Metro Football Pool

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year!! The Bills made the playoffs, so yea, that’s a pretty weird way to start the year. My first gift of 2018 is this way overdue recap. If you don’t want to get caught up to speed… don’t forget that we play all the way through the Super Bowl. The best weeks are forthcoming with the most opportunity to gain significant ground in that all games are now wager games! Picks are due before the first game kicks off (Saturday).

The biggest takeaways…

• Kyle ping ponged around the Hot Tub until he had enough. He was dangerously close to ousting Hytree for the low score in Week 16 as well. RIP KZ.
• Bautista likely forgot that the pool runs into the post season. That’s the only explanation that I can come up with for whatever he’s been doing the past couple weeks.
• Meghan posted a perfect 152 in week 15 which is more rare than an encounter with a jaguar shark. Dusty couldn’t even muster up 47% of that number on the same week.
• Zach continues to make it difficult to close the gap to 1st and Lee W is apparently no longer content playing the role of Cal Naughton Jr.

Good luck this week! Shake and Bake!!

Standings have been updated for the main pool & hot tub… as well as payouts. Speaking of money… still missing dinero from Ed McD, Gary, and Coulter. Ed… this isn’t one of those bets where you see if you win something and then request to take the entry fee out of those proceeds. Shady.

This season is shaping up to be tighter than my pants this week… I may have to switch to another material other than leather. Good luck and get your picks in on time! As Borat Jagshemash would say… chenqui!

Thanks to ATL’s victory, we have a new leader (albeit for the very short term). More to come, but this week starts the Hot Tub!! I know many participants are pumped for a fresh start, so just remember to include somewhere in your email that you want to chill in there for the rest of the season. The water is a nice temperature… for now.

For the handful of delinquent payment offenders still remaining… time to pay up. I know folks were waiting for Christmas bonuses a la Clark Griswold, but don’t worry… they’ll still come. Make sure there’s an “x” by your name on the standings sheet… if not, I have not received your dinero yet.

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and don’t drink too much too early and forget about football picks!! Good luck this week!

… but not so much my effort in the Pool. That’s been more along the lines of complete domination!! Everyone else deserves their moment in the spotlight and what better way to highlight our heroes then in a little table format…

Sorry Ray, your Week 8 to Week 9 story was too good and I didn’t want to pick on Olga (again) over 1 point :). The bright side is that no participant in our pool has performed in a more embarrassing manner than the Bucs this season… it’s a close race between them, Cleveland, and Los Gigantes for worst team (and the Giants at least have a few excuses… like dealing with Ed McD as a super fan). Week 12 starts the Hot Tub so start dialing in now for those in search of a second chance for greatness. Good luck this week!

The crown quickly got too heavy after about a week… I couldn’t believe it and as Yoda would say… that is why I failed.  Jason has soundly moved into 1st place after posting the top score in week 3 and following up with a strong showing in week4.  The force is strong with him this season… not so much the Patriots’ defense.

In week 3, Faulkner bet big against the Cowboys and basically every other team that won… missing the majority of the games is essentially the only way that one can put up 27 points.  Bill and Olga’s week 4 lows weren’t nearly as bad, but they also weren’t very good.  I was just bragging about Olga and now she really opened the door to let Bob catch up!

The high scores for week 4 went to Dusty and the Nelson’s… that sounds like a cool band name. Let the Nelson roller coaster ride begin!!

I still need money from about 6 folks… don’t be that guy! Good luck this week!

More to come, but week 1 scores and week 2 pick sheets have been uploaded. It makes perfect sense who sit-ith on the throne after our first week of action. As a reminder… when you submit your picks for this week, please also provide your NFC & AFC team predictions for the Super Bowl! The Bengals blow.

…Continued…

Week 1 really set the stage for this season… and the results were fairly unsurprising. The Nelson’s wanted to give everyone a fighting chance and started the year on a low note… while last year’s Hot Tub winner put the pool on notice…

BOOM!

Week 2 really separated the men (or women) from the boys (or girls… gotta be PC in this era). In typical NY mode (that’s French for fashion), the G-Men are not looking very manly. The good news is that their #1 fan, Ed McD bet against them and posted this week’s high… and this is a guy that paid up big time for Eli’s game worn Super Bowl XLVI jock strap. Dedication. On the flip side, I can’t remember the last time that I had to write about Rob on the low end of the spectrum (2008-ish?). The early assessment on this underwhelming performance is too much advice solicitation from Faulkner.

Good luck this week… that super genius in 1st is really building momentum!

