Parts Unknown (DP--Disassociated Press): After this year's NFL Championship round ran its course, and its handicapping action mercifully came to its nail-biting conclusion, the Bookie Challenge competition was no closer to figuring out an unequivocal odds-on favorite to win this year's overall Bookie Challenge championship than it was able to do before the start of this year's postseason. That's not to say there isn't a handicapper who holds a trump card up his sleeve and can be considered as a de facto candidate that might foot the bill, as in 7mick7, who is the only handicapper who truly stands to benefit from his preseason selection of this year's Super Bowl winner, the Kansas City Chiefs. In fact, if the Chiefs indeed go on to win this year's grand finale, the Irish Hustler is going to be blessed with 10 huge bonus points at the conclusion of the Super Bowl, of which the bonus points could possibly boost 7mick7 to his first Bookie Challenge championship. But nothing can be taken for granted, as the Chiefs are presently 2½-point underdogs to the San Francisco 49ers heading into this year's final game of the season. What also has to be kept in mind is that a pointspread is not factored into one's selection of a preseason Super Bowl winner. In other words, for 7mick7 to win 10 bonus points, the Chiefs are going to have to defeat the 49ers outright. But if the Chiefs fall short of defeating the 49ers, then the Irish Hustler is going to have to batten down the hatches and figure out a different way to fend off three heavyweight contenders who are also battling it out with 7mick7 atop the playoff point standings for this year's Bookie Challenge championship, of which all three handicappers, the likes of Driveline, jcvike28, and the Biased Nihilist, also have their respective sights set on capturing this year's highly coveted Bookie Challenge title. So if the Chiefs don't come through for the Irish Hustler in the most critical outing of this season, the final showdown among 7mick7, Driveline, jcvike28, and the Biased Nihilist for this year's Bookie Challenge championship is going to come down to a dog-eat-dog handicapping battle of attrition.

But it's first things first. Before we put 7mick7 at the head of the line to win this year's overall title, let's not forget that it wasn't 7mick7 who ended the NFL Championship round in first place of the Challenge's playoff point standings, but rather it was this year's defending Bookie Challenge champion, as in Driveline, who finished the last round with a 1-point lead over 2nd-place 7mick7 (30pts vs 29pts), a 2-point lead over 3rd-place jcvike (30pts vs 28pts), and a 4-point lead over the 4th-place Biased Nihilist (30pts vs 26pts). So, to reiterate, if the Chiefs do happen to ruin 7mick7's best chance to win an overall Bookie Challenge championship this upcoming Sunday evening, it's a no-brainer that the winner of this year's Bookie Challenge championship, in most likelihood, is going to have to produce the highest scoring total in this year's Super Bowl round, of which will probably necessitate the eventual winner of the round to bang out and win the most propositional selections that are incoporated in the Super Bowl round, or at least connect on the Lion's share of the prop picks that are going to be required to be submitted for Super Bowl Sunday. Incidentally, so far in this weekly review the spotlight has been on the handicappers who are in a virtual gridlock in the top tier of the present playoff point standing and who probably have the best chances to win this year's Bookie Challenge title, to mean Driveline, 7mick7, jcvike28, and the Biased Nihilist, but there is an outlier who is still in the fray to contend for this year's overall championship, of whom is Vikings17, or the greenhorn who has been this year's runaway rookie phenom. Heading into this year's final round, and with 23 overall points accrued in this year's postseason, Vikings17 is presently situated in 5th place in the playoff point standings, just three points beneath the 4th-place Biased Nihilist and seven points away from the overall lead of the playoffs. And if anyone from the Challenge field has already forgotten, as a rookie in this year's competition, Vikings17 won this year's Run-&-Shoot divisional title over some of the competition's toughest veteran handicappers in DawgPound, moemonie, and TCU, but more impressively, the "Purple People Eater" won this year's regular-season championship. Consequently, because Vikings17 was poised to start this year's postseason as the regular-season champion, and would start the opening round of the postseason with significant scoring advantages over the entire Bookie Challenge field, he was rightly pegged as the early favorite to win this year's Bookie Challenge championship.

