2024 CFCC Week 1 Starts a New Era

By Boda

Yes. Its a new era of college football and we welcome the changes. More teams in the college football playoff; better and more frequent intersectional rivalries; and a season that now lasts until late January are a few of the meaningless benefits on the minds of -- well, football morons and pundits. But not here at Dirty-Dawg.com. What's great is we're now seeing QR codes on helmets. By the Michigan game in late November, we will be seeing Ohio State replace all Buckeye helmet stickers with QR codes. The more stickers you have the more each Buckeye gets paid. What's great is that we now have helmet to sideline communication to increase the chances of playcall stealing before and during games. Connor Stalions has been replaced. By me ! A simple hack and I listened to the entirety of the Texas-Colorado State playcall last Saturday via bluetooth, my couch, and a speaker shaped like a Michigan winged-helmet. And for those asking, take Michigan plus the points and also take the Under this Saturday. Unfortunately, I'm hearing some sharp Texas Tech grads have figured out how to bypass this hack by hardwiring comms between the quarterback and the head coach. Bastards! What's great is the new and long-overdue two minute warning in college football. They are not calling it that though, instead copying US Open Tennis and calling it a bathroom break where the losing team gets a shower, uniform change, and a mental reset to mount a furious comeback. These changes are clearly for the better and, as always, we at Dirty-Dawg.com are happy to provide real perspective on events in the sporting world.

Back to the CFCC for a week 1 summary ! We apologize for the brief IT outages to start the season, but that's what happens when you try to sell your business to Direct TV. Those hacks tried to change the code, screwed it up, and asked for their money back. So the Dirty-Dawg.com Board of Directors are back in charge, albeit 5 dollars poorer each. But, most importantly, the code is working again. Just in time to announce Mack Morris of New Braunfels TX won week 1 with 100 points and a 12-3 record. Mack was followed by Darren Scherer of Strafford MO, also with a 12-3 record, but only good for 88 points. The week was a bit tougher than a normal week 1, as the last 4 games on the game form were almost non-survivable with solid favorites going down to defeat. In Group Play, Water Wizards (apparently a group of Hydologists from Sacramento ?) start the season in first place. Right behind are Snoop's Clean Canines presented by WFO EWX (apparently a group of non-hydrologists from the non-city of New Braunfels ?) -- who also won this years award for the best Group name. Congratulations to all. Also congratulations to BJ Ellis and Phil Stiegman for recognizing they have no skill in a confidence contest, even before the first games were played !! Both set their confidence level top to bottom consecutively 1 through 15, a strategy that was good for last place (363rd) and third from last (361st). As far as we know, this oddity is a first for Dirty-Dawg CFCC.

That's it for week one. Good luck for the coming week when the games get tougher. Also refer to the new scoring rules for the end of year bowl blowout. Should be interesting. https://www.dirty-dawg.com/cfcc/game_rules.php

March Madness 2024 - The Secret to Success

By the Cold Hard Truth

Well here I am again - beginning the process of filling out my bracket. Unlike my wife who fills out her bracket in about 5 minutes, my bracket will take hours of research and careful evaluation of all pertinent parameters, and then and only then will I pick all the #1 seeds to advance to the next round.

I like to print out Ken Pomeroy Ratings. Each year I print out the complete list of 362 teams. Teams that make the March Madness field are highlighted in a light red color, and each year when I print this list out, no colors actually appear on the printed copy, rendering it nearly useless. Also,due to printer formatting issues, I occasionally will lose a team at the bottom of each printed page. This annoys me, but I realize that no matter how much data I have, I never win the contest. It just makes me feel better when I look at all this cool data. Also, I look at the Kenpom "Luck" column and I always ask myself,"What does that column really mean?" This year, I see that Oklahoma had a luck ranking of #251. That must explain why the committee left them out of the tournament? However, on the next line up I see Texas A&M and they were ranked #254 and made the tournament - I have no idea? A&M fans suffer from what they refer to as "Battered Aggie Syndrome" "BAS" and always expect the worst, and their opening round game is against Nebraska, the only Power 5 school to never win an NCAA tournament game. It is a good bet to expect Nebraska will win that contest and make history at the expense of the Aggies.

This looks to be an extremely difficult year to pick a winner. I completely missed how good UConn was last year. After losing two players to the NBA, they reloaded and are having an even better year at 31-3. They are #1 in the Kenpom and look poised to make a run at a second consecutive title. What about Houston? They went 30-4 and have the #2 ranked defense in the country. They beat Kansas by 30, but the other night, Iowa State (the #1 defensive team) held the Cougars to 41 points and 27% shooting. How about Purdue? Are they good enough to win it all? They have developed a reputation for losing early, but Zach Edey came back to college to prove something. Is he ready to prove that he can put this team on his shoulders and take them to the Final Four? When I look at the Kenpom rankings, I see 12 teams that could make a legit run to the Final 4. I see another 15 teams that could mess up my bracket, so I know I will never win this. Look at #26 St. John's. They have a real shot - oh that's right - they didn't even make the tournament. But we were lucky enough to watch #73 ranked Virginia embarrass themselves last night against Colorado State. Once again, the Selection Committee got it wrong in my opinion. I would gladly volunteer to help them. I am a self-proclaimed expert who consistently has printer issues and my favorite team lost 19 games in a row to end the season. So what I am saying is this is an impossible task. Even if the committee got it right, there will always be a St. Peters or a San Diego St. or a Florida Atlantic who gets hot at the right time and makes an improbable run. Each time that happens, millions of brackets are tragically destroyed.

