NFL Survivor Pool

Wow, as Fox pointed out 20 times on Sunday, what a great weekend to be a Philadelphia sports fan. And I’m a Nittany Lion alum, which just made it so much sweeter.

So this is how my weekend went:

Saturday 11:01pm: Lydell Sargeant intercepts Buckeyes super-quarterback Terrelle Pryor’s pass to seal Penn State’s 13-6 win, their first in Columbus since 1978, to preserve the Nittany Lions‘ undefeated record.

Sunday 1:47am: Carlos Ruiz hits an infield single to bring in the winning run in the bottom of the 9th to give the Phillies a 5-4 win and a 2-1 World Series lead.

Sunday 4:11pm: After a blown call, Brian Westbrook breaks open for a 39-yard touchdown to put the Eagles up by two scores en route to a 27-14 over the Atlanta Falcons.

Sunday 9:49pm: Ryan Howard hits the first of two home runs, scoring Jayson Werth and Jimmy Rollins to put the Phillies up 5-1, which would end up being enough to beat the Rays 10-2 and take a 3-1 lead in the World Series.

So now I just need the Phils to win one more, and for Texas Tech to beat Texas or LSU to upset Bama this weekend, and it’ll be golden. And then maybe I’ll start sleeping again.

Oh yeah, back to the pool: So just about everyone made it through this week again, we only lost three more players. We’re just about at the halfway point of the season, and we are now down to 37 players out of the 152 that started the season.

Otherwise, same spiel as before. All other picks due to me by Sunday at 10am ET. Thanks to everyone for getting their picks to me this time, noone forgot.

Just a reminder that starting in week 10, the NFL will start playing Thursday night games, so keep that in mind if you plan on making any of those picks. Any of those picks will have to get to me by Thursday at 5pm ET.

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With the Bucs triumph over the struggling Seahawks, an uneventful week 7 wraps up.

For the first time this season, everyone made it through the week unscathed. We’ll still have 40 players going into week 8. I forgot to mention this last week, but since buybacks are done, the pool is finalized at $2,775.

Some interesting (maybe just to me) notes:

- Despite having 8 people enter 4 times and 14 others entering 3 times, none of the remaining players have more than 2 picks still alive.

- 16 of the remaining 40 players did not need to use their buyback.

- There are still three teams that noone (win or lose) has picked yet, all from the AFC: Dolphins, Browns, and Raiders.

- The NFC East is by far the most popular division to pick from. NFC East teams have been picked 189 times. The next closest division is the AFC East with 114.

- The Giants have been the most popular pick so far, having been picked 81 times. Cowboys are second with 51.

- Only 8 of the players left have not picked the defending Super Bowl champions yet.

- The NFC overall is more popular than the AFC, 402-300.

- As far as a single team knocking out players, Broncos are first with 31, all of which were in their week 4 loss. Coming in second is the Redskins with 26, also all in a single week (week 6). Tied for third with 23 are the Patriots, who did it in week 3, and the Seahawks, who did it over the first two weeks.

- The AFC West is in the lead for knocking out players, with 59 losses in 81 picks. The least comes from the AFC North, with only 1 loss out of 41 picks.

All picks due to me by 10am ET on Sunday.

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No recap this week. I’m still on vacation, I didn’t watch any of the games or SportsCenter the following day, so I don’t really know anything other than the Skins lost and took a bunch of people with them.

Same ol’ spiel from previous weeks, except there are no more buy backs.

All picks to me by 10am ET on Sunday.

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So did the Bengals play up or did the Boys play down? Either way, they probably gave 27 of you a scare near the end of the game. Anyway, almost everyone made it through week 5, with the MNF game still to go.

Like I mentioned in the pre-game email, we have less than half of the players remaining after five weeks. We started with 152, and now we have 67.

All picks *MUST* be sent to bill at billma dot com this week. I am leaving early Saturday morning for Florida, so that mailbox is the only one I am going to be checking for picks on Sunday. I’ll apologize ahead of time that unless everyone has their picks to me by early morning Sunday (6-7am-ish), they will not be posted on time on the website. I’m on vacation, I guarantee I won’t be sitting around at 10am waiting for picks to arrive.

If you lost and plan to buy back, $15 to me by Sunday at 10am. If you plan on mailing it, I must receive it in Friday’s mail. After that, Paypal payments only. This is the last week for buybacks!

Have a good week!

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Just a quick email before week 5 kicks off…

This is the last week for buybacks if you lose. So if you lose this week and haven’t used your buyback yet, you can buy back for $15. Once you lose in week 6 and going forward, you’re out. No more buybacks.

We are officially under the halfway mark, and by that I mean that not everyone who was eligible to buyback this week did. So we have 81 eliminated players and 71 active going into week 5.

There are still a couple of people that aren’t sending me their picks. In case you wanted to know, the way that the picks are assigned goes like this: The odds are taken from either Fox Sports or USA Today as of Sunday morning, and it goes down in order from top to bottom, looking for a favored team that you haven’t used yet. You may get assigned a team that’s favored by 10 points or one favored by 0.5 points.

And as I keep stressing but people don’t listen, I only accept picks via my bill at billma dot com email address. Not text messages, not my work email, not a handwritten note folded into an airplane left in my mailbox (okay, noone’s tried that yet but you get the point). That account has a special filter in place so 1) I can record timestamps when my server receives your email, 2) it won’t get sent to a spam folder, and 3) so there’s a written record should there be a dispute.

Dallas and Carolina are by far the two most popular teams this week. 27 picked the Boys and 25 picked the Panthers. The next closest is the Giants with 7 picking them. Go Bengals!

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