Unfortunately for Vikings17, after he handicapped his first-ever playoff round of a Bookie Challenge postseason, which was this year's NFL Wild Card round, he quickly found out that winning an overall Bookie Challenge championship over the more experienced and battle-tested veteran handicappers of the competition wasn't going to be a cakewalk, and in an excruciating twist of fate, it was 7mick7, the very participant who recruited vikings17 to join the Bookie Challenge competition before the start of this year's competition, who transformed Vikings17's shooting-star season into a falling-star disaster after the Irish Hustler went a perfect 5-0-0 with his five best bets in the opening round of this year's postseason and culminated the first round with a 1-point edge over Viking17 for the initial lead of this year's playoffs (10pts vs 9pts). So in one fell swoop, Mick Balls quickly negated Vikings17's substantial scoring advantages that the upstart rookie was supposed to capitalize upon over the rest of the Challenge field in the first round of this year's playoffs. But even before the start of this year's postseason, the allure of Viking17's magical rookie season got diminished somewhat after his preseason selection of the Cincinnati Bengals to win this year's Super Bowl got eliminated from the playoffs, of which the Bengals' elimination tempered some of Viking17's momentum right before he headed into this year's postseason. More importantly, because the chances of Vikings17 to win any crucial bonus points off his preseason Super Bowl selection no longer existed, it gave rise to the speculation that maybe Vikings17 didn't have enough handicapping ammunition to see his dream of winning an overall Bookie Challenge championship become a reality. Essentially, although Vikings17 won this year's regular-season championship, that distinguished honor is slowly turning out to be in name only, especially after he has gradually and painstakingly seen his seizure of this year's regular-season championship lose some of its stature, of which is clearly apparent by the fact that he is presently behind the eight ball when compared to the main group of front-runners who are currently atop of the playoff point standings. Regardless, and as mentioned earlier in this weekly review, Vikings17's current point total (23 pts) still has him in rough proximity of the point totals of those from the present front-runners within the top tier of the standings, and therefore needs to be included in the conversation about the participants who are in the hunt to win an overall Bookie Challenge title. Now granted, when comparing Viking17's point total to those of the main front-runners, it's obvious his point total is in the outer periphery, but although he is on the outside looking in, the truth of the matter is that he's still in the game, still in the picture, and that's something that can't be said with a straight face about the rest of the participants who are presently underneath him in the playoff point standings. To that regard, Vikings17 might just be the last handicapper who can be considered as still being in contention for this year's overall Bookie Challenge championship. To better explain it, the next lower point total underneath that of Vikings17's is 14 points, of which the 14 points belong to Theopholis and it's a point total that is nine points lower than Vikings17's total of 23 points.

But let's get back to the point totals that are more significant at this crucial stage of the season, the ones that belong to the handful of the present front-runners atop the playoff point standings. As it stands right now, in the current playoff point standdings, only four points separate Driveline's first-place point total (30pts) from that of the Biased Nihilist's fourth-place total (26pts). With that being pointed out, any handicapper in the competition who has taken the time to pore over the scoring format for this year's Super Bowl, should readily know that when heading into the final round of this year's playoffs how a four-point lead is one that can be easily overtaken, especially when considering the selection of the pointspread winner of this year's big game is alone worth four points, and let's not forget the slew of other points that are up for grabs in the Super Bowl round that can also be a factor to help overcome a small lead, such as a "four-point lead". Moreover, it should be needless to say that some handicappers, in particular the ones who are presently needing to play catch-up in the point standings, are fully aware how a high tally of points in the final round can drastically change their respective fortunes. The blueprint for such success is a fairly simple one, but is also one that is highly difficult to execute. However, one doesn't have to be a Nikola Tesla or an Albert Einstein to envision what it's going to take to have a successful Super Bowl round, and it has already been mentioned in this review--win propositional selections, win propositional selections, and win more propositional selections.