Could the real secret to success be just skipping filling out the bracket? It would be less stressful and take less time. However, avoiding a challenge is never the right answer. I commend a team like Indiana St. who was left out of the Dance with a 28-6 record and a #43 ranking. They won their first round NIT game tonight and opted to compete, while teams like St. John's, Oklahoma, Pitt, Memphis, Ole Miss, and Indiana all skipped the NIT because they value themselves more than the enjoyment of playing the game. This is a sad trend for this great sport.

So here we are - the 2024 CBCC is here! You probably won't win it, but it sure will be fun watching all these great games. There will be great stories of leadership. There will be historic moments that we will talk about for years, and eventually there will be a champion. Best of luck to all the CBCC competitors!

PFCC: Weeks 14 and 15 Update

by: exRegionalWeenie (12/21/23)

Our September goal of weekly article updates for both CFCC and PFCC has again descended into late season once-in-a-blue-moon updates. Sorry 'bout that. In an effort to make amends, this article will be a two-fer special with shoutouts to the top performers from Weeks 14 and 15. And stay tuned because there might be updates for the season's remaining three weeks. Or, maybe not. We'll see.

Sean Poluos is The Man
We'll get to the weekly updates in just a sec, but this first highlight must go to Sean Poulos. The man just can't be stopped. He leads the overall PFCC after Week 15, just like he did after Week 14. And Week 13 and 12 and 11 and... all the way back to Week 3. That's 13 consecutive weeks atop the PFCC standings - wow! After Week 8, we wrote that Sean, "...holds a commanding 30 point lead..." (yes, that's us quoting us). Well, now his lead is 54 points! Sean is definitely having a dirty-dawg season for the ages, especially when you add in the fact that he is ranked 3rd over in the CFCC.

Week 14 Kudos
Emma Mims lives in Heaven, South Carolina, according to her player info page. I wonder if Heaven, SC, has angels? Maybe they're the ones who brought Emma a Week 14 win. Emma went 10-4 with 43 points. Forty-three may not seem special but the average player scored a -17 that week, so there. Congrats, Emma! {Ed. Note: After writing about Emma's location in Heaven, I decided to fact-check her. Low and behold, there is no Heaven in SC according to Google. Shame on you, Emma, for pulling a fast one on us.}

Mike Johnson earned a 2nd place finish in Week 14 with 39 points. Close behind was Phil Stiegman with 37 points. The week's 4th place went to Homer Bartson of Homer, NY, (I'm not even gonna bother) while Monte Oaks claimed 5th place.

Week 15 NFL Scores and Top Dawgs
Bizarre stuff keeps happening in the NFL and Week 15 was no exception. For the third consecutive week, at least one team was shutout (NY Jets). The Jets were one of SIX teams that scored 10 points or less. There's a lot of crappy football being played these days. Refunds should have been offered to those misfortunate enough to attend the Carolina-Atlanta snoozefest with it's 9-7 final score. B-O-R-I-N-G.

The low-scoring games didn't seem to impact us Dawgs, though, as the average player score in Week 15 was a much improved 40 (recall it was -17 the previous week). Top Dawg for the week was Kevin Fitzgerald who went 13-2 with 94 points. Nice job, Kevin! Kevin had many players nipping at his heels. Jerry Douglas and Amanda Fanning were next with 92 points. Cody Mize was 4th with 90 points while the week's 5th place went to Robert Ricks (he also scored 90 but had one less win than Cody).

The Non-Sean Poluos Portion of the Overall Standings
Sean may have a stranglehold on the year-to-date standings but there are still other players having a very good year. The overall 2nd place position is currently held by Dan Valle. Yeah, Dan is 54 points behind Sean, but he jumped 4 places this week and has risen in the standings for 4 straight weeks, so maybe he can make a run at Sean. Or, maybe Sean will be challenged by Jason Runyen. Jason is currently in 3rd place (56 behind Sean) and has pretty much been in the Top 5 for the past 2 months. John Schmidt is currently 4th and has just as many points as Jason, so maybe he can threaten Sean. Don't rule out Amanda Fanning. Amanda is on a tear, having reached 5th place overall after being ranked in the 60's just 5 weeks ago. And who knows, maybe someone in the rest of the Top 10 can surprise us in the end. Those players include Linda Kunches, Mark Avery, Daniel Noirot, Jeff Raberding and Christine Kruse in 6th through 10th places, respectively.

PFCC Group Play Standings
The Hailraisers continue to lead the Group Play standings and have a decent lead over the 2nd place Boomerbacks (the Boomers, by the way, lead the CFCC Group Play standings, so they're quite a... group). In 3rd place we find Padookie Quack Attack.