NFL Survivor Pool

Welp, another NFL regular season has wrapped and this year’s pool has come to an end.

I wasn’t able to watch the early games but did get to listen to the Eagles pregame radio show as they kept me updated on the scores of other games. Week 17 sure was interesting, if only for the pure total of improbable upsets and almost-upsets. I’m not going through every one, but two probably made eight of our remaining players very nervous: The Falcons needed late-game heroics to pull out of a 24-24 tie early in the 4th quarter against the 2-14 Rams, and after being tied 14-14, the Packers finally woke up in the final quarter to make the Lions the first 0-16 team in the NFL.

So the final tally is ten winners, each winning $277.50. The winners will be contacted via email shortly.

This will be the last blog post of 2008. Look for an email announcement for 2009 to be sent out sometime in late July or early August.

I started using an email distribution list for the announcement this year, so if you received that announcement and/or you played in this year’s pool, you are already on the list (unless you already unsubscribed).

If you want to be added to the distribution list, you can subscribe by visiting: http://zebrapool.com/mailman/listinfo/announce_zebrapool.com

There’s been some talk in previous blog posts about altering some aspects of the game to avoid multiple winners in future years. Some of you have presented your own ideas on the topic. Feel free to continue to contribute your suggestions by adding comments to either this or other blog posts; I will take them all into consideration when I reevaluate the rules for next year.

That’s all. Toodles!

[Edit 4/2/09: Changed how to subscribe to the mailing list. I've switched software used to manage the list.]

3 comments »

A funny thing happened en route to the final week. After losing only two players in the last three weeks, three favorites dropped their games and knocked our pool almost in half. The Texans (-7) had nothing in the second half against the Raiders, the Broncos (-6.5) gave up a big lead to the Bills, and the Vikings (-3) can’t expect to fumble seven times and still beat the Falcons.

And don’t forget about Miami barely escaping the shoot-out with the Chiefs. Miami alone scored more points than the over-under.

I got a kick out of the Titans dismantling the Steelers. The two best teams in the league? Not really.

So we’re down to 10 players. If all 10 make it through week 17, it’ll be $277.50 per player. An interesting note: If we didn’t have buybacks at all, Drew would have won the pool this week. He’s the only one to pick 16 straight winners.

All picks due Sunday at 10am. However, I do have holiday plans on Sunday so unless everyone gets me their picks by early Sunday morning, the picks may not get posted before the games start unless I can get access to a computer later in the day.

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This is the definitely the time of the season where it becomes harder to pick a team. Most of the sure bets have already been used, so that shows why 19 players picked 7 different teams.

I didn’t get to catch too much of the action on Sunday, but based on the box scores, a lot of games were close. The Lions almost pulled a fast one on the Colts, the 49ers outgained the Fins in every stat but the score, the Bungles upset the Skins (for our lone loser this week), the refs handed the AFC to the Steelers, and the Bills were a fumble return away from beating the Bretts.

On to week 16: In addition to the Thursday night game, there’s also a Saturday night game this week. So if you want to pick either of those games, you have to get the picks to me by 5pm on the respective game days. Otherwise, all other picks by 10am on Sunday.

I also wanted to review some of the options suggested in a previous blog post. One of the suggestions was to raise the entry fee, which I really don’t want to do. That’s the reason I stopped entering the one I used to play in and started my own pool.

I would entertain the idea of shortening the buyback period though. Let’s see what this season would have looked like after 15 weeks. There’s still two more weeks to play, but for this exercise, let’s assume the season is over and it’s time to split the pot. Let’s also assume that no one has any special strategies regarding whether they still have a buyback available or not.

First, let’s baseline: With five weeks of buybacks after 15 weeks of play, we have 18 remaining players and $2,775 to split.  That’s $154.16 per player.

Okay, but what if we shorten buyback by a week: If noone is allowed to buyback in week 5, we’d only lose one more. So with 17 remaining players and $2,715 to split, that’s $159.70 per player.

One more: With only three weeks of buybacks, after 15 weeks we would have 14 players and $2,460. That’s $175.71 per player. Still not that big of a haul, but in this economy…

What if we just do two weeks: No one still in the game used a buyback in week 3, so we’d still have 14 players but now only $2,370 to split, or $172.50 per player.

Just one week: Now we’re down to 9 players and $2,010 to split. That’s $223.33 per player.

And if we rid of buybacks altogether: 6 players still in the game have not lost through 15 weeks, and each would get $250.

Draw your conclusions.

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No recap this week. It’s been an insane week at work. No big news anyway since everyone made it through week 14.

As usual, picks by Sunday at 10am unless you’re doing the Thursday night game, in which case picks by Thursday at 5pm.

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Just a quick note from last night’s game…

One of the things I know I want to work on for next season is showing the results of the Thursday night game even though the deadline for that week isn’t until Sunday. Cuz right now, you can’t see that three people picked San Diego in last night’s game (including myself) and won for the week already.

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