2016-17 Bowl Pool - First 6 games edition

We are off to a fantastic start to the Bowl season.  We had 6 games today, and we would up with 3 favorites winning and 3 upsets, which is a nice distribution.  I managed to watch some of the games, and for the most part, they seemed pretty good.  I watched a lot of the Celebration Bowl today as I was cleaning my house.  The line I had on that game was Grambling by 15.5, so I wasn't expecting much.  It turned out to be a pretty exciting game, and one of the better finishes (if you took Grambling for a lot of points).  NC Central scored a TD in the last minutes of the game to get the game to 10-9.  During the celebration, the receiver  took off his helmet on the field, which is a 15 yard penalty.  Grambling managed to block the extra point, and that was the ballgame.  It was a tough loss, but for fans that were just coming to the game without knowing anything about either team, it was pretty exciting.

Actually, I prefer to watch a 10-9 game than the 70-63 games we seem to see a lot more these days in college football.  I also think that one of my old adages seems to be true still, and that is that kickers in college can't make field goals.  I didn't count how many misses happened today, but it's safe to say that kicking is not the forte for most of these teams.

I was happy to see San Diego State roll in the Las Vegas Bowl.  There were a couple of storylines that I noticed in that game.  I liked that the San Diego State RB set the record for most career rushing yards.  I remember Ron Dayne at Wisconsin.  I think he took the nickname Ron "No Gain" Dayne when he went to the NFL, but he was really good in college.  I hope that doesn't happen to Donnel Pumphrey.  Actually, I just hope he gets drafted.  It's always nice to see good things happen for SDSU, mostly because they are one of two colleges that have decided I was degree-worthy.  Thanks, Aztecs.  The second thing I noticed about that game was the Houston was playing with an interim HC.  That always seems like a bad idea.  I don't know the stats on that, but I think I will always be picking against interim head coaches in the future.

The biggest upset of the day was Arkansas State over UCF.  UCF was a 6 point favorite, and the median pick for them was UCF for 15 points.  A lot of people took it on the chin with the Cure Bowl.  Actually 13 people lost a team they had in their top 10.  7 of them had Houston, 4 had UCF and 2 had Toledo.   If you are one of those people, don't despair.  Even the person that had the most points at stake today used less than 20% of the total points in this pool.  We still have a long way to go before this thing is over.

As for the sheets, I already mentioned that half of the games were won by the underdog, so the average number of wins today should come as no surprise.  It's 3.52 wins.  The average number of points won today was 67.57, and the number of points lost today was 36.68.

We are also down to only 4 people with perfect sheets, and at least 2 of them are former champions of this pool:  Tim N and Brent E. #2.  The other two are our current leader Freitag B. and myself.  Before we go any further, I should explain my methodology, because I admit that it looks a little fishy that the person keeping score somehow managed to go 6/6 today.  I looked up Bowl Pool methodologies on the internet and found some system that some guy published in an Arizona newspaper.  He had some point system based on wins/losses during the regular system.  Using that, he was able to identify about 20 games that he thought would give you an advantage based on his scoring system.  I made those my top 20 point games, and then used the Vegas lines for the rest after that, with some upsets thrown in for good measure (like SDSU and WMU).  It's a pretty risky strategy, as it could all go sideways pretty quick, but I really didn't watch much college football this year, so I needed all the help I could get.

Sadly, the other side of the spectrum,  we have one person that went an unfortunate 0/6.  I feel especially bad because he contacted me before I sent out my initial invitation letter asking if I was going to run the pool again this year.  I wish I could reward that kind of enthusiasm.  Sadly, it didn't work out today.  But never fear, Dan Du., you only used 8.31% of your points today.  There's still plenty of time to recover.

So, here's the initial rankings after day 1 (points only):

