Metro Football Pool

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and off to a great 2023. I can say that although extra work, I truly enjoy our little football community and appreciate all of you. While we’re busy in our own daily worlds, football is a commonality that we enjoy and share together. We have differences of opinion in which teams we select and pull for (or differences of opinion in general), but I know everyone feels the same way that I do in that events like last night put many things into perspective which transcend the game we all love. The effort, talent, camaraderie, and risk these athletes are exposed to at a professional level is undeniably incredible… we all wish the very best for Damar Hamlin along with his family, teammates, and community. A tragic situation under such fragile variables… we’re all anxious and hopeful to hear some positive news.

As far as week 17 in the pool is concerned, given the uncertainly if this game will be rescheduled, we will treat it like a regular tie. You will be awarded the points that you allocated irrespective of the team but will not get double points for any wager game classification (so no wager game this past week). If the game does in fact get rescheduled, I’ll update the points accordingly based on those results. Hopefully this logic makes some sense!

Hope everyone has a great turkey day filled with family, football and food comas! Friendly reminder but the Hot Tub starts this week which should make football that much more enjoyable for MANY of you again :). In addition to your usual pickings, please select the little toggle in the pick sheet to let me know what you’re thinking (nice little reference below)…

Don’t forget to fill out your AFC + NFC team predictions for the Super Bowl on this week’s pick sheet since everything is that much more clear now… little drop down dili towards the bottom. Also… ties count as wins which were much needs this week. As much as I missed Kevin… he may have overstayed his welcome already :). On the positive, we appreciate you Brendan!

Good luck and get your picks + $ in please!

Hope everyone is doing well and had a great offseason training sesh full of depth charts, handstands, stats, improv poetry, 80’s jams, and In-N-Out burger. We can all get our lives on track again now that football is upon us! Everyone should know the drill but ALL of the regular season pick sheets have now been posted on the weekly pick sheet page (week 1 is due prior to kickoff this Thursday). As a heads up, Google Chrome has been wishy washy on the downloads… not really sure why given the care we place in our robust security protocols. Anyhow, let me know if you have any troubles, don’t have access to another browser, etc. and we’ll get you sorted. Look forward to collecting and keeping everyone’s $$ this season! Good luck!!

Another amazing season in the books… also sad as another chapter closes for too many months :(. While Chris May is always a winner in my book, Bob was able to hold onto his lead and become the second person in pool history to finish in overall 1st! Congrats to Bob on another legendary victory!! The first person to wear two rings in the pool was none other than Meghan. However, this season she wasn’t able to overtake Danita in the Hot Tub. Meg will undoubtedly be out for revenge next year.

If your name is listed for a payout in the Hall of Fame page (1st – 4th + Hot Tub winner), please send me an email to let me know preferred method. Appreciate all the ups and downs we shared together this season and am already looking forward to next year!! Cheers!

What a wild ride… best overall NFL postseason in a long time! A rare occasion to see an underdog story overcome some significant AFC odds to reach the Super Bowl. Preseason pegged them at 150/1 which peaked at 200/1… would have been a nice $25 wager :). Most folks are betting against them once again, but how could one possibility underscore the probability of Shooter closing this one out in a close duel. On the flip side… could be a complete blow out… haha!

We have some very interesting stories developing in our world (all points for LAR picks have been awarded in this week’s updates). Anyone in the top 7 of the main pool has a shot at $$ depending on how things shake out. If you’re outside the top 7… it’s been real. Having said, you should still go for the satisfaction of completing a great season and pad the stat sheet… all about the journey! While Bob will not finish any lower than 2nd after a strong late season surge, he isn’t quite safe from being dethroned from the top spot by Chris May. Both are savvy veterans and previous trophy holders… in fact Chris is the defending champ and looking to pull off our first in history repeat.

The Hot Tub has been far from cold despite folks fading out of the party. Danita has dominated the field (including a nice little hurdle over her own daughter). Olga tried to get cute last week and slipped a bit… she never bets against the 49ers (I think it’s really “she doesn’t like to bet against the 49ers”). Although she’s still statistically in the running, this one should come down to an epic mother vs. daughter battle!

Good luck to everyone with a shot… don’t get Brrr’ned :).

