College Football Contests Season Contests 2010-11 Wrap Up: Auburn Fends Off Oregon for Title
Season Contests 2010-11 Wrap Up: Auburn Fends Off Oregon for Title
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A highly competitive Bowl Series Challenge was highlighted by a 15-game win streak predicted by this year's winner devescovi. From December 31 through Monday's BCS National Championship, the Central Florida fan correctly called every game and climbed 19 spots to take hold of the top place after the GoDaddy.com Bowl on January 6th. He'd be challenged all the way through the weekend until his pick of Auburn over Oregon in the title game came through thanks to a game-winning drive led by QB Cam Newton and RB Michael Dyer. That and much more from the Season Challenge.
Bowl Series Challenge
The fifth Bowl Series Challenge prediction title went to devescovi who won the contest on record at 25-10(.714) through the three-week bowl season. He tallied the 14th most confidence points with 413.60 out of 630.
The Central Florida fan proved that with 35 bowl games the bowl contest is most like a marathon and you shouldn't count out yourself or anyone too early. Through the first nine games, devescovi was in the back half of the contest at 38th and after 15 games sat right in the middle in 30th position. It was then in the 16th and 17th bowls of the contest that he began to make a major move into contention.
devescovi's leap up the standings began on December 30th with his picks in the Pinstripe Bowl and Music City Bowl. He was one of 25% who picked Syracuse to upset Kansas State in the Pinstripe Bowl and 51% to rightly side with North Carolina over Tennessee in the Music City Bowl overtime thriller. After the controversy and late-game drama unfolded in two of the most exciting games of bowl season, devescovi saw himself rise 20 spots to 10th place in two games' time. In the night cap Holiday Bowl, Washington upended No. 18 Nebraska in what turned out to be the only game where no contestant recorded a win. devescovi would take a 10-8 record and 10th placing through the half-way point of the contest.
The next day on December 31st, the second half of the bowl season started devescovi out with a set-back when South Florida upset Clemson(27% correct) in the Meineke Car Care Bowl and Notre Dame blasted Miami(46% correct) in the Sun Bowl. He'd fall to 19th with a 10-10 .500 record.
But as bowl season hit its stride on New Year's Eve with the second afternoon game featuring devescovi's beloved UCF Knights in the Liberty Bowl, he'd go on a run the contest had never seen. UCF granted him with a hard-fought win over Georgia(22% correct) to get him back above .500. The last game in 2010 brought another fortuitous outcome after No. 23 Florida State upended No. 20 South Carolina(24% correct) in the Chik-fil-a Bowl. He'd start the new year in single-digit contention in 8th place. From there, devescovi never looked back closing out the contest's final week and a half on a 15-game winning streak, a feat no other player could claim in the first five years of the contest.
According to the field of contestants, there was only one minor upset that occurred during the bowls of the new year. No. 3 TCU's BCS-shaking 21-19 win over No. 5 Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl was predicted by 49% of participants in the most divided game of all the bowls(along with the Music City Bowl - 51% UNC). It was one of those swing games which ended up having contest defining implications riding on it and devescovi found the right side of the equation once again. Had he missed the Rose Bowl, he'd have finished 4th.
It took ten straight wins for devescovi to take hold of the top line following Miami-Ohio's win over Middle Tennessee(83%) in the GoDaddy.com Bowl on January 6th. To show how competitive of this year's contest was, it would take all 15 consecutive wins through the final weekend, including No. 1 Auburn over No. 2 Oregon(58% correct) in the BCS National Championship on January 10th for devescovi to secure the post-season prediction title.
The third time was the charm for devescovi in the Bowl Series Challenge. After finishing 49th in 2008 and 11th last year, he broke through for his first win in any college football prediction contest, season or weekly. He received $100, 10,000 CFBPoints, a golden football trophy and a permanent placement atop the Winners Wall.
Sixteen contestants were within three games of devescovi's 25-10 record. Second place finisher RollTide was the only contestant within one game at 24-11/434.30 and received 7,500 CFBPoints. In third place, decampo42 was awarded 5,000 CFBPoints and led four players at 23-12, including jmartin1145, eahasic and abailey. Had Oregon beaten Auburn in the BCS National Championship, eahasic would have won the contest on points over devescovi.