As this season of Game of Thrones comes to a close… a new beginning is finally upon us! For those of you that don’t watch GoT… there’s probably a good opportunity for you to join the upper ranks of the Cleveland Browns’ organization. I’m pretty sure that was Osweiler’s big pitch… Brock: “I don’t watch Thrones”… Browns: “Cool, you must generally make bad decisions… welcome to the team!”

Bob was the Tom Brady of 2016, but can he be the first one to repeat a 1st place finish??? The pick sheet has been posted and is due prior to the Chiefs at Patriots kick-off next Thursday (9/7). Boom!!

UPDATE: TB @ MIA has been removed from the pick sheet due to the cancellation and uncertainty if the game will be rescheduled this week at a neutral site. If you’ve already submitted your picks, you can resubmit at this point or I’ll just adjust your current sheet by lowering the games with higher point allocations than this game by 1 point (max points now being 15 for this week). So in other words… if you put 15 on the Bucs and 16 on the wager game… the wager game would now becomes 15. Florida peeps stay safe!

Also… Brock is no longer with Cleveland 🙁

The incredible victory by the Patriots comes only second to Bob’s 1st place finish. He’ll look to repeat his Brady-esque performance next year as we now enter our sad dry spell of no football :(. There’s no question that Bob has already started his early scouting reports and training camp to prepare for 2017. Congrats to all our top finishers as your names will be forever etched into the annals of the Metro Football Pool Hall of Fame (well… at least so long at the internet continues to exist and I can afford to make payments for this badass website)! We wish everyone a great offseason and thanks again for making the pool a ton of fun!!

1st – Bob Gonzalez

2nd – Phillip Thompson

3rd – Zach Schneider

4th – Rich Leatham

Hot Tub – Ryan Huey

Although both the games this weekend were pretty much over before they started… the Super Bowl should be a completely different story. After accounting for all our early season New England picks, here’s how the season might conclude with a potential 39 point swing on the line…

The Main Pool:

1. Papa Gonzalez – you’ve held strong and haven’t been over thinking things this post season… well you probably have. The good news – you can’t finish in less than 3rd. The bad news – you could finish in 3rd.
2. “Z” – you’ve floated around the top pretty much all season and deserve a payout after flopping in fantasy football so badly. The worst you can do is 3rd.
3. PT – you’ve  fought hard to earn a money spot… with a lot of help from guys like Gary & Rich. You can finish anywhere from 1st to out of the money in 5th. Yikes!
4. Snowflake Hourigan – I bet a lot of the professional speed walkers that you work out with ask a similar question… how do you move your hips like that? I mean… where in the world did you come from?? You’re out of range for 1st or 2nd but could finish anywhere from 3rd-5th… and part of our annals for the 3rd straight year!
5. Rich – this is your chance to prove to Cassie that you are in fact a man. You’re out of the money and won’t finish any worse but could finish as high as 3rd. This would allow you to treat her to a nice dinner.

The Hot Tub:

Since week 12, Theee Huey has been unstoppable.  However, Josh could spoil everything in a similar fashion to what Stacie did in 1996 and 2013. I don’t know if Stacie actually did anything strange in ’96… but I also don’t know if she didn’t.

If I did not call you name… sadly there’s nothing you can do at this point except finish the season with pride so you can revisit the rankings all year round and aspire to reach the top next season! Never be a quitter. Good luck and cheers to another great season!!

So many questions. Why is a dude named Trey taking this picture of ODB Jr. taking a picture of himself posing on a boat? Why can you not take your eyes off this pic? Is this what these guys did for most of that day? If so, how do I get an invite on the next excursion? Earlier this season we discussed how the kicking net sucker punched ODB Jr. in the face… in week 18 he allegedly got attacked by a wall in the locker room at Lambeau Field. He’s a winner.

Speaking of highs, Elias bested the entire lot in week 17… but everyone pretty much has their game face on at this point so competition is tighter than Jr.’s abs. Josh and RC tied for high score in the Tub but it’s going to be mighty difficult to dethrone our current leader… in fact, everyone should just go ahead and give up at this point. Rob and Dusty tried to get cute but ended up with a blurry selfie.

Playoffs get weird so I’m not going to fault anyone for trying to make a move in week 18 or beyond. However, I will note that Doug actually turned in his picks and still managed only 8 points. That’s all I have to say about that. A lot of folks posted perfect scores, but I have a feeling that this will be much more difficult in week 19. Good luck!!

Also, as a follow up to my previous post on paying the pied pool piper. We’re down to 3 delinquents. You now have 3 ways to go about this: check, Paypal (pool email), or Venmo (pool email). Get it done.