Protect Your Unit Week 1 Results

(DISCLAIMER: This game is for entertainment purposes only. No actual money is being wagered.)

First, many of the reports at the website are broken again this morning. You may begin betting Week 2 games, but please stay under $250 until I can fix it. Should be Tuesday night (UPDATE: weekly limits now calculate correctly.)

Let’s get Friday’s game over with: we all saw what happened, and almost everyone lost fake money on it. The only winners were defdans and dsidwell, who took the under; and HerdCountry941 and mmmmsnouts, who took Wisconsin minus the points. Overall, there were 19 individual wagers that lost a net total of $396.36. To put that into perspective, the most we lost on any other game was $93 on NC State-East Carolina, and the most bets on one game were 12 on Oklahoma-Houston. So, yeah, we’re homers.

Memphis won their game 15-10 over Ole Miss, but mostly failed to cover. I say “mostly” because the line was 4.5 at one point this week, and jrjs jumped on it, winning a small bet. Others had the Tigers at -5.5 or -6.5, which lost. This was especially painful considering Memphis missed a PAT in the second quarter, which would have covered at 5.5.

Taking the harshest blow here was BullsOnParade96, who had $200 worth of parlays including Memphis, all of which lost only because of the Memphis result:

Ouch. Two of the parlays had them at -6.5, but if they’d covered 5.5, BOP would have won one of the parlays and cancelled most of his loss on the other two.

He also had a fourth parlay, which only lost because California couldn’t score enough points against Cal-Davis to meet an Over 48. Unfortunately, he lost his entire $250 allotment this week. Which brings me to another feature I’m adding to the website: accomplishments!

One of the challenges in running PYU has been keeping the game interesting for players who fall behind in the season-long race. As with most fantasy leagues you’ve ever been in, people lose interest if they’re out of the race. To alleviate that, I’m implementing accomplishments in PYU. These are minor achievements you can earn for weekly success, and will be displayed in your dashboard. You might not win the most money for the season, but you might win the most money in a week. Or you might win $100 fake dollars in a week, which is the traditional threshold for recognition in the weekly review posts.

The first accomplishments will be:

• Weekly gold/silver/bronze medals for first/second/third place, with the requirement that you must have a net gain during the week.
• The black ribbon, signifying “in the black” for making a profit during the week.
• The green ribbon for winning more than $100 during a week.
• The prestigious diamond for winning more than $227 in a week. I chose $227, because that’s how much you would win if you wagered your entire $250 allotment at -110 and won. (Actually, it’s $227.27.) So anyone can win the award any week, as long as they have $250 to start. Note that the amount can also be achieved via parlays and/or money line bets.
• The long-running Spite Bet and Degenerate Bet awards.
• An all-time records book, for categories like biggest win/loss, biggest underdog win/loss, biggest parlay/win loss, etc.
• Whatever else I can think of, as long as it doesn’t change how people play the game. I don’t want people making bets just to win accomplishments. Our aim has always been realism, and I want to maintain that.

So with that in mind, I hereby award BullsOnParade96 the first weekly accomplishment: the Participation Trophy. These are awarded for meeting the weekly betting requirements of 3 bets/1 AAC bet and $50 or 5% minimum. This isn’t just to reference an annoying cultural item; it’s to confirm you met the minimum bet requirements, so you can ensure you remain eligible for the season-long championship. In the past, there’s been no way for players to track if they used their bye week or not. So there’s a point to it.

These will soon be added to the Dashboard page.

Here’s how much everyone won/lost in Week 1:

The standings page at the website will normally track full standings, but, big surprise, it needs fixing at the moment.

Okay, back to Week 1 games. The big winner in parlays was E-Dogg42, who hit an impressive 6 of 11 parlay plays:

One of these wins invoked the always entertaining rule 8.3.3.1, which is:

If any bet in a parlay is a push, that bet is removed, and the parlay is recalculated as a two-team parlay or single bet.

Houston +23 covered, and over/under 80 pushed, so this parlay pays off at +100. I love it when obscure rules come into play.

Other observations and news items from this week:

• The only FCS-over-FBS upset was Central Arkansas beating Western Kentucky 35-28. If only UCA were the home team, so we could see their nightmarish purple-and-gray field. This game got a lot of action, but only Oak1787 took the (looking it up) Bears to win. For that, and for also nailing Alabama State ATS over UAB, I award Oak1787 the first Floyd’s Money Team Degenerate Bet of the Week of 2019.
• The Randolph and Mortimer Spite Bet of the Week won’t always be awarded because, frankly, people just don’t do it very much. Especially now that is Central Florida is actually... (pauses to consider the heat death of the universe) ...good at football, and betting against those chuckleheads isn’t as reliable a proposition as it usually is. I’ll award it where called for, but not necessarily every week. As always, feel free to lobby for these things in the weekly picks thread.
• There were a lot of low lines in FBS vs FCS games. And, they turned out to be accurate. San Diego State was only favored by 8 against Weber State; SDSU ended up winning 6-0. Arkansas was similarly a slim favorite over Portland State, and only won by 7. Northern Illinois, which has recently been a solid program, needed a late touchdown to pull away from Illinois State. Wagner easily covered against UConn, losing by only 3.
• The Gambletron 2000 was broken during Week 1. It will be back for Week 2, offering a random bet for -102 instead of the usual -110.
• The PYU official twitter is @protectyouru. I use it to make game-related announcements. Feel free to @ me with game questions or comments.
• 26 different players placed a bet this week. I think that’s the most ever. And, it’s not too late to join for this season! You’d have to take Week 1 as your bye week, but you can get a username/password and get started. Email me at angerthespy@gmail.com to do this.

On to Week 2! Top national games are Texas A&M-Clemson and LSU-Texas. The AAC takes on Power 5 opponents in USF-Georgia Tech; Cincinnati-Ohio State; Tulane-Auburn; and Illinois-Connecticut. Apparently, one of those two teams has to win. Central Florida is at FAU; SMU hosts North Texas; and Tulsa travels to San Jose State. Houston (Prairie View), East Carolina (Gardner-Webb), and Memphis (Southern) have FCS opponents. Navy is off.