Speaking of winning propositional points, in this year's NFL Championship round, jcvike28 made some major headway up the playoff point standings after he won four propositional selections, each worth three points apiece, and also won two Super Bowl bonus points for having correctly predicted San Francisco to make it to this year's Super Bowl. In all, jcvike won a total of 14 prop points, and after he connected on both of his best bets and also on his 3-point parlay combination, "El Duque" won the NFL Championship round after compiling an amazing 23 total points for the round. The captivating scoring outburst enabled jcvike, who after the first-two rounds of this year's playoffs had only accrued five points overall, to go from second-to-last place in the standings and leapfrog over six handicappers to finish his outing in 3rd-place in the standings after he notched his 28th point for this year's postseason. The brilliant performance by jcvike just goes to show why a handicapper should never throw in the towel on a Bookie Challenge competition, no matter how bleak his season might appear to be. The incredible outing by jcvike also allowed him to break into the top-four slots of the point standings, of which until the NFL Championship round had only been occupied by this year's four divisional champions from the regular season. What's more, jcvike has now positioned himself to possibly become only the third handicapper in the history of the Bookie Challenge competition, apart from the Nihilist and Driveline, to possibly win an overall BC championship with the playoff qualification of a divisional wild-card status. To note further, the 23 points jcvike tallied for the 3rd round of this year's postseason broke Driveline's all-time record of 20 points for a 3rd round of a playoffs, which was a 3rd-round record that the Fisher of Winners had just established in last year's playoffs. Also interesting to note is that jcvike28 and Driveline are the only two handicappers in the history of the competition to have scored 20 or more points in a 3rd round of a Challenge postseason. However, what's more important to both handicappers is that they are two out of four main participants who will be seriously duking it out in this Sunday's top handicapping attraction, of which will be the four-way battle that can be aptly coined as the "Handicapping Death-Duel in Vegas".

As already mentioned earlier in this weekly review, the highly anticipated "Handicapping Death Duel" that's going to take place among Driveline, 7mick7, jcvike28, and the Biased Nihilist, is going to be made more intense if Kansas City loses the Super Bowl and takes away 7mick7's big scoring advantage, or the 10 bonus points that KC can provide for the Irish Hustler with a straight up victory in the grand finale. But if an outright victory by the Chiefs doesn't come to fruition for 7mick7, it might be curtains for the Irish Hustler, because Driveline, the Nihilist, and jcvike are the real deal, they are no joke to be messing around with, for they are the type of handicappers Mick Balls can't afford to let his guard down if he wants to take down the house this season. Not for nothing, but out of the four aforementioned handicappers, 7mick7 is the only one out of the four handicappers who has yet to win an overall Bookie Challenge championship, so it's going to take everything and more from his handicapping bag of tricks to prevail over the three former champions, all of whom don't know the meaning of the word "quit". Already in this year's competition, each of the three former Bookie Challenge champions have proven they have the patience to stay the course and overcome huge deficits when they were all seemingly down for the count at one stage of this year's competition. For example, both the Nihilist and Driveline started their respective divisional races with the two-lowest point totals, not only within their respective divisions but with the lowest point totals in the entire league, and yet, they both showed that they have the handicapping moxie needed to make extraordinary comebacks when all seemed lost, it's a handicapping trait that can only come from the resolves of bona fide Bookie Challenge champions. In the case of jcvike, he just proved his handicapping mettle in his very last outing, in which he unleashed a record-setting third-round scoring record after amassing 23 points for the round to flip his postseason fortunes completely around.

So when looking ahead at the suspenseful finish that is sure to come in this year's Super Bowl round, 7mick7 had better pray that the Chiefs win the Super Bowl, because if not, there exists the strong probability that the end game of this year's competition is going to be so close that the eventual Bookie Challenge champion won't be determined at the conclusion of the Super Bowl but in an overtime, so to speak, as it happened back in Challenge year #2. Back then, Bomber7 and LtFrankDrebben found themselves in a deadlock in total points at the end of that year's Super Bowl, and before tiebreakers could officially be implemented to break the tie for that year's Bookie Challenge championship, the competition had to wait until the selection of the game's MVP to see if it could determine the overall Bookie Challenge champion before tiebreakers had to be utilized to do the job. In Challenge year #2, the game's MVP did just that, and to the delight of Bomber7--his MVP selection is what enabled him to win that year's Bookie Challenge championship by the skin of his teeth. Maybe such a scenario plays out this season and maybe not, but one thing is certain to happen--the determination of this year's Bookie Challenge championship is going to be just as riveting and nail-biting as it was back in Challenge year #2, and really and truly, that's the way it should be.

