PYU 2021 Season Wrap-Up

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

And the final standings are:

ULhothot is our money winner! He kind of came out of nowhere during bowl season, but it turns out he was pretty good at futures bets:

After an unremarkable first half of the season, parlay success in Weeks 7 and 8 turned in several parlay wins, moving him as high as 1807.63:

The rest of the regular season returned to average, but ULhothot was the only player not to lose money in bowl season, gaining 64.18. Combined with the 1078.41 he won on futures bets, miles ahead of almost everyone else (more on that later), this was enough to keep him in first place.

This is not the first time a supporter of a school other than USF has won the PYU contest. “zls22”, a UConn supporter (remember them?) won it in 2013.

2021 was the first season of the points race, in which we awarded 15 points to whoever gained the most units during each week, followed by 10 for second most, and then 7-5-4-3-2 for the next five finishers each week, and then 1 point for anyone else who made a profit. The winner of the points race would be a co-champion, and receive the same rewards and glory as the money winner (i.e., not much). Our points race standings are:

BullsOnParade96’s “go big or go home” approach with parlays, combined with a one huge money line win on the Louisiana Monroe-Liberty game, gave him a huge lead for most of the season. It also gave him the maximum 15 points for 5 of the first 11 weeks, which built him enough of a lead to hold onto the points race championship over dsidwell31.

dsidwell31 was in the running for both titles until the season last’s game. A 900.00 parlay win in the season’s next-to-last week, combined with BullsOnParade96’s money lead evaporating in bowl season, give him a chance to win. But he missed the Orange Bowl over by half a point:

Alabama -13.0 points over Cincinnati; Georgia -7.5 points over Michigan; Over 45.5 points in the Georgia-Michigan game (WIN,WIN,LOSS) 100.00

Technically, the Orange Bowl wasn’t that close, with Michigan needing a cheap late touchdown and a two-point conversion to get the total within half a point. But this was still a brutal beat for a player who was finally poised to leap into first place. Despite that, he still had a shot at winning at least one race if Alabama won the national title game, but that didn’t materialize. He and BrianK19 were our two closest overall challengers this year.

Other items of note:

• BullsOnParade96 won 4211.50 on Louisiana-Monroe +8423.0 money line to beat Liberty. This is by far the largest single bet win in PYU history.
• The biggest parlay win was 1500.00 by McIntyre2K7. This was also only the second time in PYU history that someone needed to use the “sudden death loan”, and later repaid it. He was eligible to win and was in the running during bowl season, but ended up at 521.92.
• USF’s futures bet to win more than 2.5 games never materialized. 9 different players had made this bet.
• We had a futures bet on who would win the 2021 Marble League! E-dogg42 was the only one who picked Mellow Yellow to win.
• COVID didn’t have much of an impact on the season, beyond a few cancelled bowl games.
• Player defdans was down to 220.00 after Week 7, and made no bets after that. But he hit all of his futures bets (ignoring one that was voided), and won so much on them that he finished in the middle of the pack with a respectable 839.32.

That’s everything I can think of to write, so goodbye and thank you for playing in 2021! The traditional prizes will be awarded to both winners, and I will reach out to you privately for that. We’ll see you all again next year, in some form.