A Ghastly Weekend ....

Some of you may be familiar with the term "back-doored" when it comes to betting.  What it basically means is when the game is close and ritard play happens that changes the outcome of the game (gambling wise) and makes one set of people happy and another set furious.  This can be a garbage time TD or FG that covers the spread or pushed the over/under or as we saw last night a pick-6 in the final minute that took a win ATS away from Minn and the 60 people who took them and gave the 64 people who took the Jets a cheap win.  I could hear the screaming, both joyous and anger from the Vegas sports book all the way in my Massachusetts basement.   With Farve anything is possible so it should not have been a huge surprise but for me and the 59 others who took Minn and checked this game as a win it still sucked.

Congratulations to "Ghastley", he had quite the weekend  winning the week and moving up to #1 in the overall standings.  The biggest jump of the week was "Kris10", up 45 spots to 24th overall and came very close to winning for the second time this season, in-between a last place finish. We are still about 2 or 3 weeks away before we start seeing some separation in the overall standings. Currently the top 56 are only separated by 10 games, usually by week 8 we start seeing that number widen more and more. 

Four players really have a case of the Monday's, "Bean Pie Specials", "ENZO", "Nacho chowda" and "Ease It In" have yet to win a Monday night game this season, yup 0-5 this season. Ask them how they feel about Brett Farve today!

This season has seen a big trend in upsets, and these upsets are having a major impact on the pool, this week alone only 30 people took Arizona (vs. NO), 29 took Washington (vs. GB) and 35 took Oakland  (vs. SD) and all three won, and only 8 players took all three teams. 

Now over to the Survivor Pool, we started with 107, 56 remain, 19 have no losses. I think many of you need to learn how this thing works before we go any further, too many of you are either too dumb or are not thinking ahead.  First it is a double elimination pool not a single elimination, why does this matter?  Well in a double elimination you need to take chances, because it is almost a certainty the pool will last into the playoffs so if you hope to be in it until the end you will have to pick 17-21 different teams and only 12 teams make the playoffs so you better be sure to hold onto a few of the top teams so you have teams to pick come January.  Sure each week you can go with the safe pick like many of you cowards did with IND, they were the best bet of the week no question about it but Ind will be a playoff team so why burn that pick when there were other options involving teams that won't be in the playoffs that were low risk and ripe for the picking.  The best time to take a chance is always between weeks 5-7, this is when you start seeing weaker teams playing the best football, come the second half of the season shit teams are too unpredictable. This week prior to making my pick I narrowed it down to 3 teams I deemed a low risk but a good risk, DET, JAX and SF.   DET was my best bet,  they have played very well this season, they were at home  vs. St. Louis who is terrible. It was a no brainier.  Jax I gave a look but after their big win last week and going on the road a letdown was a concern I felt they were the 2nd best bet, SF it seemed many of the experts loved this week, they seemed to be a good pick with all the injuries Philly has but with Philly losing last week Andy Reid would have them ready and SF is still coached by the clueless Mike Singletary and QB by Alex Smith not two people I felt good about putting my pick in their hands. So Detroit was my selection and they won 44-6, Jax also won and SF lost.  Honestly I thought I would be the only one picking them, I didn't think anyone else in this pool got how this is played but I wasn't alone, 4 other players took Detroit as well and I welcome you 4 (Sonylove III, Davey Kleinfeld, Daveydfla and Smooooth) to the top of the class and which ever one of you finishes in 2nd place behind me I'll be happy to have you as my runner-up, hopefully all 4 of you can share 2nd place.  For the rest of you who took NO, SD, CIN, BAL, IND shame on you, you are cowards, scared to take a risk, we are playing chess while you are playing checkers. And come week 15, 16, 17 and beyond ...IF you are still around and you are stuck having to pick Cleveland, Buffalo, St. Louis while us early season risk takers still have IND, BAL, NE, NO, NYJ in our pockets we will be laughing at you.  Now, those of you who already had a loss coming into this weekend I can't fault you for taking a safe pick, you have to stay in it but the rest of you who took the easy road, your an embarrassment to yourself.   And yes I can speak as an authority, I am still the only player in the Survivor pool history to win the pool alone and outright, every other season the pool ended in a tie so I am a living legend here.  You should be honored I just gave you this lesson, it must have felt like watching Picasso picking up his chisel. Why am I giving you this advice and risking you using it to beat me? You are all to stupid to take these tips so I am not worried.

Nomar Fact of the Week
"On August 31, Nomar made his major league debut at The Coliseum in Oakland against the A's, entering the game as a defensive replacement at second base"