The new NFL season started last weekend, and this is going to be a different kind of football season for me. For the first time in about six years, the Howlin' Wolfs won't be playing.
The Howlin' Wolfs never benefited from a TV contract or had to negotiate with player agents. It never had to hire security at the gates or hire a large staff or run a pro shop. It never had uniforms or marketing pizazz.
That's because the Howlin' Wolfs lived only on computer servers. That was the name of my fantasy football team the last few years. They did OK. I think one year, we finished second in the regular season. Another year, the Wolfs reached the championship game of the post-season. Other years, they didn't do as well.
Early this year, I decided to stop playing in fantasy sports leagues. I only was in two--a baseball league in spring and summer and a football league in fall. I decided now that I'm 60, I'll move on to other things.
The main reason: I'm just not as much into baseball (especially) and football now, and I certainly don't want to spend most of my free time researching which players I want on my team. I have other things I'm interested in, stuff that I'm more curious about. And I'm more into hockey than I was before.
So no more fantasy teams. For the most part.
This fall I put down $20 to support our local high school football team by buying a ticket in their Football Mania game. It's one of their fund-raisers. You buy a ticket, and it gives you three randomly selected NFL teams--a different trio each week. Your score is the total points those three teams score each weekend.
Each week, the four highest totals and the two lowest totals earn cash prizes. Best total of the week wins $500. Worst total wins $50. If entries finish with the same number of points, their teams' combined net yards is the tiebreaker.
For week 1, I had the Chicago Bears, Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers. They combined to score 58 points and gained 1,245 net yards. I went to the website to see how I did.
Here's how I did: I finished 1883rd. That's better than 1884th, I guess. The first place ticket had teams that combined to score 110 points.
However, I was pleased to see that my 1,245 net yards was better than any of the top 25 teams. But all 25 of those teams scored 96 points or more. Mine only totaled 58--seems that they moved up and down the field OK but fell apart when they reached the red zone (inside the 20 yard line).
(The second best total net yards was 1,194, by one of those 96-point teams.)
The low total was 22 points. This morning, I got a news release: Seems that a local guy won the $50 prize for having lowest score in Week 1: 22 points and 819 total yards (three teams tied at 22).
Now teams are getting ready for the second week of the NFL season. This Sunday, I will be rooting for extreme success for the Carolina Panthers, Cleveland Browns and San Diego Chargers.
Extreme success or extreme ineptitude. $50 wouldn't be a bad prize, would it?
Let's see: What are my chances of winning a cash prize? Time for a little lesson in practical mathematics.
There are six cash prizes per week, and there are 17 weeks in the season. Multiply one by the other (6*17) gives a total of 102 cash prizes all season.
Since there are 32 teams in the NFL and you get three teams each week, we have to ask my handy-dandy blue scientific calculator how many different three-team combinations there are. Mr. Sharp?
Mr. Sharp: "There are 4,960 different possible combinations of three teams in a 32-team league. That's what the "nCr" function on my keyboard is used for."
Very good. For our next step, we have to divide 102 by 4,960 (102/4960) to get my odds of winning some moolah. The answer: a 2.06% chance. Odds of about 1 in 49.
That doesn't look very promising, right? But look at it this way.
How many of you buy lottery tickets? Mr. Sharp, what are the odds of winning a typical 6/49 state lottery?
Mr. Sharp: "One in 13,983,816. Exactly."
We'll round that off to 1 in 14,000,000. So next, we are going to divide 14 million by 49. One last time, Mr. Sharp.
Mr. Sharp: "That comes to 285,714.2857."
Which means that my chances of winning a Football Mania cash prize at some point this season is 286,000 times better than hitting the lottery. If I ever decide to buy a ticket. I think the last time I invested in a lottery ticket was ... 20 years ago? More?
Anyway, if I win something in Football Mania, I'll let you know. Just don't hold your breath, OK?
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