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving filled with wins! I’ll try to catch up a bit over the holiday weekend but as a friendly reminder… if you want in the Hot Tub just select that option on this week’s pick sheet (you’ll notice the extra drop down box). You can also just let me know when you send in your picks. If you fall outside the top 15ish (although no hard fast rule on the money cutoff / Cinderella stories), this is a good option to regroup and get a fresh start on the pool. This decision will hopefully make life that much more enjoyable again vs. letting your crappy pool play cast a shadow over Thursdays, Sundays, and Mondays. Cheers and good luck this week!

I’ve missed you guys… sorry it’s taken so long to write but I had to patiently wait until I broke into the top 10… I was actually going to write last week but Meghan didn’t want me to mention the low score for the week (it was a rough one as well) so I postponed another week. Whoops ;).

Hope everyone had a fun Halloween… plenty of tricks this past weekend including some miraculous performances by 2nd/3rd string QBs. The Saints seemingly plucked a lucky fan off the stands around halftime. At least KC managed to finally win another game against the best High School team in NY! We all drank the KC kool-aid pretty hard this year… oh yeaaah!

On a positive… Professor Davis Green… Doogie Howser skipped high school as a medical savant. While I wouldn’t recommend doing the same solely based upon your keen NFL intuition, it is pretty amazing that you’ve fended off all the competition for like 8 straight weeks in your rookie season. For those that don’t know Davis… he is “7 and a half”. Kidding… but no, seriously he’s like 12 or 13 or something. Ridiculous. May and Matt S… nicely done of the highs… Matt, you need to string like 12 more of these together.

Since I get to chat with Nick pretty regularly… another side benefit is being able to more directly commend how well he’s been doing this season. Nick… this was another very encouraging showing to build some momentum off of. The Huey clan (with really the exception of 2 at this point… you know who you are) has been struggling. I keep a couple ‘power ranking’ type stats on the side for moments like this… one of which ranks everyone by how far you’ve fallen off the wagon from your highest ranking. The competition is fierce for the title, but Mark (aka Dad) has completely run away with this stat at a -23 (i.e. he’s lost 23 spots from his highest rank)… so if he’s in 24th now… yikes!! You’re better than this Dad and you could have absolutely QB’d for the Saints on Sunday.

Good luck this week!

A lot of pain and surprises this week. On a likely ‘shorter term’ positive note (and maybe some solace for our veterans)… the top 4 have just joined us for their first season. In fact, the pool has reached international acclaim with our first London participant! This is surely the final (and most necessary) catalyst for a formal announcement on the initial overseas expansion teams. Super exciting and long overdo Aunt Rita… I know you generally win at everything, but throttle back a little for all our sakes please :).

On another positive, albeit unsurprising note… Jack put an absolute beat down on his dad to start the year in overall 1st… nicely done! As for the low… the wager game killed most of us (in an odd twist of events), but somehow Hytree posted a score that matched his overall last place rank which is not something to encourage or strive for. It’s a week 1 first in our pool history which is kinda cool for everyone else to witness this historic coincidence. Also… Bill, thank you for sending your funds over well before you could change your mind… ha!

Your Super Bowl game prediction is due this week… you just fill out the teams that you think will match up (there’s a spot directly on this week’s pick sheet). These are meaningful and count for bonus points at the end of the season… often make the different between the top spots. Choose wisely.

We’ll see if the top spots can keep together… Packer’s week 1 style. Good luck!

A lot happened in 2020, but I want to apologize for not running the pool and the extra disappointment that it likely caused for so many. I know many of you look to this as a beacon of hope each year and for that I failed all of us. I could rattle off all kinds of excuses (moving, life, the uncertainties brought on by COVID, …) but it was generally just irresponsible on my part not to believe in a great NFL season along with finding another gear to run this thing. To think that you guys have entrusted me with some of your highest and lowest moment (many many lows in fact) for so long (a lot of us since 2007) and I turned around and totally flopped on 2020. The football pool had such a solid streak through countless times of adversity and it shall live on in greatness. Tom Brady didn’t flop on 2020. Thank you for the inspiration Tom… and early congrats to your next ring this season!

As an aside and in all seriousness… hope you and all your families have been safe and doing well. I know that’s not the case for everyone and look forward to reconnecting a bit thru the pool should you have some time… wish everyone the best one way or another if you choose not to participate this year.

Everyone knows the drill, but possibly a couple newbies (feel free to pass along to a best friend or two)… some dated info from 2019 given the ‘*’ of 2020, but click around for a refresher as necessary.

Weekly pick sheets have been posted. I’ll review and refresh these if any changes need to occur for each respective week (will post/notify as an update in the blog)…

Good luck this season!!