1. Freitag B.: 135 (0)

2. Brent E. #2: 131 (0)

3. Klei R.: 129 (0)

4. Deborah G.: 118 (-54)

5. Brent E. #1: 115 (-16)

6. Tim N.: 111 (0)

7. Michelle L. #1: 100 (-22)

8. Dave M.: 100 (-58)

9. Roth W.: 96 (-50)

10. Brent S.: 95 (-18)

11. Hutch H.: 95 (-42)

12. Mark ESPN: 90 (-21)

13. Josiah T. #2: 90 (-29)

14. Michelle L. #2: 90 (-36)

15. Marc R.: 89 (-19)

16. Mike S.: 87 (-55)

17. Matt N.: 86 (-14)

18. Pete J. #1: 83 (-23)

19. Hal R. #1: 83 (-51)

19. Hal R. #2: 83 (-51)

21. Mason A.: 82 (-38)

22. Marc S.: 79 (-28)

23. Damien R.: 77 (-25)

24. Brad R.: 76 (-38)

25. Adam E.: 73 (-9)

26. Scott Her. #2: 73 (-33)

27. Ben S.: 71 (-39)

28. Ryan W.: 71 (-50)

29. Ray R.: 70 (-40)

30. Josiah T. #1: 67 (-48)

31. Kevin F. #1: 65 (-19)

32. Dustin B.: 63 (-37)

33. Mike W.: 61 (-38)

34. Scott H.: 60 (-40)

35. Jim P.: 59 (-8)

36. Dorthea R.: 59 (-39)

37. Jay H. #3: 58 (-98)

38. Stephanie P.: 53 (-30)

39. Nick B.: 53 (-41)

40. Julie S.: 52 (-98)

41. Kevin F. #2: 51 (-34)

42. Dan S.: 51 (-99)

43. Chad L.: 46 (-30)

44. Jim W.: 46 (-32)

45. Ally H.: 42 (-12)

46. Becky H.: 35 (-17)

47. Scott Her. #1: 31 (-60)

48. Pete J. #2: 30 (-76)

49. Ash D.: 28 (-35)

50. Dan Dz.: 24 (-27)

51. Jay H. #1: 22 (-70)

52. Brett W.: 15 (-12)

53. Dylan B.: 15 (-67)

54. Nichole W.: 12 (-41)

55. Jay H. #2: 8 (-13)

56. Dan Du.: 0 (-74)

Remember that the first number is the number of points that you've won.  The number in parenthesis is the number of points that you have lost.  That serves as the tiebreaker at this point.

Here is the ranking for net points:

1. Freitag B.: 135

2. Brent E. #2: 131

3. Klei R.: 129

4. Tim N.: 111

5. Brent E. #1: 99

6. Michelle L. #1: 78

7. Brent S.: 77

8. Matt N.: 72

9. Marc R.: 70

10. Mark ESPN: 69

11. Deborah G.: 64

11. Adam E.: 64

13. Josiah T. #2: 61

14. Pete J. #1: 60

15. Michelle L. #2: 54

16. Hutch H.: 53

17. Damien R.: 52

18. Marc S.: 51

18. Jim P.: 51

20. Roth W.: 46

20. Kevin F. #1: 46

22. Mason A.: 44

23. Dave M.: 42

24. Scott Her. #2: 40

25. Brad R.: 38

26. Mike S.: 32

26. Hal R. #1: 32

26. Hal R. #2: 32

26. Ben S.: 32

30. Ray R.: 30

30. Ally H.: 30

32. Dustin B.: 26

33. Mike W.: 23

33. Stephanie P.: 23

35. Ryan W.: 21

36. Scott H.: 20

36. Dorthea R.: 20

38. Josiah T. #1: 19

39. Becky H.: 18

40. Kevin F. #2: 17

41. Chad L.: 16

42. Jim W.: 14

43. Nick B.: 12

44. Brett W.: 3

45. Dan Dz.: -3

46. Jay H. #2: -5

47. Ash D.: -7

48. Scott Her. #1: -29

48. Nichole W.: -29

50. Jay H. #3: -40

51. Julie S.: -46

51. Pete J. #2: -46

53. Dan S.: -48

53. Jay H. #1: -48

55. Dylan B.: -52

56. Dan Du.: -74

Great picking by Freitag B. today.  It's always frustrating to pick every game right and then see that I am still behind someone.  Here's what the Freitag B. sheet looked like today:

Grambling	40
New Mexico	33
San Diego State	7
Appalachian State	17
Arkansas State	14
Southern Mississippi	24

Not too shabby.

We are off tomorrow.  We have a run of days next week that feature one game each.  That's nice for me, since I don't have to crunch so much data.  The next game is the Miami Beach Bowl.  Here are the particulars:

Vegas Line: Tulsa -13

Median Pick: Tulsa for 35 points.

Picks:

Tulsa: 48 (average points: 32.25)

Central Michigan: 8 (average points: 10.88)

So, maybe this doesn't seem like a great game on paper, but if it sucks, I recommend watching something else.  Maybe the marathon of the Christmas Story is going on at that same time.  I always like watching that.  Plus, Central Michigan is the arch-rival of Western Michigan, so if they get pasted, I won't be terribly disappointed.

Good luck to everyone!!!  I'll be back at it on Monday night.