Category: Season 12 (2023)

A few nights ago the Co-Commissioner and the Commissioner Emeritus made the official trophy presentation to this year’s winner, Kerren Berz. It was a richly deserved denouement after a long, hard fought campaign, and it was a stone cold groove all the way.

The Commissioners thank you for your participation this year, and we hope you all had a good time rooting for teams you’ve never heard of, cursing the play calling of a coach whose name you didn’t know before the game started, and finding new ways to attempt to hex 19-year-olds so that they miss those crucial field goals.

Looking ahead for a moment, the 24/25 bowl season promises to be fascinating as the 12-team playoff will force us here at the SBBPA to make an equitable adjustment to the scoring system so that as many people as possible have a chance going into the last few games. How will we do it? No fucking idea, but rest assured we’re hard at work putting the pieces together.

And, as ever…

Wait ‘til Next Year Dadgummit!

In honor of, arguably, the greatest on-screen portrayal of ROOKIE SUCCESS this final SBBPA update might just have been titled: MARVELOUS! And like marvelous Miriam Maisel, the two previous prognostication champions, Elizabeth and Sonia, KILLED on their very first run. And, for the third straight year, the winner of the SBBPA challenge is a first-time prognosticator!

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Kerren Berz is the 2023 Champion Prognosticator and winner of the MJM trophy for excellence in prognostication! CONGRATULATIONS KERREN!

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Kerren fended off a gutsy, sustained challenge from previous champion Danyelle and won by correctly picking an impressive 67% of the winners. She finished with an impressive streak of 9 correct picks in a row, including her pick for the National Champion, to clinch the title outright. Interestingly, had Washington won the National Championship, Kerren would have still prevailed, in a tiebreaker, over Ben by a mere .077 points! She was not to be denied!

Click HERE for a PDF.

Congratulations, Kerren! Your custom SBBPA MJM commemorative trophy is in the SBBPA fabrication shop and will be shipped to you soon! We’ll also engrave your name on the St. Bobby plaque along with the other winners.

And congratulations to EVERYONE who participated this year. THANK YOU for making this a fun event. We look forward to hosting this challenge with you every year. Remember, sports fans, it’s a whole new ballgame next year with the 12-team playoff and we’ll be considering a few adjustments in response to this new format.

We can’t wait to get busy prognosticating!

Like all of us here at the good ol’ SBBPA, Hunter S. Thompson loved FOOTBALL! And, like most of us, he also appreciated the losers:

“There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother’s milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won’t be any winners.“

Tongue in cheek? Perhaps. But I think he recognized that the most important thing is that the game is played. And winning and losing is the name of the game. You can’t have one without the other.

And so it is with the SBBPA, where losing is SO IMPORTANT! We can’t crown a winner without first acknowledging the losers among us. And as an 11-year loser of the SBBPA challenge, I feel especially qualified to say to the winners, “YOU’RE WELCOME!”

Normally by now we’re able to determine the winner of the challenge. But not this year! This has been the most competitive challenge to date! Kerren continues to set the standard with 28 correct picks and is currently in the midst of an epic run of 8 correct picks in a row. And yet, she can’t seem to shake Danyelle and Ben who are nipping at her heels with 27 correct. And these guys are also enjoying impressive runs as well! It’s all going to come down to the last game and, maybe, the O/U tiebreak! The last time this happened, Miles lost to Danyelle by .0003 points (or something like that). Will we witness another heartbreaking loss because of silly math?

Click HERE for a PDF.

One more game to go, sports fans! FOR ALL THE MARBLES! See you on the other side!

Ralph Steadman

All FSU fans are Private Hudson tonight. After losing just about every impact player to injury, the draft, or the cursed transfer portal, the ‘Noles turned in one of the ugliest bowl game performances in the history of bowl games. I’m not sure why all those “Dawg” fans were so happy watching this travesty…I mean, the stooges at ESPN can talk about statement wins all they like, but if there was a statement made tonight, it’s that the NCAA and the “business” of College Football SUCKS! Thanks NCAA!

Now, one could be consoled by the fact that the ‘Noles, essentially stood up their scrimmage squad against the former #1 team in the nation in the Orange Bowl so that record setting 60 point margin of victory shouldn’t sting that much…right? No. This epic beatdown hurts. NOBODY likes to be embarrassed like that. And still, one can’t overlook that the ‘Noles had some agency in this too. Players who could have played CHOSE to leave. Georgia’s starters made a different choice.

