Week 8 had a few surprises (like nobody picking the Panthers over the Cardinals), but we continue with great participation.  The other big surprise was only 16/64 people picked the Eagles over the Giants, which ended up being a pretty big blowout.  Nobody picked the 49ers to win straight up, and only 2 correctly picked them to cover (one of them was who I called out for picking against the Colts last week).  This was also the first week that the Broncos or Saints lost ATS, so you can't ride that train anymore.

On to the Results.  In the Against the Spread contest, the winner this week is TouchdownMonkey, who got 9/13 games correct.  Nice job in a tough week!  Here's the leaderboard after 8 weeks:

In the Straight Up contest, the winner this week is skywalker, who got 11/13 games right.  Yours truly was tied with a slew of others at 10 correct, which is the closest I've been to the top yet this year.  Here's the leaderboard after 8 weeks:

shoein is still on top in both contests, although he's actually 1 game behind Bill Simmons.  Speaking of Simmons, he had a pretty good column on how he did so well early on in the season, and a warning that he's now just guessing, and you shouldn't listen to him:

Anyway, here's my request for the next few weeks: If you have bad luck, stay away from "borrowing" my 2009 picks. Don't be the cooler of my column. Let me see if I can keep banging out 10-4 and 11-5 marks every week without you attaching a black cat to my ankles. If you have bad luck and are joining forces with me, that means other people with bad luck are doing the same. How do you think that's turning out for all of us? Badly. Poorly. Tragically.

Full Standings are after the jump.  You'll notice I've only included the last 5 weeks, as it's too wide for any more.  That means if you haven't participated the past 5 weeks, you're out of the standings. I'll be around Sunday afternoon to let everyone see the picks. 

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Picks Week 8

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Week 9, open until 1:00 ET Sunday

Continue reading this post »

Week 8 brought some better scores, and an almost perfect week by someone.  I also see 1 person picked Tampa Bay to beat the Patriots (that's some intense hatred!), and 1 person picked the Redskins to win.  Biggest Upset was by far the Cardinals over Giants, where only 5/75 picked the Cardinals.  I'd also like to point out that only 1 person picked the Rams either Straight Up or ATS, and I'll let him come forward with shame...

On to the Results.  In the Against the Spread contest, the winner this week is Orren's Boy, who got 11/13 games correct, which was a great week.  He picked all the Favorites, and had a great week.  Here's the leaderboard after 7 weeks:

In the Straight Up contest, the winner this week is shelbyjames, who got 12/13 games right.  He/She (I'm not sure) only missed the Cowboys winning, which is perfectly acceptable.  Here's the leaderboard after 7 weeks:

Congrats to shoein, who is still on top in both contests.  Only one game up in both, however.  I had an awful week picking upsets, and hope to turn that around this week.

Full Standings are after the jump.  You'll notice I've only included the last 5 weeks, as it's too wide for any more.  That means if you haven't participated the past 5 weeks, you're out of the standings. I'll be around Sunday afternoon to let everyone see the picks.  As a reminder, there is no Sunday Night game this week, as they won't compete with the World Series.

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Picks Week 7

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Week 8, open until 1:00 ET Sunday

Continue reading this post »

Week 7 was a real struggle for most of us around here.  It actually included two different teams (Oakland and Buffalo) who had 0 people pick them to win Straight Up.  Hopefully this week brings some better luck picking games.

On to the Results.  In the Against the Spread contest, the winner this week is PB, who got 10/14 games correct, which was a great week.  A couple games came within 1/2 a point, so getting those right was especially tough.  Here's the leaderboard after 6 weeks:

In the Straight Up contest, the winner this week is KingRichard, who got 12/14 games right.  That means the only games he missed were the games everyone missed.  That's the 2nd week in a row KingRichard has had the most right, just in opposite contests.  Nice work.  Here's the leaderboard after 6 weeks:

Congrats to shoein, who is now winning in both contests.  Still a long way to go, but pretty impressive so far.

Full Standings are after the jump.  You'll notice I've only included the last 5 weeks, as it's too wide for any more.  That means if you haven't participated the past 5 weeks, you're out of the standings. I'll also send the links to shake so he can post them, as I'm not positive I'll have internet on Sunday.

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Picks Week 6

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Week 7, open until 1:00 ET Sunday

Continue reading this post »

Another successful week for the Stampede Blue Prediction Contest, and our participation still remains great.  Week 5 saw a few more upsets, which I called 2 of the 3 (booyah!):

• Seahawks - 8/63 SU, 8/37 ATS (I guess a few of us doubted how much Hasselbeck means to the Seahawks)
• Browns - 12/63 SU, 17/37 ATS
• Bengals - 8/63 SU, 29/37 ATS.  Looks like everyone figured out 8.5 points was a lot.

Unanimous choices this week were Minnesota, Philadelphia, and the Giants.  None of these were ever in jeopardy, so nice work everyone!

On to the results of Week 5...Winning this week in the Straight Up contest were 4 different people going 11-3:

• bluegirl
• DFWColtFan
• peytonsthebest
• TouchdownMonkey

Great job to all of you!  As for the season totals, the leaders are:

In the Against the Spread contest, we had 1 winner who went 10-4, and that was KingRichard.  Nice work by one of my fellow writers here.  On the season, the Stampede Blue leaders look like this:

Bill Simmons is back on top, having a pretty good week himself with 10 victories.  I'd also like to point out that Skip Wood, "expert" at USA Today, only got 4 games correct STRAIGHT UP.  He decided to pick a bunch of the big number underdogs to win, but didn't pick the Bengals.  Great job!  You'll also notice the Power Ranking, which I mentioned earlier today.  Those full rankings will come at some point on Thursday, with a short explanation.  Needless to say, it looks to be pretty good at this point.

