The NCAA Football season will be kicking off in only 17 days!! What does this mean for you...well, a couple of things:

1) Get me your $100 entry fee in the next 2 weeks if you want in the FC for this year. Here is a list of who has paid:

Matt O'Groske - in for $40 (from last year)
Jeremy Hammon - in for $50 (from last year)
George Thomas - PAID
Steve Schuft - PAID
Cole Peyton - PAID
Jared Groehler - PAID
Chris Stone - PAID
Tony Weber - PAID
Mark Ossanna - PAID
James Rollins - PAID
Greg Rollins - PAID

That means I need payment from a lot of you over the next couple of weeks, here are the guys I have on the list to play but have not paid:

Mike Thomas
Mark Heinert
Mike Setnicker
Rob Olson
Luke Wendlandt
Adam Wendlandt
Mike Corcoran
Mike Roe
Tait Nelson
Joe Adams
Mike Kobow
Mike Mallak
Rod Swenson
Rich Mornson?
Paul Thaden?

2) The lines for week one are already available and moving, but I will send them out to you NEXT WEDNESDAY (AUG 22nd). This will give you one full week to get them in to me. I will be heading out to Vegas on Thursday the 30th, so I'll get the first preview out there before I take off for the weekend. The typical schedule after the opening week will be sending the lines on Tuesday and I'll need them back by EOD Thursday before the Thursday night kickoffs.

Thanks guys.

Football Challenge 2012 - 1 month away!

One month from today, AUG 30th, the Football Challenge will begin for 2012. If you are getting this email it means you are on the list to play this year in FC2012 (please let me know if you will not be playing). I've sent out the rules to all of you already, and now it's time to start getting in the entry fees and get this thing going.

You have 1 month to get me your $100 entry fee for the season. I want to have all of these collected before that opening kickoff on AUG 30th. You can get me cash/check/paypal/or whatever else works for you.

This is the only fee for the entire season and post-season worth of football picks. All money is returned to the players with weekly and season long contests. Those dollar values will be released once we have a complete list of entries for FC2012.

Get entered and start studying!! Only one more month to go!!

Playoffs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3-eavMSBnk

A historic day, 6/26/12, College Football adopted a playoff model for 2014 and the BCS is no more.

This is what we've all been begging for, right?!? Well, you would not know it based upon the response from the media and the public last night and today. Now it appears as if everyone is pissed about only having 4 teams in the playoff and not 8 or god forbid 16 teams in a playoff. I'm not completely opposed to a larger bracket, but let's stop and enjoy what we have...a true national champion...finally.

I can see the argument for more teams, but honestly, to maintain the integrity of the regular season, this thing can not be larger than 8 teams...and even that might be a little too much. Think about it - are there ever 8 or even 6 teams that should, based on their regular season, have a claim to the National Title? The quick answer is NO, but let's look back at last year to illustrate this.

Teams with a claim to the Title in 2011:
ALABAMA
LSU

Obviously, this was the title game, so both would be included in any playoff format. I can't come up with a legitimate argument that leaves either of these teams out of this scenario.

OKST 11-1, conference champ, yes, I think they deserve to be included in the 2011 playoff. For me, the auto bids seem to be pretty simple - undefeated or one loss teams that won their conference. ALA makes it as a non-SEC champ with 1 loss because they lost to #1 and destroyed everyone else in their path. The small conference (Non BCS) teams will need to go undefeated to even be considered, and really this is how it should be. The average weekly opponent for teams like HOU and BOISE is probably 2 TD's worse than the average ALA opponent and a true title contender should never lose to one of those. So if you're not undefeated in a small conference, then you don't have a chance. It's not written that way in the actual playoff rules, but that will be the case.

The 4th team is a little more difficult to choose. The candidates:

STAN 11-1, ORE 11-2 PAC 10 Champs
BOISE 11-1
HOU 12-1

That's really it. Based on the criteria outlined yesterday, ORE would get the nod over STAN in the Conf Champ, head to head, and SOS components which should be enough to put them over the top and get them in as the #4 seed. BOISE and HOU would not be considered because they each had a loss. If BOISE defeats TCU and goes 12-0, then they would have a shot...but I think I would still put ORE in the playoff.

So we would have ORE-LSU and OKST-ALA...who can complain? Nobody. STAN lost to ORE and didn't win their conference. BOISE and HOU both lost games they should not have, so they are out based purely on a major strength of schedule difference against the BCS teams. If this was 8 teams, and all conference champs were included, I think it would be great as well. However, the top 4 in a tourney is a hell of a lot better than leaving a legit championship contender (OKST 2011) out in the cold with no shot to prove it on the field.

Be happy - this is major progress!! Now we just need to get through the next 2 years of the BCS swan song!

We are at about 64 days until the season kicks off...just in case you forgot.

Football Challenge 2012 - Official Invitation

If you are receiving this it is because A) you were in the Football Challenge last year or B) someone thinks you are amazing enough at picking games that they want you in this pool...I suppose it could also be C) you're easy money.

If you are unfamiliar with the Football Challenge (which kicks off in only 75 days!!) let me break it down for you:

CONCEPT
Picking NCAA and NFL games against the spread every week with a chance to win weekly and season long prizes.

RULES
- Point spread league, we pick 15 games per week every week (5 NFL, 5 NCAA, 5 of your choice)
- 2 points for each win, 1 point for each tie = most points wins the week/season titles
- $$$ for weekly winners and season long winner, as well as Bowl champ and post-season champ
- $100 to enter gets you into everything: 18 weeks of regular season plus a bowl/playoff challenge
- spreads are sent Tuesday mornings using most current lines at that time, picks due by Thursday at NOON
- Recaps are sent weekly to all players as well as a weekly preview that summarizes all the picks and tries to make you laugh, cry, or get excited.

