2021 Week 1 Newsletter

Hello Homies,

This week Norm Macdonald died at just age 61. I reckon only 7/11 of you know who that
is, and I would be surprised if more than one of you had watched his stand up special on
Netflix, but he is an all time great comedian. Most of you would know him as Burt
Reynolds from celebrity jeopardy on SNL. I bring him up because he has a couple quotes
worth sharing.

“Comedy is surprises, so if you’re intending to make somebody laugh and they don’t laugh,
that’s funny.”

I can think of memoires with each of you where I made a joke that did not land. Plenty of
jokes in the 30 some issues of this newsletter have absolutely missed. But I don’t think
that’s a bad joke. Norm also said “A joke should catch someone by surprise, it should never
pander.” This was one of those deaths that kinda hit different just because Norm’s voice
was so unique. So these were my two therapy paragraphs, and just know that I will continue
to tell you all jokes that aren’t funny and catch you by surprise. And I fully anticipate
Jeffrey being there to say “Thad just stop.”

Our first weekend of fantasy felt really flat to me. Part of that is my team sent sub 100 all
in the 1 o’clock slot so I didn’t have a lot of reason to care, but I think its also that there
has been so much hype between all of us looking forward to this season. All that said, THE
ENDING OF THAT MONDAY NIGHT GAME MADE IT ALL WORTH IT! This
is the type of finish that makes a rivalry. I was texting Stephen late in the Ravens game
asking him how nervous he was. He felt okay. Then Lamar ran it for 25 yards and sealed it.
And then Stephen won with an OT fumble and the game was over. It was super easy to
ignore Connor and focus on the team that got lucky. This was one of the worst losses I
have ever seen though. Credit to Connor for not complaining in the GM and just
swallowing defeat, much in the same way that Cat must have swallowed Connor moments
later (respectfully).

This first issue is going to be a conglomeration of last season awards that never got handed
out, and some of the usual stuff. There isn’t enough data for Strength of Schedule and
Luckiness, so lets grind through this.

PS. After writing this entire thing, Connor had the victory given to him and then once again
taken away. So even more props to his attitude for this level of hell he’s gone through.

2020 Luckiness

Team Act Wins Prj Wins Luck % Jeffrey was clearly the luckiest team
21% with three more wins over the course
Jeffrey 8 5.0 14% of 14 weeks than he should have had.
8% Grant, despite having 8 wins and
Andre 8 6.1 7% finishing the regular season on a tear,
3% was still the second most unlucky
Nick 10 8.8 0% team. By projected wins, he should
-5% have received the bye week over
Ridge 8 7.0 -5% Connor, but it ended up not playing a
-6% role in the champion.
Matt 7 6.6 -10%
-13%
Alec 7 7.0 -15%

Chip 6 6.6

Andy 5 5.7

Connor 8 8.8

Thad 4 5.4

Grant 8 9.8

Stephen 5 7.0

Here is a chart that shows a different way to look at Luckiness.

Grant 141.34 This chart shows how many more/less points you
Nick 97.92 scored over the course of the season compared to
Alec 46.1 what your team was projected. Grant’s players
Connor 41.48 routinely scored more than projected while Jeffrey
Ridge 2.26 (Zeke Elliot) left him fuming more often than not.
Andy
Matt -1.86
Chip -3.32
Stephen -27.56
Andre -55.34
Thad -64.06
Jeffrey -110.48
-161.14

BOWLS

Had COVID not existed, we would have had another fantasy award ceremony where
Stephen and I would have handed out year end Bowl awards.
BIG BLUE BOWL : UK alum that had the best record against other UK alum.
While Connor had the lead going into the playoffs, he blew it by losing to Ridge in the last
week of the postseason.
Winner: Ridge
Runner-Up: Thad

COAL BOWL: Marshall Student (Stephen, Grant, Matt) vs WVU Students (Nick,
Andre) *Participants in this matchup will be amended next year*
Last year WVU won this one, but this year Marshall won 6 of the 10 meetings between
Marshall vs WVU students.
Winner: Marshall

