I hate New York Giant running back Brandon Jacobs. No, I don’t actually hate Brandon Jacobs, the football player. I don’t know enough about him to warrant that strong of a reaction.What I do know, however, is that he has become the most despicable thing I can think of in fantasy football:

The touchdown vulture.

For those of you with a big question mark over your heads at that statement, let me quickly bring you up to speed. In fantasy football, your running back gets a certain amount of points for the yards he gains in a game. Usually he gets a point for every ten or twenty yards he gains running the football.He gets six points when he scores a touchdown.

So do the math:a running back runs 70 yards down the field and gets seven points (based on the point per ten yards formula). He gets six points just for crossing the goaline. This leads me to my problem with a touchdown vulture: he steals six points from a running back.

Some fantasy football “experts” will probably say that I’m being sophomoric and that I should have seen the writing on the wall when the Giants began bringing Jacobs in last year for short yardage situations. At 6’4” and 264 pounds, the evil Jacobs is more suitable to ram a ball over the goaline than Barber who stands at 5’10” and 205 pounds. It was only a matter of time before the big, diabolical Jacobs totally took over any short yardage or goaline situations. I should have been aware of Tiki’s immanent production drop-off and avoided him during my fantasy football draft.

My answer to them is this: he’s Tiki freakin’ Barber! He’s missed three starts since 2002 and over those seasons he has averaged nearly 1500 yards rushing, 550 yards receiving and 10 touchdowns. Even if you don’t play fantasy football, you know those are elite numbers.

The problem now isn’t that Barber’s production is falling; he’s already close to surpassing 1000 yards rushing yet again. The touchdowns, however, are now missing. For a fantasy football owner, having a back without the touchdowns is like having an ice cream sundae without the hot fudge. Those 10 touchdowns Tiki averages a year? In fantasy football terms, that’s 60 points Tiki brings to my team. It’s the difference between winning a competitive league and being bounced out of the first round of the fantasy playoffs. To most fantasy players, it’s the difference between winning the prize money and getting dirt.

So maybe I should have just picked up Brandon Jacobs on my team, right? Well, it’s not that easy.The accursed Jacobs is what I call a hit or miss back. While Tiki is low on touchdowns this year, he still gets yardage points.Jacobs averages 31 yards rushing per game. That doesn’t help me out too much. He’s not worth starting every week from a touchdown perspective, either, as he averages less than a score per game. Basically, the cloven-footed Jacobs will either punch one or two runs in for touchdowns in a game, thereby making him worth a start, or he will net you only 20 yards rushing, making him virtually worthless to your team and possibly losing you a game.

So really the only choice a Tiki owner has is to hope that he continues his yardage production throughout the year. And hopefully, by the grace of the fantasy football gods, he’ll occasionally manage to break a long run to pay-dirt thereby eliminating the need for the nefarious leech-like back known as Jacobs.

If Giants coach, Tom Coughlin, is out there and is taking a break from his 19-hour work day to read this article, I sincerely pose this request: Have some compassion for the millions of fantasy owners out there and give little man Barber some goaline love, would ya?