• THIS YEAR'S CHALLENGE FIELD STILL LOOKING AT ENDING ITS SEASON ON A HIGH NOTE: The 13th annual Bookie Challenge competition is coming down to its final weekend of the season and this year's Challenge field is still on pace to conclude its season with its overall statistical numbers in the black. To its credit, this year's field had a good outing in this year's NFL Championship round after it produced another winning weekend with its combined best bets after registering a 12-9-0 best-bet outing, which was a performance that factored out to a .571 winning percentage. As a matter of fact, the outing guaranteed this year's field will finish its season with a winning bes-bet record, as the field has a year-to-date best-bet tally of 319-299-14 for a .516 winning percentage on this season, and with just 11 best bets left to handicap in this year's competition, there is no possible way this year's field will wind up with an overall losing best-bet record for the season. The winning best-bet record the field is guaranteed to finish with is sort of a rubber-match year that will break the tie of its previous 12 competitions in which the previous Challenge fields registered six years of winning best-bet records and six years with losing best-bet tallies. Also guaranteed for this year's Challenge field is that it will end the year with a winning record of its consensus picks (presently at 18-15-0 for a corresponding .545 winning percentage). To note, after this season wraps up, the Challenge fields over the span of 13 competitions, which includes this year's competition, will have registered an overall nine winning seasons with it consensus picks versus four losing seasons, which is pretty good when considering it has produced a combined yearly record of its consensus picks with an outstanding .696 winning percentage. So, as it turns out, after a horrible start to this year's competition, this year's group of handicappers fought back and in the end--they were pretty damn good after all.

Ever since the start of this year's postseason, most of the competition's press that has been released through its weekly reviews concerning the handicappers who are the main front-runners to win this year's Bookie Challenge championship has centered around 7mick7, who after the first round took the early lead in the playoffs, and on this year's defending champion Driveline, who in the second round surpassed 7mick7 for the overall lead of the playoffs and who has maintained that overall lead for two consectutive rounds, and on the Biased Nihilist, who has kept pace with both 7mick7 and Driveline throughout the first-three playoff rounds. Early on, a small portion of the press was given to Vikings17, but the little press he received was in the vain of being an "honorable mention", for the upstart rookie has slowly faded away from being a serious contender for the overall championship ever since the first round. But after the handicapping action from this past NFL Championship round went into the books, a new participant has burst on the scene to hog the headlines--and it is jcvike28. Like his father, the Biased Nihilist, jcvike is once again a relevant contender for a Bookie Challenge championship. The last time both handicappers were relevant contenders for an overall championship this late in a competition was many years ago, when they won their last Bookie Challenge championships, of which Challenge year #6 was the last time the Nihilist won his overall title and Challenge year #7 being the last time since jcvike nailed down his overall championship. But heading into the final round of this yaer's postseason, the father-and-son tandem are both on the cusp of possibly winning this year's Bookie Challenge title, and they are both hungry--real hungry--to win another championship. Already mentioned in this weekly review was that the Nihilist has been one of the top contenders for this year's Bookie Challenge championship ever since the start of this year's postseason, but it took a miraculous outing by jcvike in the NFL Championship round of this year's postseason before he could crash the party being held by the few serious contenders for this year's overall title.