Seventh place finisher topadakey led the pack of players who posted 22-13 records. topadakey scored the most confidence points in the contest with 464.70 out of a possible 630. crzyfrk, BLNFalcon and tmack62 were among those at 22-13 and completed the top ten. All top ten finishers were awarded CFBPoints outlined on the contest's page and notched a Championship Top 10 statistic.
Mikey, this season's No. 1 rated predictor during the regular season, placed 20th with a score of 21-14/402.60. The average score was 20-15/377.31 which is about two games better than last year.
Top 25 Season Challenge
As competitive as the Bowl Series Challenge turned out, the Top 25 Season Challenge was equally uncompetitive. Kansas State fan J06Powercat(47) locked up the season long contest before the Heisman Trophy winner was ever announced with a record low 47 points. That's right, five correctly forecasted conference champions is all it took to win the 2010 version of the contest. Subsequently, the average score hit an all-time low of 22.98 out of 136 possible points which broke last year's previous low of 33.68.
Since the contest began running in 2007, the winning and average scores have kept trending downward. In 2007, the winning/average score was 92/43.50. In 2008, they were 81/34.06 and last year they fell to 65/33.68. This year, they plummeted to 47/22.98.
Either we're all getting progressively worse at forecasting champions or college football is becoming increasingly harder to gauge long-term. Logic would point to the latter being the case. Obviously, parity has taken full control over the past five seasons and has been spoken about plenty. In particular for this season, players like this year's Heisman winner Cam Newton can break onto the scene in an instant at a high profile school and change the entire landscape. Junior college players like Newton have become more popular to fill rosters and create depth in one off-season and a small number can have instant impacts on an entire team's performance -- Newton being the ultimate example of that this season.
Other predicting factors that have always been present have become bigger factors these last few years. Coaching changes, both at the head coach and assistant coaching level, have become more frequent as the expectations to win and show progress has expanded to lesser grade programs due to expanding parity. More frequent turnover of leadership and thus change in systems, schemes and philosophies can certainly make it tougher to project how well a team might embrace them and perform during the course of a season.
Another factor is the increasing number of injuries, most notably concussions, and the emphasis that has been placed on preventing recurring or further damage has kept players out of action longer than in previous years also contributes to uncertainty in long-term team and individual performance.
The good news for predictors is that odds are on our side that Top 25 Season Challenge picks will become more accurate. You'd think they would have to anyway, right? For one, you won't see too many Cam Newton's break onto the seen and change an entire program's season and thus college football's national race as quick as one can sign a national letter of intent. Those talents are rare and come around once every 10-15 years. Other outside factors like the economy might force programs to retain leadership longer resulting in more consistent and reliable results for teams.
Now getting back to the results...In the past two seasons, no contestant has predicted the Heisman winner and only three have predicted the National Champion. Perhaps the Heisman races haven't become as cut and dry and pre-determined as most tended to believe. In fact, there's been only one season where more than one contestant correctly picked the Heisman winner and that was in 2008 when, still, just five players penciled in Sam Bradford from Oklahoma. Another fallacy or misnomer might be the Heisman jinx. In the last two seasons, both Heisman winners Mark Ingram and Cam Newton have helped their teams win the BCS National Championship.
This season, only J06Powercat predicted more than four of the 11 conference champions. Only one conference champ was predicted by more than half of all contestants and that was the 75% who selected TCU to win the Mountain West. 48% correctly chose Virginia Tech to win the ACC and Oregon to win the Pac 10. 41% picked Big 12 Champion Oklahoma but from there the numbers got ugly. 16% chose Connecticut in the Big East and this number can't really be blamed on the picker after the favorite Pitt never got going and other front-runners struggled at one point or another. 8% picked the Wisconsin to win the Big Ten and Central Florida to win C-USA. Just 5% picked Auburn in the SEC, Miami-Ohio in the MAC and Florida International in the Sun Belt.
We'll make a long-term prediction of our own: these extremely low percentages and the current trend in this contest cannot and will not continue.
This was J06Powercat's first major prediction title. He received 7,500 CFBPoints, a golden football trophy and prominent recognition on the Winners Wall.
rocky(41) was the only contestant to predict Auburn's National Championship which was good for second place and 5,000 CFBPoints. JohnnyBeGood08, Dj_John69, eahasic, jtalsma83 and poppymuffin all tied for third with 37 points and were among those who picked four of the conference champions. They were each awarded 2,150 CFBPoints.
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