DISCLAIMER: This contest is for entertainment purposes only. No actual wagers are being performed.
Casual Hoya's reign at the top of the "Protect Your Unit" Game standings has come to an end after a brutal 0-3 week and a $200 fake money loss. Taking over the top spot is Kevin Meacham of The UConn Blog, who has quietly put together four winning weeks in a row, taking over the lead after a big win on the Cincinnati-Louisville game.
Meanwhile, our own Toro Grande continues his free fall down the standings after missing a giant parlay about as badly as you can miss it (see "Worst Bet" below). He is now in last place and is the only player who has not had a winning week all season long.
Here are the complete standings along with the weekly gains and losses. For complete pick details and the always-enjoyable line graph, click here for the Microsoft Excel file.
- Kevin Meacham, The UConn Blog - $1,093.47 (+$141.36)
- WVUIE97, The Smoking Musket - $956.80 (-$11.37)
- Chas Rich, Pitt Blather - $942.36 (-$36.82)
- Hoya Suxa - $924.99 (+$59.09)
- Casual Hoya - $908.62 (-$200.00)
- Scott, Bearcats Blog - $832.41 (-$46.82)
- Sean Keeley, Troy Nunes Is an Absolute Magician - $731.82 (+$43.18)
- Voodoo 5 - $618.49 (-$57.50)
- Ken DeCelles - $613.15 (-$11.37)
- Chris Lane, The Nova Blog - $583.17 (+$190.00)
- Andrew Porter, The UConn Blog - $456.46 (+$38.64)
- Toro Grande - $439.20 (-$246.18)
Now for the best, worst, and degenerate bets of the week.
BEST BET: Chris has had a real bad run at this game. He started out losing and pretty much kept on losing big every week. Lesser men might have taken a bye week, or just said screw it and stopped playing. But Chris persevered, and finally hit a huge bet last Thursday night, winning $181.82 in fake money on the Kansas-Kansas State game. It was the complete opposite of the week's...
WORST BET: Toro's lost almost $500 in fake money in the last two weeks on two giant parlays that have gone terribly wrong. Last week's parlay couldn't have gone much worse - he had Kansas +3 in a game they ended up losing 59-7. It was so bad that when I was reading through everyone's picks to put the announcement post together, I replied to his e-mail and just said, "Kansas, huh?"
MOST DEGENERATE BET: I enjoyed Ken's rationale for taking Southern Miss over Memphis -- because the 12 of us in this contest could probably beat Memphis. He was right about the game (the Golden Eagles rolled) and he might be right about the Tigers, too. Memphis is terrible, but hey, I'm sure that Big East invite is probably just lost in the mail, guys. Yeah, that's it.