Category: Season 13 (2024)

Well sports fans, it’s been a long six months since we announced the winner of Season 13 of the SBBPA challenge and Aden Simmonds has been patiently (anxiously, no doubt) waiting for word of when his presentation ceremony will take place.

Alas, the Commissioners have been hard at work trying to coax his trophy out of the SBBPA’s printing facility with no success. We finally isolated the problem to a faulty Bowden Tube Coupler and have ordered a replacement from the SBBPA machine shop in Tuvalu. Unfortunately, this replacement has been delayed by the current administration’s 165% tariffs on all climate change threatened island nations.

SBBPA lobbyists have been working their back-channel contacts with the administration seeking relief for the small, sinking nation but were told that the tariffs were levied because the administration has determined that the island’s subsidence is due to the collective weight of its 10,000 locals rather than climate change induced sea level rise.

We’ll provide additional updates as we can and are committed to delivering the MJM award to Aden prior to the 14th challenge!

HOO BOY Sports Fans! At long last we’ve reached the end of the 13th Annual SBBPA and this new format did not disappoint. When we created this new format, we hoped for a bit more unpredictability over the course of the challenge and, well, it paid off. We could not have predicted that this year would be an All in the Family event!

But before we crown the 2024 winner, let’s start with some well-deserved kudos to several players who, at one time or another, set the pace with some impressive prognosticating. Marc S., one of the OG prognosticators with a knack for ripping of impressive streaks during the challenge, owned an early lead and stayed competitive throughout! The crew from Rocket Partners made an impressive showing with Adnan A., Ben G., Kieran W., Tommy F., and Schafer, setting the pace at various points. Miles W., Robert (Gator) I., Alex T., and Daisy T., all honorary MJM keepers of the flame, demonstrated intense patience and good cheer throughout! Sonia A, a previous champion challenged briefly seeking that ever elusive repeat. After an extended absence from the challenge, Chad H. rejoined this year and was in the mix nearly the entire time and owned the outright lead towards the end. And previous champion Pete T., THE OOG of this entire challenge, surged to the lead at the very end and was poised to win it all, and a coveted repeat victory, with a Notre Dame victory.

EXCEPT…Notre Dame laid the proverbial egg against Ohio State, a situation that recalls something once said by that great orator, Archie Bunker: We better not, ya know, kill our chickens before they cross the road.

Only ONE PROGNOSTICATOR picked mighty Ohio State to win it all. Heading into the National Championship, this prognosticator was firmly in the middle of the pack, but his gutsy picks in the semifinal and final netted him 12 points to close the gap and best Pete T. by one…measly…point.

ADEN SIMMONDS is the 2024 SBBPA Prognostication champion!!!

Click here for a PDF

Congratulations and well done, Aden!

Aden’s victory is doubly sweet as he joins his mom and last year’s winner, Kerren Berz, as prognostication champion. We’re sure that his MJM memorial trophy will be proudly displayed next to Kerren’s 2023 trophy in a prominent and highly visible location!

Aden’s custom fabricated MJM Memorial Trophy for Prognostication Excellence is in the SBBPA fabrication shop and will be shipped soon.

And so, this closes out the 13th Season of the SBBPA. Thank you all for playing this year. Every year we look forward to hosting this challenge. Many of you have been with us since the beginning and we’re excited to see all the new players. We hope to see you all next year. Until then, we’ll be reminiscing…

…those were the days.

Mickey Goldmill knew a thing or two about underdogs. He was able to see the aura of greatness that surrounds those who are destined to achieve great things! He also believed, in his gut, that he was destined to guide someone to greatness. That belief requires an uncommon level of confidence, and it takes a lot of chutzpah to raise an underdog’s confidence to rise above expectations.

This iteration of the College Football Bowl season has given us an exciting playoff and a final matchup between two over-achieving, underdog teams who are also led by coaches who are lifting their teams up after crushing defeats and nudging them back towards greatness.

Chutzpah!!!

Just how do we know that Notre Dame and the Ohio State University are truly underdogs? Well, the SBBPA says so! Prognosticators were confident in picking Penn State (57%) and Texas (82%) to win their QF games. The opposite is true for the other two QF games. Just 12% of us picked Ohio State and 9% picked Notre Dame to win their QF games. And in the Semi-Final Games, only 6% picked Notre Dame and 9% picked Ohio State.