Of course, it has already been pointed out that the record-setting 23-point scoring outburst by "El Duque" in the NFL Championship round set a new all-time scoring record for a third round of a Challenge playoffs, and how the 23 points tallied skyrocketed jcvike from second-to-last place in this year's playoff point standings to third place and back into serious contention for an overall title, but what has yet to be mentioned are the two handicapping wrinkles that surfaced after jcvike's stunning comeback. More specifically, after jcvike was credited for a week-won in the NFL Championship round of this yaer's postseason, it marked the 5th time jcvike was credited with a week-won over the span of his 10 years of handicapping the postseasons, of which the five week-wons tied jcvike with his father, the Biased Nihilist, for registering the most week-wons in the history of the Bookie Challenge playoffs. But in what has to be deemed as a weird statistical anomaly, or that first handicapping wrinkle, is that jcvike has only recorded ONE week-won in his 10 years of handicapping the regular seasons of the competition. Another statistical anomaly, or the other handicapping wrinkle, concerns the 3-point parlay hit that jcvike registered in this year's NFL Championship round. As hard as it is to believe, the 3-point parlay hit jcvike nailed down in the 3rd round of this year's postseason was the FIRST one of his entire Bookie Challenge career. But at this juncture of this year's postseason, those aforementioned oddball anomalies matters very little to "El Duque". What does matter is winning a second overall Bookie Challenge championship, of which remains to be seen on Super Bowl Sunday if he becomes only the 4th participant in the history of the Bookie Challenge competition, besides the Biased Nihilist, Tony Soprano, and Driveline, to win multiple Bookie Challenge championships.

So, the Hall-of-Fame City Kid wants to be a Bookie Challenge handicapper? Well, the rookie is finding out just how tough it is to compete in a Bookie Challenge competition, is finding out that the Bookie Challenge competition is a long and arduous journey that is replete with handicapping highs-and-lows, with handicapping exhilarations and heartbreaks, with handicapping hot streaks and cold slumps, but most of all, the City Kid is finding out that the Bookie Challenge competition is one, tough son-of-a-bitch to crack. Heck, it's already a given that it's hard as hell to win an overall Bookie Challenge championship, and that reality doesn't just apply for greeenhorn handicappers but also for veteran handicappers alike. So if anything, if there's one consolation the HOF City Kid can take to heart right now, and with just one last outing left to handicap in this year's competition, it is that out of the 11 remaining participants left standing in this year's postseason--only three have won overall Bookie Challenge championships. What's more, when accounting for the overall 14 participants that started this yeqr's competition, only four of them--the Biased Nihilist, Driveline, jcvike28, and dbucc--have ever basked in the glory of winning an overall Bookie Challenge championship. With that being said, the City Kid needs to know that there's no shame in falling short, especially in one's rookie season. To be fair, the City Kid fought the good fight, hung in there for the most part, but he just couldn't connect on some big outings at the end of the regular season despite finishing his first-ever divisional race as the divisional wild card of the Red Zone division (2nd place). If the truth be told, the Hall-of-Fame City Kid deserves plenty of kudos for gutting out the regular season after producing one of the worst-ever starts to a rookie campaign in the history of the competition, and to say "worst-ever start" is no exaggeration. He never quit, though, which was an attitude that was noteworthy. However, despite his valiant and inexorable struggles to make a comeback bid in this year's regular season and win a divisional championship, the sad part about the City Kid's present status in this year's postseason is that he has started his first-ever playoffs the very same way he had started this year's competition, with some horrible handicapping.