WHITE BOYS BOWL: White boy with the best record vs other white boys.
Three teams finished with a 9-5 record vs other white boys. These were Ridge, Nick, and
Jeffrey. Jeffrey was just 6-5 headed into the postseason but sailed through all three white
boys he faced. The tiebreaked is which of these three white boys had the best record vs the
other white boys with 9-5 record.
Winner: Ridge
Runner-Up: Nick

TIGER WOODS CLASSIC: Winner of Andre vs Andy matchup
These teams only faced one time this year. Andre won the matchup by 26 points.
Winner: Andre

CLASS OF 2016 CUP: 2016 grad with best record vs other 2016 grads. Valedictorian
goes to best, while dropout goes to worst.
Matt absolutely crushed the class of 2016. Matt finished the year 9-8 and ALL nine of his
wins came against 2016 grads. The race for the bottom was equally anticlimactic. Stephen
went 3-8 vs 2016 grads. I guess graduating sixth doesn’t mean anything in fantasy football.
Valedictorian: Matt
Salutatorian: Thad
Dropout: Stephen

SOUTHSIDE SHOWDOWN: Which southside dweller performed best vs other
southsiders.
He is gone as quickly as he arrived. Some people say Stephen only moved to the southside
to win this award. Because as soon as he did, he moved away. Perhaps he is seeking to win
all of neighborhood awards. Stephen went 2-0 vs Ridge and Chip.
Winner: Stephen
Runner-Up: Ridge

BEVERLY HILLS BOWL: Beverly Hills resident with best record vs other residents.
This bowl has had a lot of complaints over the past 2 years. Andy went to Beverly Hills but
gets left out. Grant lives just outside of both ranges and gets left out. Going into the
playoffs Andre had this one all but sealed up, but its as if the ghosts of Spring Hill
cemetery heard he was splitting his time between Beverly hills and the southside and decided
to rip it from him.
Winner: Matt
Runner-Up: Andre

COMMUTERS CUP: Commuter (Andy, Grant, Nick) with best record vs other
commuters.

Maybe winning will ease the unhappiness of being considered a commuter for Grant. BTW
next year Grant will be reclassified. But this is what it is.

Winner: Grant

Runner-Up: Nick

COUPLES CLASSIC: The deadline for this award was early December. I asked everyone
to disclose if they were in a relationship, and if they weren’t public than they missed out.
This means current sexually committed individuals Jeffrey and Nick are left out. The
participants are: Stephen, Matt, Ridge, Connor, Andre, Andy, Chip. This was an insanely
tight race down to the last day of the postseason. Matt beat Stephen by .96 points to take
home the award.

Winner: Matt

Sloppy Seconds: Connor

Outliers by Malcom Gladwell

This week we recorded the 16th outlier over the past three years, and it was just the first time Andy
recorded an outlier since the league expanded. For all of our data anals, I am adjusting for QB
completions so everything doesn’t get skewed to hell. Andy’s adjusted score was 166.86 which just
barely cleared the upper limit of outliers at 166.29. This was the first time in three years that an
outlier was recorded in Week 1. Out of the 16 outliers, 11 of them clear the upper end (high
scores) and 5 of them fall below the low end (wretched scores). For a refresher of who has
registered outliers keep reading. (Note this is only regular season)
Alec: 3 Positive Outliers
2019: Week 5 - 169.9
2020: Week 2 – 168.04, Week 12 – 173.2
Andre: 1 Positive Outlier
2019: Week 5 – 186.3
Chip: 2 Positive Outliers
2019: Week 3 – 183.5
2020: Week 3 – 166.38
Connor: 2 Positive Outliers and 2 Negative Outliers
2019: Week 3 – 176.7, Week 7 – 68.8, Week 10 – 67.2
2020: Week 5 – 170.96
Grant: 1 Positive Outlier
2020: Week 14 – 198.4
Jeffrey: 1 Negative Outlier
2020: Week 8 – 63.66
Matt: 2 Negative Outliers
2019: Week 7 – 59.4
2020: Week 10 – 64.64
Nick: 1 Positive Outlier
2020: Week 14 – 172.94

Three of us Homies went sub 100. Chip Matt and Thad add one to the tally of sub
100 games. A tally for Thad that has now reached 9 games over the past three years. I
think a week 1 and week 7,8,9 are the most excusable weeks to get a sub hundo
because you are either short handed or have no idea what a teams offense is going to
look like. Lets look at how many sub hundo performances everyone has.