Usually, by now, we’re able to project a winner but NOT THIS YEAR! The winner of the final game between Notre Dame and Ohio State will determine the winner of this year’s MJM Memorial Award for Prognostication Excellence. Pete has the outright lead with 33 points and there are 11 prognosticators behind him that, mathematically, could equal or exceed him with the final eight points.

Click here for a PDF

The end of this year’s challenge is going to be a HUMDINGER!

To get you ready, here’s a clip of the great Burgess Meredith’s Mickey giving Rocky some much needed encouragement as he prepares to face an impossible task and issuing one of the best vocal lines EVER captured on film!

Well sports fans, the result of the CFB committee’s first stab at playoff expansion is a bit like Ebby Calvin “Nuke” Laloosh’s coital exploits…and pitching….”sorta all over the place!”

We can argue the merits of a 12-team versus a 16-team structure, or whether conference championships should be used in determining bracket seedings, or whether any conference is so preternaturally gifted as to deserve automatic playoff inclusion (looking at you SEC). None of the tops seeds, those conference champions given automatic passage to the QF rounds and first-round byes, survived their QF games. So, there’s plenty to fix.

Having said that, this iteration of the playoff has delivered a hugely entertaining post-season and the extra competition has weeded out some pretenders and allowed some truly great underdogs to advance. The Semifinal matchups are actually compelling and should be competitive games!

Most importantly, it’s impossible to know where this thing’s gonna go!

Our experiment with the point spread for the non-playoff games has succeeded in interjecting a small amount of chaos into the system. While there have not been wild swings in the results, the field has remained tight up to the end with one Push and four favored teams failing to cover, which either negated points for all or shifted a few points to the losers. And the remaining points available for the Semis and Championship could still swing the challenge in unexpected ways. We have NO IDEA what’s about to unfold.

As it stands now, Chad is leading all prognosticators with 30 points and Pete and Schafer are just off the lead with 29 points. Well done!!! There’s no time to gloat, though, since the semifinal games are worth 4 points each and the championship game is worth 8 points.

Click here for a PDF

With Georgia’s loss in the quarters, will the eventual champion emerge from somewhere back in the pack?

Stay tuned, MEAT!

Well sports fans, Susie Myerson had it right! After Saturday’s Bowlapaloosa of eight games, the inevitable re-shuffling of the standings has produced a new leader and an entire phalanx of prognosticators in hot pursuit. The games also showcased two examples of just how truly, deeply f***ed the sport of college football is as a result of NIL and the transfer portal.

Example 1: In an act of perverse selfishness, Marshall decided that it would be better to forfeit their game against Army rather than play their committed game with a depleted roster. Though, perhaps this act was somewhat understandable given the beat down that FSU took from Georgia after playing their game with depleted roster. I mean, who wants to be embarrassed like that on national television? As a result, that game is designated a PUSH for all prognosticators and no point was awarded.

Example 2: In an act of pathological selfishness, Miami’s star quarterback, Cam Ward, played the first half so he could get his stats, and then, shockingly, opted to sit the entire second half in an effort to protect his draft status. He watched, from the sideline, as the team struggled and ultimately lost their game. Frankly, I’m not sure why any NFL GM would seriously consider bringing on such a selfish, self-involved player…stats be damned!

It’s a good thing the results of our little challenge are so hilarious!

Adnan is the new leader with an impressive 20 points. And Chad, Kieran, and Schafer are drafting along with 19! Other Ben (18), Alex, Sonya, and Tommy (17) are not far behind as well. And this thing could still go sideways as we enter the meat of the playoff round! STAY TUNED!!!

Click here for a PDF

While we wait for the playoff QF games, enjoy these NSFW Susie Myerson scenes!!!

Julia Child once said about cooking, “you just have to have the courage of your convictions…” Well, sports fans, Jules could easily have been talking about prognosticating in the good ol’ SBBPA!

The process of picking winners from a stupefyingly long list of mostly meaningless bowl games between teams whose rosters are completely different than the ones that we watched during the regular season does, indeed, require a certain stubborn belief that we actually know…well…anything really. Courage of our convictions!

Though, one’s strongly held belief is another’s delusion.

And so it goes with the SBBPA where some of us seem to be more courageous, or deluded, than others!

The standout of the courageous to this point is Marc, who may have set an unofficial SBBPA record for most consecutive picks and is a leading candidate for this year’s David Jakiela memorial “Quickest Way to the Pin is a Straight Line” award for prognostication success. It’s an unofficial record since his ONE miss is due to a PUSH in the second game. Marc would otherwise be a perfect 12-0 at this stage and that fact might also qualify him for this year’s Mr. Ogle “Gee Pal, I Hate That” award for prognostication reversal of fortune! Though there’s plenty of time for others to rise, or fall, to these challenges!

