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Gur-who?

Go forward to more recent blurbs.

9/30 - The regular season isn’t quite over for MLB. Technically, today’s tiebreaker game is considered a regular season game. But not for most fantasy formats, where the regular season closed yeaterday, as scheduled. And with the end of the season, I’ve resequenced the left menu panel, moving baseball to the bottom.

Congrats to gurupie BMD, who rolled to the championship of the 2013 RIBC, taking the lead in June and never looking back. Complete standings for all RIBC leagues will be posted at the baseball forum.

If you are still awaiting your prize notification for GuruGolf, please be patient. I did not get that done last week, as I had hoped. This week for sure.

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9/25 - The chase for the postseason in the American League has essentially come down to three teams chasing two wild card spots. All three won last night, Cleveland’s being the most dramatic. But two of those three teams will be eliminated within a week, since the one-game AL “play-in game” will be next Wednesday, weather permitting. (And if it’s in Tampa, weather won’t matter.)

There is supposedly a proposal being floated to move to an 18-game NFL season while limiting individual players to no more than 16 games played. Interesting concept, but it sounds like the fantasy football implications would be tricky, as most players would now effectively have three byes during the season (unless the bye week is eliminated as a consequence, which seems unlikely.) Interesting to contemplate, but premature to get worked up about.

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9/23 - I spent all Sunday afternoon at a golf outing, so I missed most of Sunday’s NFL action. Therefore, I might as well move directly to golf.

Congratulations to the two full season champs in GuruGolf:
Best ball champion: Slice of Bread
Worst ball champion: Smith32-WB

I should note that this year’s winning team was managed by blondiescookies, who also won the 2011 GuruGolf championship and was runner-up last year (finishing second to another repeat winner, bilmill.)

For the FedEx Cup Contest, these were the GuruGolf contest winners:
Best ball: Vampire Weekend
Worst ball: Kooldad-2

Prize winners for the entire season will be reconciled later this week and email notifications will be sent out.

Thanks to gurupie Wolfer for suggesting today’s quote of the day.

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9/20 - The Philly offense isn’t as impressive when they turn the ball over five times. Michael Vick isn’t as impressive when he throws two picks, fumbles once, gets sacked six times, and misses a lot of receivers. The only thing that kept his fantasy performance from totally sucking was 95 rushing yards, most of which came on two plays.

Hopefully, the Indians can advance and make some noise in the MLB playoffs. It doesn’t appear that the Browns have any intention to fill the Cleveland sports void when baseball ends.

The final GuruGolf event is underway, and Billy Horschel is the most widely owned golfer. For the first time this season, all (thirty) golfers in the field appear on multiple GuruGolf foursomes this week.

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9/17 - Congrats to simple simon, who picked fifteen correct winners in Football Pickoff, posting the top score of the weekend. Two-thirds of all slates posted positive scores, and 60% of all entries are above zero for the first two weeks cumulatively, so we’re still looking for that inevitable comeuppance week.

Two teams shared the top GuruGolf score (best ball: -52), while Smith32-WB (+58) smoked the field with a 6-point margin over the runner-up in worst ball scoring.

Fantasy football scoring was more in line with recent seasons this weekend. The average team points in the RIFC for NFL Week #2 was 137.74, slightly above last year’s average of 133, but way below the blistering 150 point average in week #1. We did have one game in a AAA league that was decided by almost 100 points, however, 192-94.20. Not sure if that’s a record or not, but I guess if you’re going to have an off week, you might as well face a juggernaut.

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9/16 - A few random observations after the second NFL Sunday:

• Philly looks like it’s going to score a lot of points this year. But it also looks like a team you are going to want your offensive fantasy players to face.
• After two weeks, we’ve already had three games delayed by lightning. Doesn’t that seem like a lot? Yet, there hasn’t been a single MLB game postponed since July 25. So the bad weather must be targeting NFL venues.
• The Redskins have been outscored 50-7 in the first half this year, and their seven points were scored by the defense. RG3 owners are happy that games are 60 minutes long.
• Buffalo’s offense may not be a woeful as some feared. Of course, it helps that E.J. Manuel has been able to play. When the preseason ended, his availability wasn’t clear.
• Until Marshawn Lynch scored three TDs on 135 total yards in the late game, James Starks was the top producing running back of the weekend. In three of the four RIFC leagues, Starks is not even rostered. Then again, he appears to have hit the daily double: the primary GB runner went out with a concussion on the opening drive, and the team was facing the Washington defense.
• All credit to Colin Kaepernick, who honored the commercialized bet with Russell Wilson and shaved an eyebrow.
• After two weeks, the Super Bowl looks like a matchup between Denver and Seattle. It will be interesting to see how soon that assessment seems to fall apart.

9/13 - If you like to watch a well-played football game, then don’t watch replays of last night’s Jets/Pats game. That was some ugly football. And if you have Tom Brady as your fantasy QB, you’ve got to have some concerns. He can’t put up points if his receivers keep running the wrong routes and dropping catchable balls.

We’re all set for the weekend at RotoGuru:

• GuruGolf is moving ahead with the BMW Championship. Charles Howell III is the most popular GuruGolfer this weekend. So far, he managed only two birdies in the opening round. With no cut this week, birdies are really the only scores that matter – unless you’re vying for worst ball honors. (Howell had only 2 bogeys as well.)
• Football Pickoff odds for last night’s game seemed rather severe at 83/17, but the Pats bailed out those who stayed with the favorite. Picks for the rest of the week #2 slate will lock in at 1pm ET Sunday.
• Sortable stats for all affiliated football games are loaded and prepped for week #2.
• And of course, all baseball processing continues apace.