TIEBREAK
- New for this year is a tiebreak system, where you will turn in a MNF (Monday Night Football) pick every week against the spread to be used in a tiebreak (this game can also be part of your 15 for the week). If we still have a tie, it will be split amongst 2 guys but if more than 2 are tied it will carry over to the next week.

It's a pretty simple concept. It's all through email and very simple to play along. We had 17 guys last season, I know we'll be over 20 this year but it's up to all of you to determine where we'll be. I know many of you said that you had friends that were interested, so please send this on to them if you have not sent me their information.

If you are a new player and want in - shoot me an email and I'll put you on the list. I'll start collecting entry fees in August before the games start. This contest has only gotten better and better every year, so here's your chance to come aboard and enjoy the degenerate lifestyle for one low entry fee.

Also, if you're a current FC player and want out (never happened before, the lone drop out of the league is coming back) then please let me know that as well and I'll take you off the list.

Thanks - 75 days and counting...

Wednesday Comedy - Taylor Martinez

Watch this:

http://kegsneggsblog.com/2012/05/29/how-to-throw-the-perfect-pass-by-taylor-martinez/

100 days until kickoff

Gentlemen - we are 100 days away from kicking off the 2012 College Football season, and with that we will be kicking off the 2012 Football Challenge.

I just wanted to send out a reminder, in case you all forgot that football is coming. The countdown is officially on. Another countdown that is also about to start is the countdown to Vegas. OCT 19-20-21 is this year's trip. I plan on booking it in June/July time frame. I know many of you have expressed interest in going, but we're getting close to commitment time. Over the next month or so please try and lock in a firm YES I'M IN or NO I'M NOT with me for those of you who had expressed interest a couple of months back. Don't forget...it's Gophs at Vagers this year...could be fun.

New members - I have not started to copy potential new members on any emails yet, but I will start that once we officially hit the summer months and start officially collecting $$$ for the upcoming season. Please forward me any names/emails of guys who might be interested and I'll put them on the invite list. Until then...

2012 Rule Changes

Thanks to all of you who replied with your thoughts on what changes should happen for FC2012. I tried to take them all into consideration when coming up with the proposed rule changes for this year. One thing I won't list is the new payouts, which we'll decide once we figure out how many members we'll have for this upcoming season.

Here's what has already been decided:

-Still pick 15 games (at least 5 NFL and 5 NCAA when possible) and we will pick 15 games EVERY week, even when it's NFL only. Most of the ties last year occurred in the 10 game weeks where it was NFL only, so we will move to picking basically every NFL game over the final weeks of the year (15 of 16).

- I will use actual Tuesday lines, so we will be accounting for the early line movements and you will no longer be able to get the obvious bad numbers that came with posting the opening lines for our use. This should sharpen the lines up and make the choices less obvious and likely decrease our records a bit from last year.

- Wins will be worth 2 points and ties will be worth 1 point...this eliminates the always controversial tie = loss rule that has been in play for a couple of years. This way, it will be a points based competition and make it more fair and hopefully eliminate some of the ties.

Tiebreaker
So this is the one that has had the most debate amongst the players of FC and just internally for me as well. In the weeks where we had 15 games to pick we only had 4 weeks with a tie (28%), which is up slightly from FC 2010 where we had 21% of the 15 game weeks end in a tie. I think this trend will continue to go up as we add more members, which appears very likely to happen again this year. We will counteract it in part by going to a point system and not counting a tie as a loss...this will cause a little more separation among the players. But I'm assuming we end up with about 4-5 weeks that end in a tie this year, which leads me to think we need to develop some kind of system to break these ties. Some have had the idea of splitting it if it's only 2 people and do a carry-over if it's more than 2...I kind of like this plan. Only 2 of our 7 ties last year involved more than 2 people, so a carry-over would truly be a rare thing. Another consideration I have is adding more drama to the end of the week (MNF) and making that game meaningful each and every week. With all those in mind - here is my plan for tiebreakers/carry-overs in FC 2012 (still looking for a new name BTW)

- When turning in your 15 games for the week, you will be asked to also submit a MNF pick as a tiebreaker. This will give us another layer to try and help break the tie and have a true winner every week. You can still pick this game as one of your 15 for the week, but please submit a pick in this game as a tiebreak as well (doesn't necessarily have to be the same). If we still have a tie of more than 2 people we will carry the $50 forward to the next week. If it is only between 2, we'll do a split.

So in summary here are the steps we're taking to limit ties this year:
1) Sharper lines = worse records (I think this will lead to fewer ties, but who knows)
2) Points system with wins worth 2 and ties worth 1 (not penalized for a tie as a loss any more)
3) Tiebreak pick with MNF game every week
4) Only a carry over if we have more than 2 guys in a tie...if it's just 2 we'll split it $25 each

I feel like these are some minor tweaks that won't change the overall feel but will increase our probability of having a true winner each week. I guess we'll see in about 4 months!

Enjoy the golf season - football is right around the corner, Phil Steele's bible comes out on June 7th so you really only have 1 more month of off-season before it's time to start studying!!

Baseball 13 Run Pool - Tuesday Update

So I was hoping for 15 and we're now at 17 after a bunch of entires came in this morning. So now we'll each be getting only 1 team, but the good news is we have room for 13 more guys!!

So any of you who haven't entered yet...you probably should. $20/guy at 17 guys...the pot is already at $340, we might as well get it up to $600. If we don't hit 30 by the end of the day, I'll throw out the invite for anyone to buy a 2nd team in the pool until we get to 30.

Shoot me a note if you want in or if you're already in try and rope a buddy or 2 or 3 to come along for the ride.

Thanks.