“Hey, maybe you haven’t been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!”

Speaking of epic beatdowns, the 2023 SBBPA is shaping up to be a real slugfest as we slide into the final games. Kerren and Danyelle have been trading the lead for a few rounds now and are tied again for the lead with 23 correct picks. Ben has grabbed 2nd place for himself with 22 and I am trailing in third with 21.

For a PDF version click HERE.

The window for catching Kerren and Danyelle is closing rapidly, sports fans. We have a small reprieve while we ring in the new year so Happy New Year! We’ll see you in 2024!

Well sports fans, in the good ol’ SBBPA, we’re all a bit like Khan Noonien Singh. Like a poor marksman, we keep missing the target!

I know, I know…it’s not entirely your fault. I mean, when you’re forced to make the choice between mediocre and run-of-the-mill, the results are likely to be stupefying. And factor in minor-league officiating and telecast crews, we’re all destined to find ourselves on all fours in front of the tee-vee screaming, Kirk-like, into the void!

Or maybe that’s just me…

At any rate, this year’s SBBPA continues to defy expectations and previous patterns. Usually at this stage of the game, the majority of us have accepted that it’s just not our year. But this year the field is still extremely competitive. The only certainty is that the onslaught of games over the next few days SHOULD shuffle the deck. We’ll see!

In the meantime, Danyelle, Gordy, and Kerren sit at the top of the leaderboard with 14 correct picks. While I am trailing in second place with 13, Thornton, Marc, Miles, Ben, and Rocky are poised to move with 12! Amazingly, no one is really out of it yet!

For a PDF, click here.

Look for our next update on New Years Eve!

If there are spirits guiding the outcome of the SBBPA challenge, and I certainly believe there are, they might not be of the benevolent kind. 13 consistent years of painfully incorrect picks confirms that the SBBPA spirits are vengeful…James “Clubber” Lang vengeful:

“I’m gonna torture him. I’m gonna crucify him. Real bad”

As predicted, yesterday provided plenty of opportunities for massive shifts in the standings. But in a first for the SBBPA, a clear leader failed to emerge, and the field continues to tighten. This may be the most competitive field, yet!

Gordy now leads the way with 13 correct picks with an impressive prognostication consistency. Kerren is following closely in second place with 12 correct picks: a remarkable achievement for a first timer! And Danyelle and I are holding on for dear life in third place with 11 correct picks. And many of you are not far off with 7, 8, 9, or 10 correct picks. I don’t think anyone’s really out of this yet. REMARKABLE!

We do have a couple of special mid-challenge awards to announce. Last year’s champion, Sonia, is this year’s winner of the inaugural Mr. Ogle “Gee Pal, I Hate That” award for most epic reversal of fortune experienced with 7 straight misses that nearly matched her earlier epic success (8 straight correct pics). And, still, she’s in the mix for a repeat with 9. And Janice is this year’s winner of the inaugural David Jakiela “Quickest Way to the Pin is a Straight Line” award for unconventional prognostication success. Before yesterday, JB was in last place with 3 correct picks but now is in the thick of the pack with 8. Well done, both!

Click HERE for a PDF

If it’s mayhem you want, sports fans, it’s mayhem you’ll get! That’s the promise of the good ol’ SBBPA. Ready for another helping? See you after Christmas! Merry Merry to you all!

TUCO, television’s most famous pacifist, perfectly describes the current state of the SBBPA Challenge:

TIGHT…TIGHT…TIGHT!

Marc’s impressive prognostication pace has, for the moment, faltered and the group has reeled him back in. And, in a turn that feels somewhat inevitable, defending champion Sonia has grabbed the lead with an impressive 9 out of 11 picks, propelled by a sick streak of 8 straight correct pics.

Danielle has her own streak of 8 and is drafting the leader with 8 out of 11 picks. Sam, Kerren, Marc, and Ben are also keeping pace with 8 correct picks, and the 7s are still within striking distance!

Click HERE for a PDF.

Tomorrow (12/23) will likely be the first real Moving Day of this year’s challenge as there are 7 games on the schedule. Expect MAYHEM!

But remember, sports fans, there’s a long way to go yet…so keep your HANDS ON THE WHEEL!

