Parts Unknown (DP--Disassociated Press): After the 14th weekend of this year's 14th annual Bookie Challenge went into the books, the competition is now facing just four weeks left to handicap in this year's regular season. and with the exception of the Corozal division, in which two-time champion Driveline is making a humiliated three-time champion the Biased Nihilist eat crow by maintaining the largest divisional lead (11 pts) by a divisional leader over his second-place divisional nemesis, the rest of the divisional races of the Hail Mary division, the Run-&-Shoot division, and the Red Zone division, will more than likely go down to the wire. Heck, even the race for this year's regular-season championship seems headed for a last-weekend-of-the-regular-season showdown. For that matter, a totally different handicapping scenario might await the competition on the last week of this year's regular season, of which everybody already knows the mantra behind a possibly chaotic ending to this year's regular season--as in--"anything and everything can happen in a couple of weekends of a Bookie Challenge competition."

Case in point, just a few weeks a ago, after week #12 and just before the dual outings of this year's Turkey Shoot weekend (wk #13), Blitzkrieg held a very comfortable 13-point lead over second-place Vikings17 in the Hail Mary divisional race, and that was the only runaway divisional leader at the time. In fact, just to get an idea of how close the other three divisional races were, what follows are the statuses of the three remaining divisional races back then (after week #12): In the Corozal division, Driveline held just a 6-point divisional lead over the Biased Nihilist; TCU held a 4-point lead over second-place HOF City Kid in the Red Zone division, and in the Run-&-Shoot division, rookie Jets69 was stunning the competition by holding a 1-point lead over last year's Bookie Challenge champion 7mick7. But after the dual outings of this year's Turkey Shoot weekend played out, and then after week #14 ran its course, everything got turned upside down, into a chaotic mess, so to speak, and everything changed. After this past weekend, Vikings17 now trails Blitzkrieg by just one point in the hail Mary division, 41 points versus 40 points. The Hail Mary division is a fitting division to describe Vikings17's comeback, because only the luckiest man on the face of the planet can do what the "Purple People Eater" has done this season, and that's accrue 40 points on the season without hitting one 6-point parlay winner! Let's repeat that, the only reason Vikings17 is just one point behind this season's number-one seed from this year's divisional seeding, Blitzkrieg, is because he has exactly predicted the exact score by both teams of an exact-score game on THREE different occasions, to include the exact-score of the Lions and Packers on this previous Thursday night's exact-score game (Det 34-31).

To say the least, it's perplexing to see a number-one seed from a divisional seeding on the verge of losing his divisional lead by blowing the largest divisional lead (12 pts) after the start of this year's divisional races. Winning an overall number-one seed at a divisional seeding used to be special, for doing as much meant that the number-one overall seed from a divisional seeding was guaranteed to win his division and enter the postseason as a divisional titlist, or that used to be the case from the start of divisional races in Challenge year #2 until Challenge year #10. In Challenge year #11 the streak came to an end after DIRTYBIRDS (no longer active) won that's season's number-one overall seed but failed to win his divisional title. That was in year #11, but two years later, or in last year's contest (Challenge year #13), Theopholis became the second number-one seed from a divisional seeding to lose a divisional race. Yet, in this season, after Blitzkrieg won this year's number-one seed from this year's divisional seeding, the pundits of the Bookie Challenge competition didn't believe the recently deplorable trend would continue, especially when it was Blitzkrieg who won this year's number-one seed and after he had quickly took a 12-point lead over second-place Vikings17, who won last season's regular-season championship before falling apart in last year's postseason. But my, oh my, how things have changed after the dual outung of week #13's Turkey Shoot and week #14. As mentioned already, Vikings17 is presently a point behind Blitzkrieg and his divisional lead, of which it would only take Vikings17 to tie Blitzkrieg in total points to take the overall divisional lead, seeing as Vikings17 owns the league's number-one tiebreaker over Blitzkrieg (most best-bet wins: 18 wins versus 15 wins).

Now that Blitzkrieg is in a close-as-hell dog fight with Vikings17 for the Hail Mary divisional lead, it is Driveline who now presently owns the largest divisional lead in the competition, which is an 11-point lead over the Biased Nihilist. The Nihilist is fortunate to be in second place and just 11 points behind the "Fisher of Winners" (aka Driveline) because the Nihilist had entered the past weekend technically in last place in the division despite being tied in total points with dbucc (22 pts each). The Donald, however, held the tiebreaker over the Nihilist by virtue of more best-bet winners, but he's no longer in second place after he goose egged the weekend and the Nihilist eked out one point for a 23-22 lead in total points over dbucc. "Yeah. man," said the Nihilist, "I doubt dbucc can concentrate on picking winners after I sent a bunch of drones to hover over his house in New Jersey."