With playoff round one behind us, the leaderboard is taking shape. Marc S., the pride of Lincoln High and Mr. Winn’s architectural drafting class, holds sole possession of the lead with 11 points (and 12 correct picks)! Well done Marc! Following closely behind with 10 points (and 11 correct picks) are brother Ben, other Ben G, Chad “Saltwater Taffy” H, Kieran W, and previous champ Sonia “Shiner” A,!

The folks still in the hunt with 9, 8, and 7 points are fairly evenly distributed. And we can’t rule out anyone, really, as the non-playoff games may yield some surprising results, and playoff bracket wins get more valuable from here on out.

Click HERE for a PDF version.

Will Marc maintain his dominance? Stay tuned!!! In the meantime, enjoy this clip of the great Julia Child flipping potatoes like the rest of us…but handling it with WAY MORE CLASS!

Is it just me, or are we all feeling a bit like Raymond Babbit waiting for the Peoples Court to start as these cursed bowl games get rolling? Last season, the powers-that-be started us off with a bang…6 or 7 games on the first day. This year, it’s a game here…a game there. It’s like we’re all standing on that porch…waiting…about to pitch a fit!

Or maybe that’s just me.

But fear not prognosticators! Prognostication judgment cometh and that right soon!

Three games today, one of which is the first playoff game between the Fighting Irish and those hill folk from Indiana, should accelerate the chaos leading into the first real prognosticapalooza on Saturday with the three other first round playoff games, which may end the competition for some of us.

So…as most of us begin this inevitable slide into prognostication mediocrity, let us celebrate those of us who have managed to find some slow-rolling success.

There are some familiar faces at the top of the leaderboard in this first update. Marc, Chad, Sonia, Ben, and Kieran are leading the way with 5 picks. Just think…were it not for that PUSH, they’d be PERFECT at this early stage. Gee Pals…we really hate that!

For the rest of us, let us charge ahead…knowing we’re about to…

Go Down Gamblin’

And for those of you who’ve never heard the original…

We’re off to the races, sports fans! It’s a nice easy start to the challenge with two games, one of which was a great regular-season matchup between Army and Navy that caught many of us off guard, and the other the first of the 48 bowls.

It’s GREAT to be back at the prognostication game!

Though, we’re not sure what to make of the fact that before we’ve watched two full bowl games, this portal-addled league has given the SBBPA a real conundrum.

It seems that the good ol’ Thundering Herd of Marshall, having experienced an unfortunately timed, pre-bowl coaching change, have lost most of their starting roster and coaching staff to the portal or other teams. Consequently, Marshall forfeited the Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl. In a stupefying response, the Independence Bowl quickly added 5-7 Louisiana Tech from Conference USA to face Army.

The SBBPA board has been meeting all afternoon and into the evening to determine the correct course of action in response to this turn of events.

While the NCAA, ESPN, and the Independence Bowl feel that it’s important to play this game, the SBBPA feels that that the new matchup is, in a word, pathetic. So, instead of asking all of you to reconsider your pick for this one game, we’ve decided to forfeit the Independence Bowl for everyone.

Allowing players to portal before the season is over may seem like a win-win for players who can negotiate for more NIL money and starting time. But, in the end…

NOBODY WINS!

We’ll be providing semi-regular updates as more of the games unfold! Unless, of course, the other teams decide not to play because their players opt out!

Stay tuned!

Well sports fans, I think we’ve set a record for the fastest uptake in the history of this splendid challenge! Just a day after releasing the Pick’Em form we’re sitting at 19 players! I can’t recall a year where you all responded this quickly, which can mean only one thing:

YOU ARE ALL DEPRAVED AND ADDICTED TO PAIN!!!!

No, that’s not quite right…it probably means that you all have a healthy competitive spirit, a mature sense of self, and a well-developed sense of humor.

Well, whatever it means, we’re super excited to see you all and jazzed to see so many returning prognosticators, a bunch of new faces, and a few cherished alums who have returned to the challenge after some time away.

One thing I can say for certain… making the picks for 35 non-playoff games with so many mediocre teams is a true test of commitment. At around the Bad Boy Mowers¹ Pin Stripe Bowl I began to contemplate whether it would be more painful to go on with my picks or kick the table leg with my bare foot…on purpose.

