It started with a dream that die-hard Jets fan Fred Coupon would lose a wager that would have required him to spend a whole Saturday in our kitchen cranking out piping hot Cheddar Bay biscuits and mixing ice cold Lobsteritas for as many Frowns readers as could fit in the room, while wearing an apron emblazoned with Eric Mangini’s grinning mug. It only ended with the perfect antidote to the insane vagaries of fantasy football, the most phenomenal football picking competition on the internet or anywhere else.
It’s like Grandma Frownie said: Shoot for Cedar Point, because even if you miss, you’ll land at Holiday Sands.
FACT: Nobody who’s ever participated in Cheddar Bay has ever failed to report the event as the most thrilling and enriching experience of the participant’s life.
Now’s your chance. Enter Cheddar Bay, Enter Civilization, after the jump …
The “why” should be obvious, because the fact is you’re going to be watching the games anyway. Finding and tracking the narratives about the games is what makes watching them so much fun, and when you compete at evaluating the worth of these narratives with a group of the best folks anywhere on the internet, the rewards are exponential, which is to say nothing of the chance to win an enormous cash prize.
But most importantly, you can’t even imagine the sort of things you’ll learn about yourself. Last year’s champion, The Commenter Formerly Known as “P” (the only female participant in last year’s pickstravaganza (SAD, ladies)), was mired deeply in last place for the first four weeks of the competition, which seemed like an eternity at the time, but if Cheddar Bay is about anything, it’s about perspective and persistence, and you can’t put a price on what it means to know, to really know what it takes to make any obstacle vanish into the air.
Which is to say nothing of the incredible case of last year’s runner-up Titus Pullo, who’d have won the whole thing if he’d have only managed to pick against the loathsome Steelers on Super Bowl Sunday, the day that’s supposed to be the best football day of the year. Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment. Stockholm Syndrome is real. The potential for self-improvement is limitless.
And the rules are simple, with some slight tweaks from last year’s: Pick SIX games each week against the prevailing point spread (we’ll use the sportsbook.com column from each Wednesday’s New York Post line, (which Cheddar Bay Boss @jimkanicki will freeze in a digital dropbox and post in the Cheddar Bay thread for each week)), any SIX, as long as you pick at least one NFL game and at least one from the college slate.
Five of the picks each week will count for 1 point each in the standings. For the sixth, your favorite pick, you’re required to write an essay of at least 100 words to post in the comments here to the weekly Cheddar Bay Open Thread, explaining your reasons for the pick in terms of factors/narratives that are misvalued in the point spread. (E.g. “Factor X is not fully appreciated in the line for this game, for reasons X, Y, Z, etc., thus the pick here is Team A.”) The weekly essay pick is worth 3.5 points, and writing the essays is a lot easier than you think it is.
The point of the essays is to share ideas so that we can all use them when we make our own plays outside of this competition, as well as take them into the following weeks. A rising tide lifts all boats, of course. Cheddar Bay has also proven over the years to be an effective groupthink detector. And in the unlikely events when folks come up with something decent in their essays, such prose might be featured in a column here. As you see, the essays are extremely important, so please note that by agreeing to participate here, you’re subject to waiving your entry fee if you bag the essay requirement more than twice. Everybody gets one week with no essay. The second missed essay waives a chance at one weekly prize, and on the third bagged essay you’re out. Writing an obviously thoughtless essay also counts as bagging, and by agreeing to participate you’re agreeing to submit to judgment (the community’s and mostly mine) on what’s “obviously thoughtless.” Nobody was flagged for this last year, though there were some really close calls. Fair is fair. Also, picks should be in by three hours before kickoff for each game you pick (subject to the same penalties as essay bagging), because otherwise the whole data collection thing goes out the window.
Also, if you are wagering on football games anyway and can’t manage to think at least one of them through to the point where it’s easy to write a 100 word essay about it, there’s really no telling how far you’ll come as a person when you enter a phenomenal picking competition that will force you to sit down and do this every week.
The entry fee is $100 (a piddling $5.88 per week for a 17 week regular season), and the fee money will go entirely to the winners. The breakdown will be 50% to first place, 20% to second place, and 30% for weekly winners starting at Week 11 to keep folks in the game. We’ll use the same weighted playoff scoring system that we’ve used in the last two seasons and will decide how many playoff slots there will be in an appropriately democratic fashion once we know how many folks are in for this season but there will be at least four no matter what.
Finally, this is not legal advice, and don’t take it from me, but this thing is one billion percent legal.
ALRIGHT YOU GUYS GET TO PICKING. The Cheddar Bay Week 1 Open Thread is right here with this post so sign up simply by posting your picks here and emailing clevelandfrowns@gmail.com from what will be your official Cheddar Bay email address, which will then be included on the official [CONFIDENTIAL] Cheddar Bay email list to which emails will be sent re: payment and other important things.
Good luck, everybody, and enjoy. Any questions will be addressed in the comments here, or feel free to email clevelandfrowns@gmail.com as always.