Elsewhere throughout the league, jcvike28 is enjoying the second-largest divisional lead after he stretched his lead to seven points over second-place rookie Jets69 by a 43 points to 36 points divisional edge in the Run-&-Shoot division. And over in the Red Zone division, in this year's biggest surprise, rookie Kr@tos has an alarming 3-point lead over veteran handicapper TCU. Granted, a 3-point lead is nothing for Kr@tos to cut flips or cartwheels about, but it's enough of a lead for TCU to get seriously worried about, especially when it comes to winning the Red Zone divisional title. Not for nothing, but as usually is the case, this year's 4th seeded division is the tightest divisional race once again. Things got even tighter after DawgPound hit this past weekend's only 6-point parlay combination, and by doing so, he's still in last place in the division but he only trails the divisional leader Kr@tos by just six total points. In other words, the four handicappers in the Red Zone division are so bunched together that only a 6-point parlay separates its divisional leader from its last-place participant: Kr@tos (34pts), TCU (31pts), HOF City Kid (also 31 pts but loses tiebreaker to TCU because Too Tall Tommy has more best-bet winners--16 vs 14), and DawgPound (28 pts). But the suspense of this year's divisional races as they approach the final four weeks of this year's regular season is not solely restricted to the closely-knit race of the Red Zone division. On the contrary, the league's handicappers, regardless of which divisions they are battling in, know that crunch time is fast approaching, and they all know that they had all better be on their respective handicapping A-games if they plan on entering the postseason as divisional champions, of which doing so means having the best scoring advantages in the first-two rounds of this year's playoffs.

• IF THE PREVIOUS WEEKEND WASN'T ALREADY A NICE WINNER FOR VIKINGS17, IT GOT A LIITLE BIT BETTER AFTER HE GOT BUMPED UP TO A MODERATOR'S STATUS: The Biased Nihilist couldn't help but notice last year's Rookie of the Year honoree, Vikings17, and how his interest in the Bookie Challenge has grown by leaps and bounds in only his second year of a Bookie Challenge competition, not to mention that he grasped the inner workings of the competition unlike most rookies, especially over his rookie season last year. The thing is that Vikings17 proved he has a good eye for picking out statistical errors, just like his close friend 7mick7 has a penchant for picking up on the slightest statistical errors made by the Biased Nihilist, who has admitted that dealing with the lifestyle changes brought upon him because of his LVAD surgery, has made hosting his beloved Bookie Challenge competition a little more taxing, that is, physically taxing. Now, that's not to say that Vikings17 and 7mick7 are the only handicappers in the league who know about the intricate machinations of the competition, inside and out no less, but the Nihilist thinks that most of the Challenge participants are too busy to fill the role of a second message-board moderator. To that regard, Vikings17 has been a regular poster on the competition's message board in the less-than-two-years that he has participated in the Bookie Challenge competition. Not only that, "Big Game James", as his best friend in the Bookie Challenge calls him, has also shown that very little of the nihilist's statistical errors, if any, get by him. The fact that Vikings17 has been recently retired is another reason the Nihilist discussed with 7mick7 a possible moderator's role for Vikings17. The way the Nihilist had it figured was that the close friendship between Vikings17 and 7mick7 would allow Vikings17 to learn the ropes of becoming a successful moderator a lot more quicker. However, as soon as the Nihilist catches up with the weekly reviews, meaning releasing them earlier in the week, at the latest by Thursday afternoons, he'll be able to provide Vikings17 with some technical training, such as having him make different types of edits on some of the "training posts" the Nihilist plans to post for Vikings17 to work on. Additionally, whenever a key issue arises that needs to be voted on, having three participants will assure that each issue will be resolved because of the three votes from those running the Bookie Challenge competition. Lastly, just a day or so ago, a comedic episode occurred when the Nihilist went into the administrator's webpage that maintains the message board options that can be set up by the message board's administrator, which in this case means me, the Biased Nihilist. To put it lightheartedly, the Nihilist was shocked when he changed Vikings17's message-board status on late Friday evening to that of a moderator, but to only wake up the next morning and find out that by mid-morning his two moderators failed to notice an egregious error by the Nihilist. When the Nihilist changed Vikings17 status to a moderator's status on Friday night, he had inadvertently changed the posting status of everybody in the competition to a moderator's status! The Nihilist later said after fixing his horrible fuck-up that "Luckily nobody in the competition said anything about his respective promotion to be a message-board moderator, or at least nobody figured out how to navigate his new posting menus."


• WEEKLY TICKER ..................This past weekend marked the first time ever that the Challenge field accumulated the most exact-score points on a single weekend in the history of the competition that did not include a Thanksgiving day outing, of which the tally this past weekend consisted of 10 overall exact-score points (1 5pt hit for 5 points and 5x 1pt hits for 5 points).......................dbucc's goose-egg outing for week #14 was his first scoreless weekend this season, which now only leaves one participant this season--jcvike28--who has not yet registered a goose egg nor a golden goose egg in this year's competition......................Only Kr@tos and 7mick7 were two handicappers this past weekend (wk #14) who both connected on two out of three parlay picks within their respective parlay combinations, with the exception of DawgPound, who hit this past weekend's only 6-pt parlay winner................The Hail Mary division is the only division after week #14 that has all of its divisional members sporting respective winning best-bet records..........................SAVED BY THE BELL? The Hall-of-Fame City Kid was staring at getting the 5th golden goose egg of this year's competition, or at least he was when he headed into this past Monday night's "exact-score" game. However, the Man above must have had a soft spot for the City Kid because it was only by the grace of God that the HOF City Kid knocked down a 1-point exact score winner to salvage his weekend......................