Football Pool

On the list of "Why do these things?" is playing a football pool.

It's not a betting pool because 1: I'm note very good and 2: I'm cheap.

So I play in a for fun pool sponsored by the St.Thomas Youth Group in Oshkosh WI.  It's fun and keeps me in touch with the NFL for reasons that I'm not quite sure I understand.  The Steelers make me happy, the Bills make me sad.  What more could I need?

So far this year I haven't been tearing up the pool.  My first three weeks were pretty good and I was staying in the top 20 (there are currently 79 of us in the pool).  The last three weeks have been pretty awful, with the week before last being especially so.

At the moment my picking percentage is only 52.3 versus the tops in the pool - 66.6%.  Curiously that person is in 27th place, 10 ahead of me.  The reason why he is in 27 while the first place person is only picking 61.12% is the other tricky part of the pool.

This is a straight win/lose pool, no point spread.  BUT!  You have to assign a point value to each pick.  This week as an example there are 14 games.  So you value your picks from 14 to 1.  Picks you're most confident in you give high values, low confidence low values.  And it's point total that that counts toward the winner.  To our current leader has 499 points to my 432.  Which means that she (all hail Mary Pfahlert!) is better at getting her high point games right.  Which is the winning strategy.

So here are my picks:
14 Baltimore over Buffalo
13 New Orleans over Cleveland
12 Kansas City over Jacksonville
11 Denver over Oakland
10 Pittsburgh over Miami
9  Seattle over Arizona
8  San Francisco over Carolina (SF has disappointed me all season long)
7  Atlanta over Cincinnati (Ditto the Bengals)
6  New England over San Diego
5  St. Louis over Tampa Bay (TB bad at home and against any kind of quality team, StL is a team on the rise)
4  Washington over Chicago
3  Philadelphia over Tennessee
2  Minnesota over Green Bay (GB too many injuries, Favre can ignore the "stuff" in his life on the field)
1  New York Giants over Dallas (Cowboys have to show me some discipline before I believe)

If my top two picks go bad I may stop watching football.  I'm a little nervous about # 12 & 8.  We'll see.  Needless to say 5, 4, 3, 2, & 1 I see as toss ups.

You don't even want to know my system.  It's some gut feeling, some checking with experts, some consideration of division game (bad), injuries, better quality QB and blind luck.  It might be interesting to just let the computer pick them at random (an option in our pool).

My goal each year in the pool is to stay in the top 20 and my hope is to finish in the top 10.  I've done the first a couple years (not last year) and never done the second for the season.  I've finished in the top 10 for a week a couple times, including week three of this year.  To do that I need 85 points or more.  100 points is always a good week.  This week I'd be happy if I could hit 90 or more.  To have any chance I've got to keep above 70 every week from here on out. Total possible this week I believe is 105.