Welp…to quote a famous philosopher:

The more things change, the more they stay the same!

S. D. Bob “Snake” Plissken

We’ve been doing this for 11 years, now. And while the world has seen significant change since 2012, here at the good ol’ SBBPA, you can always find comfort in the warm embrace of familiarity. For most of us, the feeling one gets when the optimistic bloom of a new prognostication season is pruned into a naked stalk of reality is SO familiar!

And so it goes!

There are some familiar faces on top of the early leaderboard! Marc is setting an impressive pace with six out of seven correct picks! Sam, Robert, Gordy, Kerren, Thornton, Sonia, and Miles are drafting along with five.

Fortunately, NO ONE is out of the running, yet, so we can all just relax. The next few days will certainly shake things up!

Look for another update on the 22nd before the next large tranche of games. STAY FROSTY folks!

Click HERE for a PDF version.

Well sports fans…we’re mere hours away from “kickoff” of the 11th annual SBBPA Prognostication Challenge! Fifteen have bravely committed predictions for this slow-motion prognostic pile-up. And what a sight it will be!

If you intend to submit your guesses but are still stymied by the glut of mediocrity in the early games, you still have time to fight through the pain and GET IT DONE! Just submit before 11am tomorrow (16th).

We’ll provide updates here as we go…so STAND BACK and STAND BY!

Er…I mean STAND BY and GOOD LUCK!

6-6 Teams are breaking my brain!

Well, sports fans, uptake in this year’s SBBPA challenge is not bad for this point in the process. There are twelve prognosticators, so far, but we suspect that some of you may be stymied by the inexplicable number of 6-6 bowl eligible teams! I mean, how the hell are we supposed to pick between two teams that, arguably, don’t deserve to be in a bowl game? And can anyone explain how the HELL a 5-7 team landed a bowl invitation?

What’s the right process? Throw a dart? Flip a coin? Repeat…

Hana, man, mona, mike;
Barcelona, bona, strike;
Hare, ware, frown, vanac;
Harrico, warico, we wo, wac.

…until you finally can’t take it anymore and, out of frustration, pick the one from the State that offends you the least (an actual metric)?

Dios mio, man! Make your picks, submit the form, and we’ll get to business…ON SATURDAY!

OK, it’s time to prognosticate like you’ve never prognosticated before! The Committee has met and decided to award the National Championship trophy to Florida State, since it doesn’t seem to matter what QB they use, they just keep on winning.

That said, however, YOUR job is to correctly pick a shit ton of utterly indecipherable bowl games with absolute precision (or something resembling this) such that, at the end of it all, you’re the one with the most correct picks! At stake : the title of champion, and a shiny new Martha Jan Mickler Memorial Trophy for Excellence in Prognostication, so named in honor of the only two-time winner of the whole shebang, and also not-coincidentally my mom.

Ties? WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING TIES! By which I mean we have a tie-breaker for that so don’t worry about it.

This year’s form is here:

https://forms.gle/pKqM8zza1PNNWJUz6

Now – go do that voodoo that you do so well!

And may the best prognosticator win.

Well, SBBPA sports fans…the stooges at the CFB Playoff Committee have spoken and determined that winning and losing is now a subjective endeavor in this grand, old sport of college football. Like bell-bottoms and corduroys, what passes out of fashion can be resurrected to immense popularity. Such is the fate of the playoff, which established metrics to ensure that subjective whim could not prevent undefeated power-five teams from competing for a national championship only to revert to elevating popularity and a purely subjective model where “eye tests” or OPINIONS about quality of matchup or ability to compete replace the actual metric of winning or losing.

Like the bell-bottoms trend, the subjective model is back. And, like the bell-bottoms trend, it looks silly…and so does the playoff committee.

I’ve called a lot of these semifinal games and they average 19 points [margin of victory] because we do what’s the right thing? We need to put the right thing to the side and put the best teams in there.

Kirk Herbstreit

Now…we can promise you, the esteemed SBBPA, that doing the right thing still matters here. Winning still matters here. We will not arbitrarily demote your picks because, well, they don’t look good to us. If you win, we won’t decide that we’d rather not exclude someone else and discard your body of work over the course of the challenge so we can give out a glorified participation trophy. Your excellence will not be disappeared.

The bowl games are almost set! We’ll be posting a link soon for you to fill out your ballots.

Let’s get to prognosticating!!!!