Saturday, December 31, 2005
Now that it's over...
First of all, a well-deserved congratulations to the Junior Bro on recapturing the Surfy. If there is a single reason one can point to for why he is this year's Gehlke Bros. Football champ, it is his consistency week in and out. He did a good job of nailing most of his picks each week, even in those difficult weeks when it seemed there were no clearcut choices.
That said, I can find many reasons for why I'm writing this post instead of celebrating my own three-peat. Chief among them was a disastrous Thanksgiving weekend that saw me go 1-7 in a wild lineup of splits. You can't buy luck that bad.
But forgetting that one week (and boy I'd love to forget it) there were other problems:
1) Tampa Bay, Atlanta and Carolina -- The NFC South hurt me in a big way. I can look back on most weeks and see predictions for those teams that went the other way. Everyone has a team they can't figure out, but it's tough to weather an entire division that won't cooperate.
2) Chicago -- Here was a good team whose bandwagon I failed to hop aboard. Their success cost me a few games.
3) Monday night -- I hate Monday Night Football. No offense to ABC, but my success on Monday predictions has been nothing short of abysmal the past three seasons. I won my 2003 championship without winning a single Monday split. I had a couple in each of the past seaons. But I went 2-5 in Monday splits in 2005, which is simply unacceptable.
4) Changed picks -- Will I never learn? More often than not I get burned when I swap a prediction at the last second because "a little bird" whispered in my ear. Too often that "bird" is the Arizona Cardinals or some equally talentless team. I can think of two significant splits I switched earlier in the season that cost me games. Probably didn't amount to a hill of beans in the final standings, but it didn't help at a time when I was closing in on a tie.
5) Never leading -- Sean started the season out front and never trailed, although I got as close as one game (Week 6). Psychologically, that has an impact on how you make predictions. And then we had two straight weeks without a single split, which preceded the Thanksgiving feast. There's no guarantee we wouldn't have split all those games anyhow, but the number was probably higher on Thanksgiving week because I was three games back at that stage and getting impatient and tried to "make something happen." Big mistake. Impatience in this game is not a good thing.
6) Lack of upsets -- I staked my hope for winning the season on there being a few more surprises on the gridiron. Too often this year the favorite won the close games, so picking the slight underdog just kept me in the hole.
7) Luck (or lack thereof) -- All the strategy means nothing without luck on your side. I definitely had it in 2003 and 2004, but I was overdrawn at the luck bank this season.
So... I have my work cut out for me next season. Meanwhile, congrats again to Sean, the 2005 Gehlke Bros. Football champion.
Glenn 8-D 11:14:00 AM
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