To best illustrate just how far south the City Kid's handicapping game has gone, just take a gander at his overall performance so far in this year's postseason. He presently has the worst best-bet record, of which is a dismal 3-9-0 tally that factors out to a paltry .250 winning percentage. He has tallied the second-worst point total for this year's postseason, just eight overall points, and the only reason he's not dead last in the current playoff standings is because TCU, with just seven points accrued at the present time, had a lower playoff qualification than the City Kid had at the start of this year's postseason. Specifically, TCU entered this year's playoffs as a lowly at-large participant, while the HOF City Kid came into the postseason as a divisional-wild-card qualifier, and as such, he had better scoring advantages than TCU. And to think, Too Tall Tommy, despite his lowly playoff status, has garnered more parlay wins within his combined parlay combinations, three in all, than the City Kid has accumulated in this year's postseason, of which is a league-low ONE parlay win within his combined parlay combinations for this year's playoffs, not to mention that the City Kid submitted three overall parlay combos as opposed to the two that Too Tall Tommy has submitted. Furthermore, there's a reason, a bad reason, why the City Kid has just one parlay win within his combined parlay combos, of which speaks to his atrocious postseason handicapping. To better clarify, in this past NFL Championship round, the "Mr. I gamble like Art Schlichter" was on the verge of producing the competition's first goose egg outing in this year's playoffs after he went 0-2-0 with his two best bets and also went 0-for-3 with his parlay combo, which was a total wipe-out for his outing. However, he was spared the humiliation of plopping down the postseason's first goose egg after he registered two points that he was awarded for correctly predicting that San Francisco would advance to this year's Super Bowl. What made matters worse for the suddenly downtrodden rookie, is that it was the second time in this year's postseason that the City Kid went 0-for-3 with his parlay combo, of which the first time came in the opening round when he went 1-4-0 with his best bets and totally misfired on his entire parlay combination. Worth noting about the City Kid's outing for this past NFL Championship round is that he went completely belly up with all of his propositional selections, of which was in stark contrast to his previous outing in which he had to handicap propositional selections. For the record, the first time the City Kid handicapped his first-ever set of prop picks was back on Thanksgiving day. If anybody has already forgotten about his outing back on Thanksgiving day, the Hall-of-Fame City Kid had set the new all-time record for the most propositional points ever amassed for a Thanksgiving day outing in the history of the competition, of which the incredible tally was 14 overall propositional points. In retrospect, his record-setting performance on Thanksgiving day just baffles the mind when compared to his outing in the NFL Championship round in which he came up empty handed.

But that was then and this now, and the "now" is not a pretty sight, or it's an utterly ugly sight as a matter of fact. However, theoretically speaking, there's still a silver lining for the hopes of the City Kid to win an overall Bookie Challenge championship as he enters this year's Super Bowl round. Going into the final round he is one of only three handicappers who will enter this year's grand finale with the possibility of winning 10 bonus points for possibly having correctly predicted this year's winner of the Super Bowl, of which he had chosen San Francisco. Realistically, however, it's going to take a handicapping miracle of miracles for the handicapper from Canton, Ohio, to pull off the nearly impossible task. The numbers just don't lie, the City Kid has dug himself into such a deep hole in the playoff point standings, with the deficit presently being at 22 dispiriting points from the overall lead, that anything short of setting an all-time scoring record for the final round of the postseason will not cut the mustard. But still, the mathematical chance does exist, and when looking at the numbers, a handicapper with some extreme luck can conceivably win 22 to 26 overall points in this year's Super Bowl round, and that doesn't include the 10 bonus points to be awarded if a contestant's preseason pick to win the Super Bowl does come through. But like most handicappers who are presently in the lower tier of the playoff point standings, the City Kid is going to need the front-runners in the point standings to each bomb their respective outings and then he'll need to have a record-setting performance in order to win either the overall championship or at least finish in second place and pocket the second-place prize of the Latinum jackpot ($100). So, as anyone can readily see, the odds are highly stacked against the Hall-of-Fame City Kid to pull off the extremely improbable feat. Consider the following, when Driveline came out of nowhere in the Super Bowl round of Challenge year #9 to win the overall championship, he had to register 27 record-setting points to do as much, and that stupefying point total included the 10 bonus points he received for having correctly predicted Kansas City to win that year's Super Bowl. So nope. Unfortunately for the City Kid, those types of handicapping miracles are best left to wishful thinking and handicapping fairy tales. It just ain't gonna happen, just like it ain't gonna happen for a lot handicappers who are in the same boat with the Hall-of-Fame City Kid. Then there's this: Someone once said that "it ain't over until it's over", which are words that might give hope to some of the participants of the Bookie Challenge competition as they enter this year's grand finale, but that "someone" was talking about baseball games and not NFL games.