently on a national conference call with other states' gamblers help lines to discuss the issue.
"It's definitely something that we are addressing," Davis-Walton said. "We will be paying attention to when calls come in to see if that's why folks are calling."
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutmanon Twitter.