9/10 - First week results for the RIFC are in. The most striking observation is the amount of fantasy scoring. For each of the last two seasons, the average weekly score for an RIFC team was 133 pts/game. Yesterday’s average was 150.74. That average score would have been at the 79th percentile last year. Four RIFC teams topped 164 points yesterday. Only 17 scores exceeded 164 points during all of 2012’s 182-game regular season. Trend, or anomaly?

Two Football Pickoff slates went 14-2 this week. Congrats to The 3rd Munson with the top score of 547.

I’m aware of one NFL scoring discrepancy. DeAngelo Williams is credited with 76 rushing yards from some sources, and 86 from others. The NFL Gamebook (which I’ve always assumed was the “official” record) shows 76 yards. ESPN shows 86 yards, and that agrees with that stats reported at myfantasyleague.com. I’ve seen published fantasy scoring with both numbers. Perhaps the reporting will converge when scoring corrections are announced later in the week.

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9/9 - NFL week #1 is almost in the books, and although I’m still shaking down some of my football processes, things seem to be in pretty good shape so far. See the various links in the football section of the left menu panel.

Heading into the season, Giants RB David Wilson was one of the hottest commodities in fantasy football. When backup Andre Brown broke his leg in the final preseason game, Wilson’s stock shot even higher. What a difference a game makes: 19 rushing yards, two fumbles, and a benching. If you drafted him, you probably didn’t sleep much better than Wilson did last night. ESPN is already reporting that Brandon Jacobs and Willis McGahee have been invited to tryout on Tuesday.

By the way, how do the Giants suffer six turnovers and only lose by 5 points?

Depending on how lightly your league penalizes interceptions, it’s possible that the top two QBs this week were Mannings. The biggest difference? Eli threw three picks (not necessarily all his fault); Peyton completed those three for extra TDs.

Apparently, being a tight end on the Patriots isn’t a sufficient condition for great results. Zac Sudfeld and Michael Hoomanawanui combined for 5 yards on just three targets.

Results in the first NFL weekend always take on exaggerated significance. Last year, one of the most hyped players after the opening game was Dallas WR Kevin Ogletree, with 114 receiving yards and two TDs. He only had one other game with close to that output in 2012, and he’s now on Tampa Bay, where all he managed was one 25 yard kickoff return yesterday. So don’t go nuts extrapolating from one week.

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9/6 - I’m not going to pontificate too much on last night’s NFL game; there are plenty of other places to get that. But from a fantasy football perspective, using a traditional point formula, Peyton Manning scored 46.28 fantasy points. Last season, the top output for any QB was 39.4 from Russell Wilson at Buffalo in week #15. There was only one higher offensive game last season – 53.4 points in week #9 from TB running back Doug Martin.

I didn’t stay up to watch the 4th quarter (the game must have ended well after midnight on the east coast), but you have to feel bad for anyone who had linebacker Danny Trevathan, who intercepted a pass in the 4th quarter and then dropped the football just prior to coasting into the endzone, resulting in a touchback. (video). Nobody drafted Trevathan in any of the RIFC leagues, so it’s probably not going to be a first-week fantasy game-changer – although anyone with the Denver team defense also failed to get that defensive score.

It’s obviously too late to lock-in a pick for last night’s game in Football Pickoff, but you have until 1pm EDT Sunday to make picks for the other 15 games. Note that I don’t post scores until after all picks are locked in. Suffice it to say that if you picked Denver, you earned 26 points; if you picked Baltimore, it’s -26 points.

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9/4 - The NFL season opens tomorrow night – in case you hadn’t noticed. If you’re an old-time Gurupie, it’s not too late to sign up for FireLeague Salary Cap Football, which is the current incarnation of the original Small World Salary Cap game that RotoGuru cut its teeth on more than 15 years ago. The sortable stats and the Assimilator are once again loaded and ready to serve your analytical needs.

Football Pickoff is also back for its 15th season. I still remember building that game platform in October, 1999 – based on some discussion in the RotoGuru Forum. As I recall, I threw it together in about a week – or maybe 2. I just looked up the initial launch announcement on October 6, 1999. It’s interesting to see the things that were being discussed at the time. This was before I had a dedicated server, and capacity (and server reliability) were issues I was continually bumping into. I do notice that Pickoff had 234 registrations on its first day. Last year’s standings show only 242 teams total. Now that I have the capacity, I lack the reach.

Then again, how many games offered in 1999 are still available today, from the same producer, at the same site, with substantially the same rules – and substantially the same system programming? I’m sure that’s a small list.

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9/3 - Congrats to Vampire Weekend, whose -55 was the top best ball score in GuruGolf over the weekend. Kooldad-2 (+44) took worst ball scoring honors. And now we get a one week hiatus before finishing out the GuruGolf season, as the next FedEx Cup event starts on September 12.

The four RIFC Drafts are now complete. Rationales are almost complete, and a summary of Consolidated Draft Results is available for your perusal.

Odd fact: There were no postponed games in MLB during the entire month of August. The last time a game was postponed was July 25. Now sure how odd that is – but it seems like a long time to avoid a washout somewhere.

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2013: August . . . July . . . June . . . May . . . April . . . March . . . February . . . January