SJS College Football Extravaganza
Parade Of Champions, 2001

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2001 Parade Of Champions

The Picks Championship For the first time in the history of the SJS College Football Extravaganza, the picks contest has a repeat winner. It was Kelly, who posted a 180-75 (70.6%) mark in picking all but one week this season. Kelly entered the bowls trailing only Consensus Curtis, but solidified her victory with a 17-8 mark to edge Curtis in the final standings (70.6% to 70.4). Kelly's rise to prominence in the picks contest has paralleled that of her Miami Hurricanes, who also won a national championship this season, also with an impressive bowl tally. Those who have been watching the page for a long time know that Kelly's rookie season was a last-place finish, but 1998 was much better earning her that year's Expert To Watch Award. True to that award, she claimed the crown in 1999 and competed for it again in 2000 with a second place finish. It seems that controversy always seems to follow Kelly. Her 1999 title was challenged on account of her finishing behind Consensus Curtis, but the Hall Of Fame Committee (newly formed that year) ruled that nonhuman competitors like Curtis could not win the championship. Even more controversial was the decision that Matthias, who finished ahead of both Kelly and Curtis, was ineligible due to lack of participation. That rule, however, has been around since the beginning of the contest. This year the challanges were levied on two fronts. One, that Kelly missed one week of picks, and that was a week that turned out to be quite difficult. However, she still picked greater than 80% of the games this year, and the Hall Of Fame Committee stuck to the rule saying that the difficulty of the missed week could not be predicted a priori, and was, therefore, irrelevant. The second complaint was that Kelly, sometimes called "Consensus Kelly" by her detractors, was woefully conservative in her picking. In support of the accusations of her detractors, Kelly was this year's recipient of the Freddie Favorite Certificate coming in with the lowest upset index (0.118). But I think it is time to set the record straight on Kelly. To her credit, she was rather bold during the bowl season, and that boldness paid off: she was one of two experts to pick Utah's victory over Southern Cal, one of three to forsee Boston College over Georgia, and one of four to take Iowa over Texas Tech. Furthermore, while she did not capture the SJS Blue Ribbon, for the most correct picks in a season, she was retroactively awarded the SJS Blue Ribbon for 1999. Thus, to those who point out that her 2001 title is suspect for lack of picks must acknowledge her performance in her first championship year. But here, perhaps, is the final testimony to Kelly's greatness. This year she passed Dan and trails only Consensus Curtis as the all time career leader in picking percentage, and did so while competing in more picks than all but three other experts. Her career 68.58% picking percentage, highest among all human experts and attained over 1324 picks may be the single most impressive and important statistic in the SJS Hall Of Fame! The Ribbons New this year, but awarded retroactively back to 1996, are the SJS Blue Ribbon and the SJS Black Ribbon. Both are interesting stories. The Blue Ribbon goes to former champion Heater14, who picked up his second such award (winning it also during his championship season of 1998). The Black Ribbon, for most incorrect picks by a human expert, went to Oz. What makes that so interesting is that Oz was last year's Blue Ribbon winner (and champion), thus making him the biggest crash and burn story in the history of the contest. On The Way Up/On The Way Down Our Most Improved Expert this season was Keith, who turned 2000's mediocre 65.6% tenth place finish into a highly competitive 67.9% fourth place showing. Keith reigned in his propensity to pick upsets this season en route to a highly respectable finish. Both schmookie and boat earned strong consideration for this award. This season's Expert To Watch is schmookie. The schmook had a second place finish in 1997 but followed up his rookie sucess with subpar campaigns in 1998 and 1999. 2000 showed him righting the ship with a sixth place finish, and this year's third place finish (second among human experts) proved that the most photogenic member of the Magnificent 7 is a force to be reckoned with. The Expert To Watch Award has had a fairly good history. The 1997 winner, Webmaestro, surged to a fifth place finish in 1998, his highest placement since the pool grew to more than two participants. The 1998 awardee, Kelly, in went on to win the championship in 1999. The 1999 winner, Kevin, finished seventh in 2000. But the 2000 winner, Dan, did not exactly live up to his billing. His mediocre tenth place performance was not only well below his own standards - dragging him down two places to third in the Hall Of Fame's rankings of the best career pickers - but also finished him behind arch-rival Webmaestro for the first time in the history of not only the SJS College Football Extravaganza, but also the Picks Contest. Such was enough for him to earn this year's ignomious Army Cadet Cross, for a former champion who no longer scares anyone.