Full Standings are after the jump.  I'll try to post the link on Sunday for everyone to see the picks, but can't promise I'll be around at 1:00.

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Picks Week 5

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Week 6, open until 1:00 ET Sunday

Continue reading this post »

We are now 1/4 of the way through the season, and some of our leaders came back to the pack a little bit this week, giving some of us a ray of hope that we can still win this thing.  A couple "upsets" this week in Stampede Blue land:

• Broncos - 18/70  SU, 13/39 ATS
  
• Jaguars - 10/70 SU, 9/39 ATS

Also, nobody picked the Colts or Giants to lose straight up, which were pretty safe bets.  Also, 4 people picked Oakland to win.  For shame...

Let's get to the Results from Week 4.  Topping our Straight Up contest this week is piojocuau, who went 13-1 last week, only missing Baltimore.  Nice work!  Our leaders after 4 weeks:

Pete O'Brien of USA Today leads everyone with 49, and the Coin Flip struggled mightily this week, only getting 5 correct.  We have 3 people who got 10  games correct Against the Spread:

• burncruisin
• Orren's Boy
• marvinindy

Home teams were 12-2 ATS this week, which is a big change from both last year, and the first 3 weeks.  Overall Stampede Blue leaders after 4 weeks:

Bill Simmons only got 5 correct this week, and he's now tied with our leaders at 40.  And someone's lurking only 5 games back...

Full Standings are after the jump.  I'll post the link on Sunday for everyone to see the picks.

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Picks Week 4

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Week 5, open until 1:00 ET Sunday

Continue reading this post »

How far into the season can we start needling Stampede Blue readers about getting beat by a Coin Flip?  If it is after 3 weeks, then I'm going to run off and hide, as I'm 2 games behind my trusty coin.  There are also 4 "experts" who have less picks correct, and 2 others that are tied at 31/48.  Make sure to take a look at the Straight Up standings to see if you are as embarrassed as I am right now.  Don't count anyone who missed a week, as they will clearly be behind the coin.

This week we had 84 players pick in the Straight Up contest, and congratulations go out to 3 players, who all got 14 games right:

• Gmachine!
• jammer6303
• JustinPugh

Overall after 3 weeks, here's the Stampede Blue Readers Leaderboard:

As far as Against the Spread goes, we had 43 players, and congratulations go out to 2 players for getting 13 games right:

• bobzilla3
• goblue

Overall after 3 weeks, the Stampede Blue Leaderboard (all trailing Bill Simmons' 35):

There are so many players this year, it's going to be tough making up a bad week, so make sure to get your picks in, and make sure they are not the same as mine.  Or just flip a coin, since it's not doing half bad. 

Full Standings are after the jump.  I'll give Shake the link to the picks to post on Sunday, as I'll be in the 300 Level of Lucas Oil Stadium.  I can't wait.

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Picks Week 3

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Week 4, open until 1:00 ET Sunday

Continue reading this post »

I'm a little late with the Results (thanks Work Conference), but another solid week for both the Colts, and participation in the Prediction Contest.  We had 82 people pick games Straight Up, and 49 picking Against the Spread, which is fantastic.  Keep it up!

We'll start with Against the Spread.  This week's winners, correctly picking 13 games were:

• UnofficialPants
• jedye
• Cassieper

Congrats to the 3 of you.  Overall, recent Colts convert Bill Simmons is in the lead with 25 correct games out of 32, including 14 last week.  He's off to a great start.  As far as players around here:

Congrats to shoein for the Week 2 lead, and thanks to him for letting me know about the Thursday game from Week 1.  All the numbers have been modified, so if you picked a game after it started, you didn't get credit for it. 

For Straight Up picks, there were 2 people who got 13 games correct:  jahren & Cassieper.   Nice job!  As far as the overall lead, Pete O'Brien of USA Today has 26 correct picks, leading by 1 over Chris Mortensen of ESPN.  For Stampede Blue Readers, here's the top of the leaderboard:

Make sure to get your predictions in for Week 3.  Good Luck everyone.  Full results after the jump.

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Picks Week 2

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Week 3, open until 1:00 ET Sunday

Continue reading this post »

Week 1 is in the books, and it went much better for all of us Colts' fans than last year.  A divisional win, along with a full game lead on everyone in the division makes it a pretty good week here.  The only thing that could have made it a better weekend would have been for the Bills to not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Oh well, time to move on.

This year's Prediction Contest looks to be fantastic if we get as big of a response as we did in Week 1 each and every week.  We had 46 people predict games Against the Spread, and 66 people predict games Straight Up (including somebody named "Your Mom", who had an impressive 1 this week.  Seriously, that's pretty damn good to try and screw up every game, and almost succeed spectacularly.)

Winning the Straight Up predictions this week were 6 different people, each getting 14 games correct:

• bluegirl
• Denn
• Gmachine!
• oldecoltsfan
• shelbyjames
• zkmavz

Winning the Against the Spread predictions this week was shoein with 12 correct picks.  Our favorite Patriot homer Bill Simmons got 11 correct, getting a good start to the season.  Try to stay away from the bottom of this table, as you'll see one of our writers here tied for last...(hint: it's not JakeTheSnake).

This weekend I'll be making my first visit to Las Vegas, and plan on making picks on most of the games this weekend, so expect my ATS numbers to be very low.  If anyone wants to give me any Stone Cold Locks, please let me know, and I'll be sure to pick the opposite :)

After the jump you'll see the results for both Contests.  I've italicized the "experts" picks, so they are easier to pick out.  Click on table headers to sort the columns.

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Picks Week 1

Stampede Blue Prediction Contest Week 2, open until 1:00 ET Sunday

Continue reading this post »