DiploBall IV, Final Recap

Happy President’s Day weekend everyone!  The BBQ is on and I’m ready to rock the weekend Asmara style!  However, I owe you a final recap!  Like always I’ll announce the winners for both Points and Picks… and break them into Overall, NCAA, and NFL.  So, here we go!

Points

Overall Winner:  VJSchutz

Second Place: SchutzJP

Third Place: Jim Schutz

This is VJ’s second DiploBall Championship in a row!  Although it got a tad dicey at the end, he pulled off the win like the pro his is… although; I’m pretty sure the foundation for his dominance is the fact he doesn’t want to pay for the postage necessary to mail the Golden DiploBall to someone else.

And for the fourth season in a row all the Schutz’s take the top spots keeping the dynasty alive.  I’m just glad I was able to finally overtake Jim!  Dad!  I’m going for you next year!

NCAA Winner:  Badger

Second Place: VJSchutz

Third Place: Jim Schutz

Badger started out the season like a bat out of hell, mathematically, the Schutz’s thought it would be impossible to catch him, however, he just couldn’t seem to maintain through the second half of his season.  Perhaps it was karma getting him back for all the smack talk?  That said, Badger managed to hold on to the NCAA victory!

NFL Winner:  Steak n Potatoes

Second Place:  EricC

Third Place:  BigCat

The NFL standings support one of my biggest DiploBall concerns.  The NFL games just don’t enough weight… the numbers are terrible skewed in favor of the NCAA games.  There are only about 31 more NCAA games in the season, however, the amount of points on the table during NCAA weeks are a lot more… especially when we get down to weeks with only NFL.  We need to figure out a way to make it more even.

Well… I know what I will be spending my off season doing.

Here are the complete standings for Points:

Rank	Overall Standings	NCAA Standings	NFL Standings
1st	VJSchutz	Badger	Steak n Potatoes
2nd	SchutzJP	VJSchutz	EricC
3rd	Jim Schutz	Jim Schutz	BigCat
4th	BigCat	SchutzJP	SchutzJP
5th	Badger	BigCat	Jim Schutz
6th	The Great Usurper	The Great Usurper	VJSchutz
7th	EricC	Ryan	Pac12Bear
8th	Ryan	Ted	Badger
9th	Ted	VNIbarger	The Great Usurper
10th	Pac12Bear	RollTide1	Rada
11th	Steak & Potatoes	SEC#1	Red Craig
12th	RollTide1	EricC	Ryan
13th	SEC#1	Pac12Bear	RollTide1
14th	Vnibarger	Jeff	Robbins
15th	BeachBums505	Irishman	Irishman
16th	Irishman	BeachBums505	Renegade
17th	Jeff	Steak & potatoes	BeachBums505
18th	Arose	Robbins	Jeff
19th	Robbins	Renegade	SEC#1
20th	Renegade	Arose	Arose
21st	Rada	Rada	VNIbarger

Picks

Overall Winner:  VJSchutz & Badger

Second Place: Jim Schutz

Third Place: SchutzJP & The Great Usurper

NCAA Winner:  Badger

Second Place: VJSchutz

Third Place: SchutzJP

NFL Winner:  Jim Schutz

Second Place:  The Great Usurper

Third Place:  VJSchutz

I can’t say there are many big surprises here, however, the fact that The Great Usurper ranked in two of these categories, however, he only placed 6^th overall in points.  Interesting!

Here are the complete standings for Picks:

Rank	Overall Standings	NCAA Standings	NFL Standings
1st	VJSchutz & Badger	Badger	Jim Schutz
2nd	Jim Schutz	VJSchutz	The Great Usurper
3rd	SchutzJP & The Great Usurper	SchutzJP	VJSchutz
4th	BigCat	Jim Schutz	BigCat
5th	Ryan	BigCat, Jeff, & Ryan	Steak n Potatoes
6th	Jeff	The Great Usurper	SchutzJP
7th	Steak n Potatoes	VNIbarger	Badger
8th	Pac12Bear	Pack12Bear	Ryan
9th	VNIBarger	Steak n Potatoes	Pac12Bear
10th	EricC & Robbins	EricC	Robbins
11th	Rada	Robbins	Jeff
12th	Ted	Rada	EricC
13th	RollTide1	RollTide1	Rada
14th	Renegade	Ted	VNIbarger
15th	Irishman	SEC#1	Ted
16th	SEC#1	Irishman	RollTide1
17th	BeachBums505	BeachBums505 & Renegade	Renegade
18th	ARose	Arose	Irishman
19th			BeachBums505
20th			SEC#1
21st			Arose

DiploBall IV, Week 22

Happy Post-Super Bowl everyone!  What a game… or at least what I saw of it.  After spending all day cooped up in a hotel room in Munich watching ESPN American’s endless loop of Sunday NFL Countdown the game finally started at midnight… and well… I promptly fell asleep just after the Ravens scored their first touchdown... which made me happy... because I thought I picked the Ravens to win... but... ummm... apparently I had data entry issues this week...

Alas!

Not much to report except for our final week winners, all of whom have earned a Perfect Week Bonus.  So, if you see your name below please send me the pick you would like to reverse.  Any game of the season is eligible.  You have one week to send in your pick reversals!  At which time I will send out the final standings.