The Other Awards High on the success of beating Dan, Webmaestro collected the most hardware in the 2001 postseason award ceremony: some for the good, some for ill. Thanks mostly to lack of competition from Kevin, Oz, Matthias, and Saint Daddy, Webmaestro nabbed the Extravaganza's only regional award, the Midwest Region Champion. He also captured the coveted Send Me To Vegas Award for the most close scores, although it must be pointed out that had Master O completed a full season of picks, it is likely that he would have taken home that trophy for the second consecutive year. Well-earned was the Limb Walker for Webmaestro, for the most correct out on a limb picks (3 out of 9). Less favorable was the Dale Helms Award, given annually to the expert who starts out the season hot but falls hopelessly out of contention by the end of the season. Webmaestro won 5 weeks this year, mostly early on, then limped home to a seventh place showing (66.3%). Finally, his fifth award was the Browbeater Of The Year, the most highly-prized of the "social awards", for his incessant, if subtle, FSU-bashing. Perhaps only boat noticed, and perhaps even Webmaestro didn't realize his subconcious postings, as poll question after poll question seemed to highlight the Seminoles' subpar season. Sharing the Browbeater prize, also for subtle browbeating, was boat, for his rather lauditory efforts to draw Hurricane fan Kelly onto the mailing list. Our Rookie Of The Year was an easy choice this season: Pony Boy was our only rookie. But the Hall Of Fame Committee reserves the right to make no award in any category, so Pony Boy's trophy should not be seen as gratuitous. His sixth place 67.5% effort was better than any rookie since Oz in 1998. Look for more good picking from this talented ingenue. Speaking of Oz, he was a rather remarkable example of all that a Fall From Grace awardee should be. Literally going from first to worst as the Blue Ribbon Winner in 2000 and the Black Ribbon Winner in 2001, Oz was noteworthy for his incompetence. The only thing to possibly soothe Oz in the offseason is his second straight victory over arch-rival Matthias, whose own Fall From Grace continues after his flirtation with the 1999 championship. The paired upset picking awards of the Renegade Award and the Freddie Favorite Certificate go to Matthias and Kelly respectively, with upset indices of 0.250 and 0.118. While the Renegade Award is certainly lauditory, Matthias' 30% upset IQ was not helpful to his cause. The conservative Kelly, on the other hand, picked at better than 50% on her upset games, and upset IQ is well-known to be highly correlated with final ranking. In an upset, the Hall Of Fame committee awarded the Pulitzer Prize to Kevin. While no single piece was cited, Kevin was lauded for contributing great discussion pieces to the mailing list, including the off-topic baseball contraction issue. Some may rightly consider unfair the lack of a Prize for boat and Webmaestro, who tend to contribute the lion's share of the mailing list items season in and season out, but insiders say that the Hall Of Fame Committee was interested in drawing out more contributors to the mailing list. The Misplaced Priorities Award was hotly contested this season. In the end, SIR CHAPS was given the certificate, on two grounds: one, that erstwhile ROBERT found a great nickname but then stopped picking, and two, one of our historically weakest pickers was off to an excellent start but then abandoned picking early in the season. Also up for consideration was Master O, who picked deeper into the season and looked sure to capture another Send Me To Vegas Award had he not dropped out. The Misplaced Priorities Award, though, takes into account how important the distractions were. Thus, CoconutHead, who also missed several weeks, was starting a new job and had a baby. Master O is preparing for medical school. SIR CHAPS, we speculate, was busy improving his score on Quake II and spending 2 hours at coffee when he should've been researching college football. The Properly Place Priorities Award goes to the senior citizen and only grandpa of the group, Saint Daddy. On one hand he overcame many obstacles after his hip surgery to pick every week, but on the other hand, his best weeks of picking were those while still in the haze of operative anesthesia and pain killers... CoconutHead claimed this year's Loyalty Award, given annually to the expert most led astray by favoritism of his particular team. In a season when even boat picked against Florida State, CoconutHead went down with that ship. The New H Man was the second recipient of the John Cooper Award for the expert in contention for several trophies who did not win any. Included are the Black Ribbon, the Dale Helms, the Renegade, and the Limb Walker. Better luck next year! Finally, a well-earned third consecutive Steady Freddie Award goes to Heater14. Just look at these end of year picks rankings for Heater: first, fifth, second, and fifth. And this year's fifth went along with the SJS Blue Ribbon, which some may consider as important as the Picks Championship. Heater is now fourth on the all-time career picking percentage list, and seems to be in contention for the championship every season. A Final Word Thank you to everyone for making the fifth anniversary season of the SJS College Football Extravaganza a huge success! Congratualations to all our awardees, and especially to champion Kelly!