After Day 1

Yawnnn…..  Man, some of these games really suck.  I spent entirely too much of my life just praying for the New Orleans Bowl to mercifully be over so I could log the win for Appalachian State and send this post out.

Not every game was terrible.  I caught the end of the Camellia Bowl between Georgia Southern and Eastern Michigan.  That was an entertaining game – at least it was an entertaining finish.  Honestly, I spent most of the day watching Season 3 of “The Last Kingdom” and monitoring the game on my iPad on mute.  For a lot of these games, that’s about the best way to watch them.

The important thing to remember today is that there are still 35 games left.  The average entry only had 100 points up for grabs.  The total amount of points possible is 850, so the average sheet is only 11.75% done.  Obviously it’s better to rack up points that the alternative, but there’s still a lot of Bowl Season left.

So, today was also as chalky as can be.  There wasn’t a single upset.  This can not stand.  I really don’t like it when only favorites win.  It’s not that I don’t think they are deserving or anything.  I just think that any coward can take nothing but favorites and rack up a lot of points.  I just don’t want those people to win.  I want people to take risks and have those risks pay off.  Usually that happens, but so far the favorites have it.

It should come as no surprise based on what I wrote above that no less than 10 entries went 6/6 today.  Depending on the point distribution they are currently in 1^st (Hutch H.) to 60^th (Eric L.).  I know I say this every year, but I also don’t like the 1-40 or 40-1 strategy.  It’s the one where you just assign the first game 40 points (or 1) and then the second game 39 (or 2).  It’s kind of a lazy way to assign points, and it almost never works.  I get why people do it, but I think it’s a pretty lousy strategy.

OK.  On to the rankings.  I’ll be sending out two sets of rankings.  The first is just based on the points won so far.  In the end, this is the most important one, since the goal of this pool is to win points.  However, with so much left up for grabs, I think this ranking is not really that representative of how healthy your entry is.  For example, the aforementioned Eric L.  He is currently in 60^th place with 22 points.  That’s not that great, but he hasn’t lost any points yet, so his upside is as high as can be.  On the flip side, Nick S. is currently in 8^th in points, but he’s already lost 72 points.  His entry is not in quite as good a shape.

The way this ranking is structured is:

Rank. Entry Name: Points Won (Points Lost)

Here’s the rankings based only on points won:

1. Hutch H.: 152 (0)

2. Marc R.: 147 (-32)

3. Andrzej R.: 145 (0)

4. Tim N.: 142 (-68)

5. James P.: 141 (-4)

6. Josiah T. #4: 140 (-13)

7. Dylan B.: 139 (-3)

8. Nick S.: 136 (-72)

9. Ben S. #2: 135 (-5)

10. Josiah T. #1: 133 (0)

11. Josiah T. #2: 132 (-1)

12. Matt N.: 121 (0)

13. Jay H. #1: 121 (-3)

14. Brent E. #4: 120 (-9)

15. Nichole W.: 118 (-62)

16. Jim D.: 116 (-1)

17. Adam E.: 114 (0)

18. Harrell R. #2: 113 (0)

19. Ben S. #1: 111 (-12)

20. Pete J. #1: 108 (-4)

21. Klei R.: 108 (-14)

22. Brent E. #1: 106 (-2)

22. Brent E. #2: 106 (-2)

24. Peter F.: 104 (-5)

25. Josiah T. #3: 101 (-21)

26. Harrell R. #1: 100 (0)

26. Dan Du.: 100 (0)

28. Mike S.: 100 (-1)

29. Scott Her. #2: 99 (-1)

30. Brent E. #3: 99 (-9)

31. Pete J. #2: 99 (-13)

32. Ryan W.: 94 (-21)

33. Damien R. #1: 88 (-2)

34. Grant F.: 88 (-27)

35. Jason S.: 82 (-40)

36. Eric V.: 81 (0)

37. Brad R.: 80 (-17)

38. Michelle L. #1: 78 (-29)

39. Emily J.: 74 (-1)

40. Craig G.: 72 (-18)

41. Michelle L. #2: 67 (-59)

42. Dustin B.: 66 (-1)

43. Scott Has.: 66 (-10)

44. Jay H. #3: 63 (-10)

45. Jim W.: 61 (-5)

46. Ally H.: 60 (-15)

47. Dan Dz.: 59 (-10)

48. Bosun S.: 57 (-9)

49. Damien R. #2: 55 (-6)

50. Becky H.: 53 (-28)

51. Scott Her. #1: 50 (-24)

52. Kevin W.: 48 (-25)

53. Amos W.: 44 (-23)

54. Sally R.: 44 (-69)

55. Brett W.: 41 (-23)

56. Justin H.: 38 (-13)

57. Julie S.: 37 (-29)

58. Ava S.: 31 (-35)

59. Ashley D.: 23 (-27)

60. Eric L.: 22 (0)

61. Mike W.: 17 (-7)

62. Jay H. #2: 14 (-7)

63. Max W. #2: 12 (-9)

64. Mike N.: 11 (-10)

65. Dan S.: 11 (-55)

66. Max W. #1: 9 (-18)

Next is the net points rankings.  The concept here is simple.  Take the number of points you’ve won and subtract off the amount of points you’ve lost.  To use the same example as before, Nick S. has won 136 points, but lost 72 points.  His net points total would be 136 – 72 = 64.  That puts him in 35^th place in net points.  I feel like this is more representative of how healthy your sheet is.  When I generate the initial probabilities, they are more highly correlated with this ranking than the points ranking before.

1. Hutch H.: 152

2. Andrzej R.: 145

3. James P.: 137

4. Dylan B.: 136

5. Josiah T. #1: 133

6. Josiah T. #2: 131

7. Ben S. #2: 130

8. Josiah T. #4: 127

9. Matt N.: 121

10. Jay H. #1: 118

11. Marc R.: 115

11. Jim D.: 115

13. Adam E.: 114

14. Harrell R. #2: 113

15. Brent E. #4: 111

16. Pete J. #1: 104

16. Brent E. #1: 104

16. Brent E. #2: 104

19. Harrell R. #1: 100

19. Dan Du.: 100

21. Ben S. #1: 99

21. Peter F.: 99

21. Mike S.: 99

24. Scott Her. #2: 98

25. Klei R.: 94

26. Brent E. #3: 90

27. Pete J. #2: 86

27. Damien R. #1: 86

29. Eric V.: 81

30. Josiah T. #3: 80

31. Tim N.: 74

32. Ryan W.: 73

32. Emily J.: 73

34. Dustin B.: 65

35. Nick S.: 64

36. Brad R.: 63

37. Grant F.: 61

38. Nichole W.: 56

38. Scott Has.: 56

38. Jim W.: 56

41. Craig G.: 54

42. Jay H. #3: 53

43. Michelle L. #1: 49

43. Dan Dz.: 49

43. Damien R. #2: 49

46. Bosun S.: 48

47. Ally H.: 45

48. Jason S.: 42

49. Scott Her. #1: 26

50. Becky H.: 25

50. Justin H.: 25

52. Kevin W.: 23

53. Eric L.: 22

54. Amos W.: 21

55. Brett W.: 18

56. Mike W.: 10

57. Michelle L. #2: 8

57. Julie S.: 8

59. Jay H. #2: 7

60. Max W. #2: 3

61. Mike N.: 1

62. Ava S.: -4

62. Ashley D.: -4

64. Max W. #1: -9

65. Sally R.: -25

66. Dan S.: -44

So, it looks like we have a few days off before we get a solid run of days with 1 or 2 games.  That’s a nice cadence.  I wish it could be that way all the time instead of loading up on one day like today.  Maybe when I become the next commissioner of the NCAA I’ll push for that.  Until then, we are going with what we’ve got.

The next game is the Boca Raton Bowl.

Picks:

Northern Illinois: 35 (13.09 pts average)

UAB: 31 (7.90 pts average)

Median Pick: Northern Illinois for 1.5 points.

Mean Pick: Northern Illinois for 3.2 points.

Total points wagered: 703 (40^th overall – next to last).

Vegas Line: UAB (-2.5)

There seems to be a pretty strong consensus that if you took UAB, you should only put 7 points on them.  I’m sure a bunch of that was the 1-40 strategy, but it doesn’t seem like it holds if you took Northern Illinois.

If I was going to cheat and try to find the optimal path based on knowing who everyone picked, I would put a ton of points on this game.  The reason is because this is one of the very few games where the average entry did NOT pick the favorite.  There would be tremendous value in taking UAB for a ton of points.  I remember a few years ago, this phenomena also happened when there were a small handful of teams that made bowl games with 6-7 records.  The public wound up picking against them in large numbers, even through the matchups were even or even in the team with a losing record’s favor.  IF you recognized that people would do that, you could pick and assign points accordingly.  I haven’t looked closely this year to see if there are any other games like this out there.  There probably are, but I guess we’ll look into those when we get there.

I’m not actually sure why people wouldn’t be going with chalk in this game.  I didn’t hear anything bad about UAB in the run-up to Bowl Season.  Maybe after picking nothing but chalk for the first 6 games, people felt they needed to pick some kind of upset, and this one seemed mild enough to be palatable.  I honestly don’t know.

Regardless, good luck to everyone!!!!