Pick 'Em Champ

I would be remiss if I missed the opportunity to briefly gloat about a championship I recently won. Sure, I may have failed miserably in one of my fantasy football leagues, and come in second in another. But, I did find success in another fantasy football league, though of a slightly different variety.

Instead of being wickedly good at a team vs. team fantasy football matchup this season, I did quite well in the Pick 'Em league I was in. In this league, you pick the winner of each game every week against the spread. Adding a layer of difficulty to the action is having to wager confidence points on each game as well (for example, if there are 16 games per week, I feel lousy about Pick A so I'll only wager 1 point on it, while I feel really good about Pick B so I'll wager 16 points on it). It isn't the most complicated system, but makes for some tricky and nervous decisions when ranking your picks.
This was even more frustrating when I discovered three weeks into the season that the league takes the confidence wagering more seriously than it does your ability to pick more games correctly. It sucked being in fourth place just because some bastard went 6-10 but ranked those six wins better than I did while I went 11-5, which I think it way more impressive. If I were in Vegas, they would pay me based on my win/loss record, not whether I felt particularly good about any of them or not.

No matter, I focused in on that aspect as week and by Week 7 I was in the lead and never relinquished it. A few teams made a push and I squandered a big lead by having two awful weeks toward the end of the season, but alas I was not to be denied. I finished 138-119, meaning I picked 54% of the games correctly, which according to many gambling sites means I would have made a pretty penny had money actually been on the line. It wasn't, sadly, but I can proudly claim myself champion of a fantasy league for the fourth year in a row. I rule.