Jeffrey 10

Andy 9 If you took the buzz feed quiz I sent in the GM, then you
know Jeffrey has scored under 100 the most times over
Thad 9 the last three years. Jeffrey went sub hundo FIVE times

Connor 7 last year! And that is only crazy because he won the

Alec 7 league. Chip did not have any sub hundos until week 5 last

Matt 7 year, and is tied for the least with Mr. Standard Deviation,
Nick Stephen Richbart. It’s always worth noting that in 2018
Ridge 5 Nick had 6 under 100 performances that don’t factor in

5 here.

Andre 5

Grant 4

Stephen 3

Chip 3

The Bottom Three

Obviously tough to tell much from just one week of matchups, especially when most
of our matchups were noncompetitive. Three matchups decided by 60 or more
points. I hope we have more to look forward to on week 2. Theme this week is
friendship, because unfortunately I am in a really good mood and don’t feel at coming
at anyone.

10th – Nick – Three teams scored less than Nick this week, but Nick was only able to
save face thanks to a throwback performance by Gronk. I am not in the business of
predicting players points, and I think Nick will have a solid points per game number
this season, but I think he will have a number of weeks that just bust based on his
RB2, WR2 and flex situation. In the end Nick is a smart, handsome guy with a great
looking girl and a great future. He is bottom three here but not in real life.

11th – Thad – It was a tough call of how to position the bottom 2 teams as they both
sucked nuts week 1. Thad (me if you didn’t know who was writing these) has for the
fourth year in a row picked a high upside team that is not living up to its predictions.
I would hate to have his roster. If you trust week 1 as an indication, then Thad will
be a weekly attendee on the Bottom 3.

12th – Chip – Great guy. A catch. Person your parents think is a good influence on
you. Who is Chip? His team does not look great this year. His wide receivers will
carry him to quite a few wins I am sure, but trading away Scary Terry already looks
like a questionable decision. I predict multiple weeks of under 100 points.

In waiting: Matt (0-1), Jeffrey (0-1)

QUICK MATCHUP BREAKDOWN

Andre vs Thad

Andre is 3-2 vs Thad overall and 3-1 vs Thad in the regular season. Not much to
write home about in this matchup.

Ridge vs Connor

Ridge is 4-2 vs Connor overall but they are 2-2 against each other in the regular
season. Off the top of my head, I believe both of Connor and Ridge’s post-season
matchups have been in third place games. Connor has to bounce back after an
emotional rollercoaster of a Week 1.

Stephen vs Nick

Stephen is 3-1 vs Nick overall and 2-1 vs Nick in the regular season. They have never
had a matchup decided by less than 20 points. Kind of a rivalry of who has the nicer
beard. Winner gets beard bragging rights.

Alec vs Matt

RIVALRY! Alec and Matt have split their 4 regular season matchups and matt has
won the one post season matchup. It is already spicey with Scary Terry and Graham
Gano going off on Thursday.

Grant vs Jeffrey

Grant is 2-1 vs Jeffrey in the regular season with Jeffrey winning the only post-season
matchup. Limited fact checking this week as I try to get this out before the Marshall
tailgate, but I believe Jeffrey’s postseason victory came against the stacked Grant team
last year on his way to winning the championship.

Chip vs Andy

Chip has been the chink (no offense Andy) in Andy’s armor. Chip is 5-1 vs Andy
overall, including 2-0 in the postseason in the modern era. And obviously that leaves
out Andy defeating Chip in the championship a few years ago. I don’t mean for
modern era to be offensive, it is just the era in which we have the date saved for. Big
game though, as it would be crazy if Andy were to continue losing with the stacked
team he appears to have.