VJSchutz

VNIBarger

Robbins

Jim

The Great Usurper

Renegade

Jeff

RollTide1 (You still haven’t cashed in your perfection from Week 1)

Peace!

DiploBall IV, Week 21: Crash and Burn

Okay… so I don’t really want to talk about it…  I’m heartbroken… but I have to talk about it because someone earned a Perfect Week Bonus… meaning they did the most unholy of unholy.  This person picked against the Falcons.  Actually four of you did!  And it makes me sick… the only solace I have is the fact that only ONE of the four of you earned the Perfect Week.

Renegade.  Congratulations… you get to reverse any game you missed this season.

And I get to go back to bed… and cry. 

DiploBall IV, Week 19 & 20

Okay!  Know I am VERY late my latest recaps, but I have a good excuse.  I’ve totally been distracted by this picture of an otter from the Georgia Aquarium cheering for the Falcons: 

(http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/c0.0.403.403/p403x403/320929_10151452114960695_495810578_n.jpg)

Totally distracted.  GO FALCONS!

Since the last time I wrote two people have cashed in their Perfect Weeks:  VJ and Me!  Leaving only RollTide1 with a pending Perfect Week… although he tried to, vaguely, cash it in earlier in the season and I still don’t understand what game he meant.

That said, even though VJ is positioned for his second (back to back) DiploBall victory, his win is not guaranteed!  With two more weeks and two more potential perfect week bonuses in play, anything can still happen!

The NFL Playoff has certainly been interesting!  And for the Schutz’s it has been VERY exciting!  As many of you know, we’re originally from Baltimore and some of us still hold a fair amount of resentment towards the Colts… but watching the Ravens eliminate them from the playoffs and then move through to the AFC Championship is amazing! 

However, we’ve been in Atlanta since the mid-70s, so watching the Falcons finally break their playoffs curse, with a real shot at the NFC Championship has been incredible rewarding!

I guess it goes without saying that our pipe-dream of FINALLY having a Baltimore-Atlanta Super Bowl might actually come true!  Not sure if it will happen, but if it does, I’ll be in Munich enjoying the show if anyone is in the area and interested in joining me!

Until then, here is how the last two weeks played out:

Week 19

1^st Place:  Jim Schutz

2^nd Place:  Robbins

3^rd place:  SchutzJP

Last Place:  VNIBarger

Week 20

1^st Place:  The Great Usurper

2^nd Place:  BigCat, Jim Schutz, SchutzJP, VJSchutz, and Jeff

3^rd place:  Rada, Badger, EricC, Renegade

Last Place:  VNIBarger

For Week 20 VNIBarger has the dubious honor of missing ALL four games… … … yeah.

Well, here we go folks!  Week 21!  We’re almost there!

DiploBall IV, Week 18: Bowl-mageddon

Sorry for the late recap.  I flew back to WashDC today and have been a bit preoccupied. 

DiploBall IV, Week 18 Recap:

1^st Place:  EricC

2^nd Place:  VJSchutz

3^rd Place:  BigCat

Last Place:  VNIBarger

Missed Week Minimum:  0 Points

Irishman.  That’s right… Irishman gets ZERO points!  Per the Missed Week Rules, eligible parties are given one point less than the lowest ranking player submitted picks for more than 2/3 of the games and finished the week in the positive.  Which gave us RollTide, who finished the week with ONE point!

Eliminated:  SEC#1 and BeachBum505

Irishman now exhausted all 5 missed weeks… next week he’ll be out!

DiploBall IV, Week 17: Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas DiploBallers!  Is it me, or does it seem really odd to not have any games today?  Anyway, sorry to bother you when you should be enjoying time with your families, however I wanted to make sure everyone knows that PoolTracker considers Tuesday the start of the football week.  So Week 18 will start tomorrow with the “Little Caesars Pizza Bowl”.  And Week 19 will start on Tuesday, January 1^st with the “TaxSlayer.com Gator Bowl”.  Don’t forget to make your picks!

By the way… I’m pretty sure “TaxSlayer.com Gator Bowl” is the all-time greatest bowl name EVER.  Originally I thought “New Era Pinstripe Bowl” was pretty styling… but TaxSlayer is epic!

DiploBall IV, Week 17 Recap:

1^st Place:  Renegade

Renegade was so close to earning a Perfect Week!  Just one game shy!  That dang Seattle stood in his way!

2^nd Place:  Ted

Along with Renegade, Ted was only one of two player who picked ALL of the bowl games correct!

3^rd Place:  The Great Usurper

This was a great week for Usurper.  Not only did he take 3^rd place… but he won his second DiploBall Legacy League title. 

Last Place:  Pac12Bear

Missed Week Minimum:  22 Points

SEC#1, BeachBum505, RollTide1, and Irishman

Eliminated:  Arose

Arose has already used up her 5 weeks so she is now officially out of the game.  Also in danger is SEC#1 and BeachBum505; both reaching their limit this week.

DiploBall IV, Week 16

Sorry for yet another abbreviated recap.  My first week in Atlanta has been action packed!

1^st Place: Ted


2^nd Place:  The Great Usurper



3^rd Place:  Ryan



Last Place:  VNIBarger
 

Missed Week Minimum: 30 Point
Renegade, SEC#1, BeachBum505, and ARose

Perfect Week Cash-In:  The Great UsurperUsurper cashed in his perfect week to correct a 37 point failure from Week 13!