Monthly Archives: January 2014

Dumping accusations and another Todaro win…

…overshadows abysmal 4-win Zane performance

Week 15 dealt yet another blow to studious football prognostication as the seat of their asses flying Todaros racked up another victory.

With their under-sized, steely mouthed power forward leading the charge, the Todaros cracked open a tall boy of betting whoop ass on the Pennella, extended their overall lead to almost a full percentage point.

And though Mike certainly didn’t help the cause, it was Zane’s curiously crappy performance (4 for 15) that warranted further scrutiny.

The blessedly naïve might suggest his return to earth after back to back 11 win weeks was but a simple statistical correction.   But for those more attuned to the competitive streak and Machiavellian machinations of the junior Pennella participant, a more likely hypothesis emerges.

After his precious ESPN insider source was revealed last week, ZdP intentionally dumped last week so as to cast false dispersions on the value of his insider trading data, thus protecting its use for his crucial stretch run.  While Wall Street may have its wolf, pigskin picking clearly has its python.

In marked contrast, Claire has moved her bunny out of her former ranch design digs into a bi-level condo so as to allow Spot to make all her future football picks.  The bunny is placed on the top level with placards bearing the logos of the two competing teams placed below.  Whomever Spots chooses to pounce on gets the nod.

In an ever so appropriate side note, when presented with the Lions and Giants logos, Spot shook his head sadly before slowly turning 180 degrees and casting a profusion of pellets from his lofty perch.

Latest results can be found in the table below. To clarify, the week’s winner is highlighted in green (and the week’s stinker in yellow).  Similar color coding is applied to the overall results in terms of weeks won, as well as overall winning %, as not everyone has picked the same number of games.  (For example, Jack last picked a game when Claire was in 4th grade.)

Beaver state big shot, Kris, now has sole claim to the overall % leadership, despite failing to find a weekly title to call her own after four months.  We can only look forward to the profusion of modesty that this email is sure to engender.

Meanwhile 3 Pennellas are commiserating in the basement with identical winning (more like losing) percentages.

Let’s hope they at least they are making themselves useful and decorating the Christmas tree while they are down there.

-the Commish

click on table to view full size

Todaro resurgence & insider trading scandal overshadows…

…back to back 11 win performance by Zane

In the ultimate clash of team picking strategies, Zane “I’ve filed to legally change my name to ESPN” Pennella and Peter “I couldn’t tell you the last televised sporting event I watched” Todaro battled to an 11-win standoff in week 14.  And while 11/15 for may earn you a C- in French class and rationed screen time in the Pennella household, in the football picking world it’s pretty damn good.

In the end, however, the high scoring Monday night Bears-Cowboys tipped the week to Todaro.

Pete’s performance — backed by 8 and 9 win performances by the Todaro women — and a piss poor week from the Commish — catapulted the Todaros into the family lead by a scant 0.1%.

However, Zane’s uncharacteristically strong back to back performance raised a few eyebrows in the family betting community.  The commissioner’s own investigations revealed that Zane had been tapping into the Insider line on ESPN.  The insider line provides what the ESPN experts think the line should be and can be quite different than the official line.

While Zane’s procurement of this intel does not violate any formal league covenants,  one can debate whether his actions fall within the spirt of this family friendly wagering undertaking.

Opinions were split.  Mrs. Rauch’ Zane’s science teacher lauded Zane’s willingness to go above and beyond, going so far as to call it “unprecedented”.

Others — particularly those of the Italian persuasion — were less accepting.  Rumors about Pop reaching out to his old high school acquaintance Bologna should not be of comfort to Mr. Insider.

If we can actually locate where on the friggin’ voluminous ESPN site this information actually resides, we shall share it.  Not that it will likely influence the Todaro family betting approach.

Mr. Insider does lead the individual percentage and weekly win race at the moment. See below for the official results.

-the Commish

click on table to view full size

TBD

First Lions Thanksgiving Win in Decade Completely Overshadows…

…the first 11 win performance of the season by Zane

Ah yes, 2003, I remember it well.  Sporting the crappy generic throwback unis that looked like Tide commercial rejects and with their virtuoso piano playing quarterback tinkling the pigskins and their too cooly monikored to be stuck playing in Detroit — Dre Bly — intercepting Favre twice, the Lions rolled the Packers en route to a 5 win season.  Wiping away all those bitter memories associated with their previous 2 and 3 win seasons.  (Note to Kris and Claire:  5 wins = still sucky).

Even Fox sports was nostalgic for the lions win:

And while Zane recalls little of that day other than being irritated about not getting to watch Blue’s Clues until the game — and Dad’s ridiculous carrying on — were complete, he will no doubt recall this week in years to come for it produced the first 11 win performance of the football season.

Now the less magnanimous participants in the pool might point out that there were sixteen games to pick this week and that statistically speaking Mike’s 9 out of 13 performance in week 12 was technically statistically superior (by .48%), but let that not detract from Zane’s momentous accomplishment.

Here are the results.  Please note that the Todaro children performance does not suck as much as it would appear on first glance They only picked the three TG games.  The empathetic glee hangover from seeing Mike’s precious Lions wins was simply too much for them to carry on.

Kris has overall percentage lead by a hair despite her weak weekly win total (she’s so selfless, she even shared her one week win with Mike).  But the Pennellas are starting to build a bit of a cushion in the family feud.

And oh yeah, Zane has most week wins at 3.  Woo hoo.  See results summary below…

-the Commish

Click on table to view full size

In a classic case of meta-fictional poetic justice, the fictional accounting enquiry triggered by the decidedly non-fictional rumblings of the fictional Pennella & Ahlers firm resulted in the discovery of a decidedly non-fictional mistake.

The highly complex spreadsheet determines the winning team in light of the final score and the point spread and places said team in the all important row #9.  If this team name matches the selection of the individual pool combatant, they are awarded a win.

While fundamentally sound from an engineering standpoint, this system has one potentially fatal achilles heel (which I just discovered is redundant as Achilles actually died from his injury) — spelling errors.  For example, hypothetically, if the winning team was the LIONS (as I said, this is hypothetical), but a participant’s selection was the LOINS, well then that individual would be deprived of their rightful victory, and the overall accounting would be incorrect.  Same would hold true for say a Week 8 scenario involving the DOLPHINS and the DOLPPINS.

And if this hypothetical error happened to occur in the context of a particularly important swing game (Claire:  a swing game is where one male prepubescent (prepubescent being the pre-existing condition of idiocy that often plagues the male species prior to even entering a pub) challenges the other to leap from their playground swings from increasingly higher heights until someone wusses out or breaks something), this could result in the declaration of a mistaken victor.

Now if one deigns to venture further into the hypothetical, one could imagine a particularly uncomfortable scenario where not only the litigiously inclined Pennella & Ahlers were deprived of a weekly  win, but that said win would come at the expense of the commissioner’s own significant other and result in her relegation to the dank weekly wins basement.

And to conclude this exercise in the improbable, imagine if the commissioner was then not only to declare himself the victor in the week immediately following the disclosure of said improprieties but also pronounce himself as the new overall co-leader (along with the previously mentioned and now perhaps previous significant other).  One might envision a scenario where said pronouncement would not be embraced with the selfless, warm-hearted “good for him” cries that might normally accompany this holiday of thankfulness (and forgiveness).

Yea, that would not be good at all.  No sirree.

Revised standings through week 12 are below.

-the Commish

Click table to view full size