Sorry for the slow results – Another busy holiday season. Again this season I am writing not too long after a Cowboys choke. This is getting to be an annual event (and I like it). In Wisconsin news, Jim Leonhard is playing great for the Ravens and I find myself rooting for a Ravens-Giants or Ravens-Eagles Super Bowl. ;-) The pool was incredibly close this year as the results show below. I hope everybody enjoyed it. Happy New Year! Rich On to the results: Week 17 Player Points (out of 136) -------------------------------------- ajpetrosino 116 jdavis 116 jeff 114 maclinte2 114 nick-street 114 WIstvanick 114 olson.brad 112 Paul 112 rmaclin 112 matty 111 tararichte 110 bruce.irvin 108 otero 107 lewandow 102 jim_pruyne 100 jluttine 98 rjolsonjr 97 allenj1 94 prophet 92 faber 91 Which gives us final totals of ... Totals Player Points (out of 2287) --------------------------------------- jdavis 1607 jim_pruyne 1607 rmaclin 1605 matty 1604 bruce.irvin 1602 tararichte 1583 nick-street 1582 olson.brad 1576 maclinte2 1570 Paul 1570 ajpetrosino 1558 jeff 1551 faber 1547 jluttine 1532 allenj1 1530 otero 1523 prophet 1516 lewandow 1469 WIstvanick 1421 rjolsonjr 1372 Congratulations to Jesse “Sammy” Davis and Jim “Cowboy?” Pruyne for a tie for the win. Jesse parlayed a top week into a come from behind tie. Jim was nice enough to coast the last week and give a lot of us a shot at the title. This year’s tie and two point margin over the next contender is easily our closest race (last year’s 4 point margin is the next closest). Now on to the rest of our awards show: Matt “Daemon” Koehler easily picks the most games right, so he wins our first honorable mention. In general, the number of games picked by most people was down a bit from previous years, but Matt’s total (177) was in line with many previous years. Player #Games Correct (out of 256) ---------------------------------------------- matty 177 jim_pruyne 171 bruce.irvin 169 olson.brad 167 tararichte 166 ajpetrosino 165 jdavis 165 jeff 165 otero 165 Paul 165 rmaclin 164 jluttine 163 nick-street 161 faber 160 prophet 159 maclinte2 158 allenj1 157 lewandow 154 rjolsonjr 152 WIstvanick 141 A second honorable mention goes to Tony "Soprano" Petrosino for his stellar week 14, getting the highest score. It was interesting that this year had some high scores, but didn’t have a week that dominated the high scores. Player Points (week) -------------------------------- ajpetrosino 122 (14) jim_pruyne 120 (3) olson.brad 120 (7) jeff 118 (10) olson.brad 117 (15) . . lewandow 56 (3) rjolsonjr 56 (9) otero 54 (2) faber 52 (16) Our third and fourth honorable mentions go to Nick “EZ” Street and Brad “Kingda Ka” Olson for being the most consistent and least consistent at their picks based on the standard deviation of each person's picks (note, I left out the people who did not participate in the entire season). Jeff Hollingsworth had a lock on most consistent for years and was doing very well in that category, but was unable to participate all season, so Nick grabbed the award. And Oley gave us a heck of a rollercoaster ride. Player Standard Deviation ------------------------------------------ nick-street 11.84 jim_pruyne 11.99 allenj1 12.77 maclinte2 13.18 jeff 13.22 bruce.irvin 13.34 Paul 13.47 prophet 13.82 jdavis 14.00 rmaclin 14.26 lewandow 14.67 rjolsonjr 14.77 matty 14.81 tararichte 15.77 ajpetrosino 15.91 jluttine 16.37 faber 17.11 otero 17.12 olson.brad 17.30 Our fifth honorable mention goes to Tom "O Brother Where Art Thou" Maclin as the most average picker (measured by measuring the standard deviation of the other pickers based on using each person in turn as the "mean"). As Ted is no longer using a random picking program, which routinely was the least average picker I am going to add a sixth honorable mention for Ron “Packers” Olson as the least average picker. Player Standard Deviation ------------------------------------- maclinte2 11.44 Paul 11.94 nick-street 12.19 jeff 12.36 rmaclin 12.44 jdavis 12.55 matty 12.65 ajpetrosino 13.15 bruce.irvin 13.26 allenj1 13.32 tararichte 13.33 jim_pruyne 13.60 prophet 14.59 jluttine 15.27 otero 15.32 olson.brad 16.52 faber 16.70 lewandow 19.32 rjolsonjr 22.28 Our seventh honorable mention goes to Wendy “Lou” Istvanick for being the most effective at weighting her picks (measured as the marginal gain in points compared to simply randomly weighting picks). Wendy and Matt should perhaps collaborate next year. Player Marginal Gain (pts per pick) ------------------------------------------------------ WIstvanick 1.111 maclinte2 0.999 nick-street 0.889 rmaclin 0.849 allenj1 0.808 jdavis 0.802 faber 0.731 lewandow 0.601 tararichte 0.599 prophet 0.597 Paul 0.578 bruce.irvin 0.542 ajpetrosino 0.505 olson.brad 0.500 jeff 0.463 jluttine 0.461 jim_pruyne 0.460 otero 0.293 matty 0.125 Our last honorable mention awards go to Ted “I, Not Robot” Faber and Jim “Not Beating a Steel Man” Pruyne for the biggest gain over last year's score (these totals are measured only for those who participated in every week last year and every week this year – the second mention goes to Jim as Ted was in some sense not beating himself but his random picking program). A few people did improve this year, but scores overall were down a bit compared to last year. Player 2008 2007 Gain/Loss ----------------------------------------- faber 1547 1124 423 jim_pruyne 1607 1461 146 ajpetrosino 1558 1504 54 bruce.irvin 1602 1575 27 olson.brad 1576 1561 15 jeff 1551 1541 10 jdavis 1607 1643 -36 tararichte 1583 1625 -42 matty 1604 1651 -47 jluttine 1532 1583 -51 allenj1 1530 1596 -66 nick-street 1582 1654 -72 rmaclin 1605 1691 -86 rjolsonjr 1372 1460 -88 maclinte2 1570 1693 -123 prophet 1516 1644 -128 lewandow 1469 1603 -134 Paul 1570 1704 -134 Congratulations again to our big winners Jim Pruyne and Jesse Davis as well as our honorable mention winners (Matt Koehler, Tony Petrosino, Nick Street, Brad Olson, Tom Maclin, Ron Olson, Wendy Istvanick, Ted Faber and Jim Pruyne). You can collect your rewards next time you see me (I will be in Madison next week and of course we also have the wedding receptions). ;-) Look for the return of the pool later in August next year. Happy New Year! Rich P.S. On that subject of a close run race, I am going to go ahead and give myself the first ever dishonorable mention, the Sour Grapes award. As week 17 came to a close and Washington went down to defeat I reran the stats and realized if Washington had beaten SF then Bruce Irvin and I would have tied for first at 1609. I then quickly ran 4 other scenarios involving seeming “upsets”, 2) what if TB beat Oakland – Jesse would win by 3 at 1623, 3) what if Chicago beat Houston, I would win by 6 at 1611, 4) what if the Jets beat Miami, Jim would win by 6 at 1616 and 5) what if TB and Chicago had won, then I would have won by 1 at 1622. I stopped at that point (with 3 out of 5 scenarios giving me at least and tie for the win) and quit torturing myself. But I thought I would let you people know. ;-)