FanPost

Passing the Torch

I've had this title since getting the word from KD Drummond that he was going to take 10-for-10 with him to his new site, and have been promising this FanPost for several days.

Unfortunately, I've spent most of the past week sick in bed (summer cold that turned into a nasty sinus infection). I meant to post this last Wednesday or Thursday, and am writing it as if you were reading this before the weekend, when it was more timely.

In 2010, using the username kdp, KD debuted 10-for-10 as a weekly contest. He included it in weekly FanPosts with his other interests - gambling advice and fantasy football. I joined BTB late in that season after lurking for several months. I do not care about sports betting or fantasy football, so I didn't pay any attention to those FanPosts.

Shortly after I joined, KD was promoted to the front page. Jump forward a few months to opening weekend of 2011. KD introduces 10-for-10 to the front page, a pick-em game that sounded like fun - easy to play, and winnable. I submitted my picks. When I came home from church that Sunday afternoon, the early games were well in progress. I returned to his page and looked through the comments, wondering if anyone was going to go 10-for-10. Most were easy to eliminate, as there were a couple of "upset specials" that almost everyone had missed (like yesterday's Buffalo-Chicago, New England-Miami, and Tennessee-Kansas City "upsets").

In a fateful move, and just for fun, I set up a spreadsheet and recorded everyone's entries. There weren't that many, and it didn't take too long. By the time the early games went final, it was apparent that there would be no 10-for-10s. In fact, no one did better than 8-for-10. Me? 4-for-10. I posted my observations and results that evening and emailed KD to ask if he would like any help scoring 10-for-10. I expected to hear nothing from a great Front Page Writer, but the response was just the opposite.

What I called "not that many" was triple the response that he had the first year. He welcomed the help, and our relationship began.

I invite you to read (or re-read) that opening 10-for-10 contest page from 2011, along with my first clumsy 10-for-10 FanPost to report results and observations. My first BTB FanPosts were articles - my tribute to Don Meredith and my first I Did the Math FanPosts - with no tables or graphics. I knew nothing about HTML or how to create tables from my spreadsheet that would work in these weekly FanPosts.

Cue One.Cool.Customer. Not only had he written the definitive FanPost himself about this very topic, but he responded with grace and kindness. He asked me to email him an Excel file showing the kind of table that I wished to create. He sent back a custom spreadsheet embedded with HTML commands. All I had to do was enter my information into specifically marked cells. Then, I copied his specially-marked cells into my FanPost. His cells merged my information with HTML commands and made perfectly colored and formatted tables.

Through the past three years, I was able to branch out a little on my own, figuring out what each command meant, and making new tables (or modifying existing ones) without having to send out for help each time.

In 2012, I began to track our 10-for-10 consensus each week and report a one-way contest with O.C.C and the FPWs' weekly contest where they all submitted picks for all games. We narrowly lost in 2012, and beat them in 2013. We also had some "side-bets" on 10-for-10, mostly late in the season, where players would submit up to three weeks of picks at one time (play 30-for-30), and others would ramp it up by challenging any takers to go 48-for-48.

In 2013, one participant - jstaubach - took that challenge another level, and he submitted every game all season (actually, he had been doing that already; I just began to tabulate and record his efforts). Each 10-for-10 entry would note which ten games were to be counted there, and then he submitted picks for the other three-to-six games that were being played. I tracked his performance each week, as I tracked our consensus, against the FPWs. He absolutely destroyed them. If his picks had been recorded on their weekly page, it wouldn't have been close. Now, I did post the disclaimer each week - the FPWs had to get their picks in by Wednesday, and jstaubach had a decided advantage by being able to post a Thursday pick on Thursday, and wait until Sunday morning for the rest of his picks.

Now, it is time to pass the torch. KD contacted me before his move was made public and discussed the future of 10-for-10. Some options included:

  • KD keeping it on BTB as a FanPost (same as 2010); I would probably continue to help him
  • KD abandoning 10-for-10 and leaving it for us; I would have considered taking it and running it myself
  • KD taking it with him to his new site; I explained that my loyalty was to BTB, and that I could not promise to be able to provide any assistance to him on a competing site

I had an email dialogue with One.Cool.Customer and Dave Halprin to see what options BTB was considering once KD made his decision for this season. They did exactly what I would have done if it had been my call - Pick 256. We needed to keep a contest that was unique to BTB for all our members to continue to participate in a pick-em (essentially, what jstaubach has already been doing each year). Others would join KD and continue to play 10-for-10 wherever it was hosted. Some, like me, are playing both.

One of the issues we had discussed last year (when 10-for-10 had grown so large that it was becoming a major burden to tally each week) was how to automate the entry process. For three years, I had been manually recording each participants' entries each week into a spreadsheet from comments - some in one place, some in two or three places, some formatted correctly, some not formatted correctly, and some with improper entries (submit a Thursday game on Saturday, forget to include Cowboys, etc.). For example, this past season, those two hundred fifty-six picks from over two hundred weekly participants meant over 50,000 cells to accurately record manually (yes, I did the math). KD, Coty, and others (Dave and O.C.C maybe) had looked at ways to engineer automated entries within the SBNation platform. Nothing was feasible within SBNation.

During the season, CowboyBaby tried to get me to join him on another platform, where he was taking over a similar contest that was completely automated. Again, I refused to leave the BTB platform.

The technology solution for this year came less than a month ago when fuji1232 set up BTB Fantasy Football, using Google Forms. "The Google" quickly set up a Google Forms entry process to create an entry form that we could use to record weekly entries, and the results could be exported directly into a spreadsheet.

It has been an immediate success. More people entered Pick 256 in week #1 than ever played 10-for-10.

What about KD? He was also looking for the answer that O.C.C found and immediately mirrored the technology himself on the other site to set up 10-for-10. He has also had immediate success. A bunch of us joined the regulars on the other site, and he also had more entries this week than ever played 10-for-10 here.

I am glad that I didn't have to record that many entries manually this week. So, what's next for me? Where am I passing the torch?

First, I have offered my assistance to O.C.C, and will be making weekly FanPost reports every Tuesday - reporting how we did each week, and making some analysis. I hope to also be able post the next week's contest link on my FanPost. O.C.C will then make his regular post on Thursday with the FPW contest, including our Pick 256 link, and reporting the top scores as well. Then, each weekend, after the contest closes on Thursday night, he will post the entry spreadsheet so you can all follow along and check your progress as the games are played. Then, on Tuesday... (the process continues)

Secondly, I wish KD well. I plan to continue participating in 10-for-10. Depending on how much time I have available to me during each week, I might be able to offer some of the same reporting assistance that I did before (leaderboard and weekly results tables, Hall of Fame table, etc.). But, depending on how he set up his contest, he might not need me this year. We'll see. I hope he is able to figure out how to share the entries before the games. That was a lot of the fun of 10-for-10 - making comments and criticisms of others' picks (remember "true fan" and "traitor" reactions to people's picks for the Cowboys to win or lose). I missed that camaraderie this week.

So, the torch is passed, and it is still here. Both contests are open to all of us (and to non-members, since the Google Forms links don't require membership in either forum). KD is gone, but he's still with us. 10-for-10 has moved, but most of the participants are from here. I'm still here; I'm just assisting One.Cool.Customer instead of KD Drummond.

Look for my weekly FanPosts, beginning Tuesday.

Another user-created commentary provided by a BTB reader.