As it turns out, it doesn’t matter which is more painful. What matters is DOING THE WORK. After all…

“Pain will set you free”

1. What the hell does this have to do with NEW YORK ↩︎

2024 SBBPA Challenge Pick’Em Form is live!

Well Sports Fans, it’s TIME TO COMMENCE TO PICKIN’!!! We’re a little late in delivering the Pick’em form for this year’s challenge, and we have the NCAA to thank for that! The SBBPA committee has been hard at work pulling the pick’em form and tracking spreadsheet together after the conference championship games wrapped over the weekend and we’re finally ready to go!

The format for the challenge is a bit different than last year so there are instructions in the Pick’Em form. If you have any questions, post them here or in the FaceBook Group thread and we’ll try to answer them as quickly as we can.

The deadline to submit your picks in 12pm on Saturday the 14th.

The link to the form is HERE!

Now let’s get busy with those picks…

“Your turn, AMIGOS”

Well, sports fans, we’ve all experienced that crushing feeling of being grabbed by the ankles with our fingers, claw-like, dug into the hard-packed dirt, screaming at the top of our lungs while being dragged towards a situation we just knew, without a doubt, that we had managed to avoid.

But, alas, this situation was inevitable. The end of the 2024 college football regular season is fast approaching and it’s almost time to kick off the 13th iteration of the SBBPA…WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT!

And what a season this promises to be! In response to the significant changes implemented by ESPN and the Sports Betting Industry the NCAA and with the migration to the 12-team playoff, the SBBPA Board of Directors have implemented several changes to the format of the competition. And while we’re confident that the process implemented by the Board was a sound one, we have no bloody idea whether these changes are going to work…AT ALL!

So…what’s the SBBPA going to look like this year? There will be TWO DIVISIONS:

The VEGAS Division
The CHAMPIONS Division

The VEGAS Division (non-playoff games)

Remember, back in last year’s competition when we said this:

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.

OK…we really did mean that. BUT…in a classic case of “if you can’t beat them, join them” logic, we have “relaxed” this maxim somewhat in this round. Winning still matters, but only if the victory is impressive enough! For the non-playoff games, prognosticators will pick the winners for each game. However, to win the point, the winning team MUST COVER the spread assigned at the beginning of the challenge. If the winning team does NOT COVER, any player who selected the losing team will get the point! Or, if a player picks the underdog, and they win, that player gets the point.

Why are we doing this? Boredom. Most of the non-playoff games will not be interesting and, let’s face it, are mostly meaningless. HOWEVER, using the spread means that the outcome is important…that the play on the field is important. How these games unfold may actually be interesting! So how does this work? Here’s a contemporary example:

Florida State (-24.5)
Charleston Southern (+24.5)

The numbers in the parenthesis is the spread. FSU is favored to win by a margin of 24.5 points over Charleston Southern. If a player picks FSU to win, they’ll get the point if FSU wins by MORE than 24.5 points. If a player picks Charleston Southern in a bet that FSU will not cover the spread (a good bet) and FSU wins by less than 24.5 points (or Charleston Southern wins the game), the player who picked the losing team will win the point as FSU’s win wasn’t impressive enough. That seems fair, RIGHT!? In this round, you’re picking performance, the team that will meet or exceed expectations.

Sometimes the spread will be an EVEN NUMBER like: Florida State (-21), Charleston Southern (+21). In this case, if FSU wins by exactly 21 points, this is a PUSH, and neither player gets a point. If FSU wins by 24, the player who picked them gets the point. If FSU wins by 14 points, the brilliant player who picked Charleston Southern will get the point. Got it?

The Champions Division (playoff games)

Points earned in the Vegas Division are carried forward to the Champions Division. In this division, there is no spread, no Over/Under challenge. Players will simply pick the winner of EVERY playoff game for the entire playoff bracket. This means that those Round 1 picks are extremely important as the winners advance to the quarterfinal round. Miss a few picks in the first round and your bracket could be blown! Point awards for each round are weighted:

Round 1 = 1 point
Round 2 (quarterfinals) = 2 points
Round 3 (semifinals) = 4 points
Round 4 (championship) = 8 points

Points will be totaled at the end and the player with the most points will win.

In this version of the SBBPA, it’s entirely possible that a player could not do well during the first part of the challenge and then storm back to win it all. And, conversely, a player could pick a lot of winners and STILL lose. Such is life. And as the great footballer Danny Rojas said:

FOOTBALL IS LIFE!

Stay tuned for the next post, which will include a link to the 13th Annual SBBPA Bowl Pick’em Form. Let’s get ready to RUUUUMBLE!