• PLAYOFF QUALIFICATIONS IF SEASON ENDED TODAY: With just two weeks to handicap this year's regular season, the playoff qualifications are very close to being determined. The most important playoff qualification will be had by this year's regular-season champion. Winning the regular-season championship entitles the lucky participant to have scoring advantages over the rest of the Challenge field for the first-two rounds of the postseason, especially in the first round of the playoffs in which the regular-season champion has tremendous scoring advantages. The next best playoff qualification is that of divisional champions, for they will have the second-best scoring advantages in the first-two rounds of the playoffs. The next best qualification after the Divisional champions is that of the divisional wild cards and also the special wild card. The chances of winning an overall Bookie Challenge championship as a divisional wild card or as a special wild card are not very good. However, in the history of the Bookie Challenge's postseasons, only two participants have ever won a Bookie Challenge championship as a divisional wild-card entrant. The first to do it was the Biased Nihilist, who won the overall championship as a divisional wild-card entrant in Challenge year #5, and subsequently, Driveline pulled off the incredible handicapping feat in Challenge year #9. In Challenge year #9, Driveline actually entered that year's postseason as the Special Wild card, of which a Special Wild card has the exact same scoring opportunities as does a divisional wild card. A special-wild-card status is awarded to the participant who does not qualify for a Challenge postseason as either a regular-season champion or a divisional champion, but the special status is only given to the participant who has the best point total out of the remaining "at-large participants". For the record, an "at-large participant" has never won a Bookie Challenge championship. Listed below are the present playoff qualifications for each handicapper in the league if the season ended today:

  REGULAR-SEASON CHAMPION: The Biased Nihilist
  DIVISIONAL CHAMPIONS: The Biased Nihilist (Corozal div), Kr@tos (Hail Mary), Vikings17 (Run-&-Shoot), and 7mick7 (Red Zone)
  DIVISIONAL WILD CARDS: jcvike28 (Corozal), Pennypie86 (Hail Mary), Driveline (Run-&-Shoot), and Blitzkrieg (Red Zone)
  SPECIAL WILD CARD: Jets69
  AT-LARGE PARTICIPANTS: dbucc, TCU, Theopholis, and Matty_Ice.



• WEEKLY TICKER.................A Bookie Challenge mystery was "half-solved" after the Biased Nihilist received a Christmas text from DawgPound, of whom the Nihilist hasn't heard from ever since both DawgPound and his brother the Hall-of-Fame City Kid both quit the competition just before the start of this year's divisional races. Making matters even more shameful was that both handicappers reneged on their respective membership fees at the tine they bailed from the competition. In any event, in the Christmas text that the Nihilist received from DawgPound on the day after Christmas day, it contained Merry Christmas wishes, but more shocking to the Nihilist, DawgPound informed him that he had moved to Canton, Ohio, and is now closer to his family members, which includes his brother the "Hall-of-Fame" City Kid. Additionally, in the text that DawgPound sent the Nihilist, he said that he planned on rejoining the Bookie Challenge for the start of next year's competition. Incidentally, DawgPound said nothing of his brother, but the Nihilist replied to DawgPound that if he or his brother planned on coming back to the Bookie Challenge competition that they were both still on the hook for their membership fees for this year's competition. Subsequently, DawgPound replied to the Nihilist with a "thumbs-up" emoji as it concerned making his "back payment" before the start of next year's competition. Overall, as it pertained to DawgPound's Christmas text, the Nihilist was saddened to have learned that DawgPound had moved to Ohio, as they were best friends, not to mention drinking buddies, and they always talked about sports for years and years before the Nihilist had his heart attack...............This is the time of year in which members of the Bookie Challenge competition start to keep an eye out to see how all the participants in the competition are faring with their preseason Super Bowl selections. Not for nothing, but bonus points for correctly selecting both teams who will play each other in the Super Bowl (worth 5 pts if both teams correctly selected) and which team will eventually win the Super Bowl (worth 10 points) can sometimes play a key role in determining the overall Bookie Challenge championship. In an odd twist of faith, when it came to submitting their respective preseason Super Bowl selections, the handicappers of the Bookie Challenge must have each had crystal balls, with the lone exception being Theopholis. To explain the oddity, when it came to selecting the Kansas City Chiefs to make it to this year's Super Bowl, the participants within the Challenge field sensed that the Chiefs were not going to make it to the grand finale--and they were right! Apart from Theo, who took the Lions to play the Chiefs in this year's Super Bowl, nobody else within the Challenge field selected the Chiefs--nobody. And hell, for that matter, Theo failed to post his weekly selections for the opening week of the season, so his selection of Kansas City defeating Detroit really didn't matter, seeing as both teams as of this printing have been eliminated from this year's postseason. The only other participant who is guaranteed to not win 10 bonus points at the end of the season for correctly predicting this year's Super Bowl winner is Kr@tos, who is a Vikings' fan and one who let his heart select the Vikings to win this year's big game. Oh, and God forbid that Baltimore doesn't get eliminated, because if they do, four handicappers in this year's competition--7mick7, jcvike28, Driveline, Vikings17--selected the Ravens to win this year's Super Bowl--OUCH!.......................

• THIS PAST WEEKEND CHALLENGE FIELD EMBARKED ON LAST BID TO SALVAGE THIS YEAR'S REGULAR SEASON AND HIT A HOMERUN AFTER REGISTERING AN INCREDIBLE BEST-BET OUTING TO START 3-WEEK STRETCH RUN!: Heading into this past weekend, this year's Challenge field was staring at becoming the worst-ever Challenge field in the history of the Bookie Challenge as it concerned producing the worst all-time best-bet record and winning percentage for handicapping a regular season. All that was needed to accompany the death-knell sounds was a matching requiem of barely audible solemn murmurs, because there was no wy that this year's Challenge field was going to rescue its handicapping season with just three weeks remaining in this year's regular season. Entering this past weekend, the combined best-bet numbers told a grim story of this year's competition, as in this year's Challenge field owned a pathetic best-bet tally of 186-225-7. As a consequence of the poor best-bet marks, the resultant .453 winning percentage was well below the all-time low of the .461 winning percentage that was initially set by the Challenge field from Challenge year #3. So, by all accounts, it was almost certain that this year's field was going down as the worst-ever Challenge field. But, as the popular idiom goes--NEVER SAY NEVER! In one fell swoop this past weekend, this year's field almost produced the best all-time best-bet outing in the history of the Bookie Challenge competition after it banged out a phenomenal 20-4-0 best-bet record, of which the stunning tally factored out to an incredible .833 winning percentage. The stupefying best-bet outing from this past weekend ranked second only to the previous all-time .839 best-bet winning percentage that the Challenge field from Challenge year #6 registered on week #15 of that year's regular season. And so just like that, as if by the snap of a thumb, the Challenge field improved its year-long best-bet winning percentage from an all-time low of .453 to a present .474 winning percentage, of which the best-bet winning percentage is now presently out of danger of becoming the all-time worst-ever winning percentage (worst being .461 in Challenge yr #3). Moreover, for the most part, this past weekend the Challenge field was able to flip the script after eight overall handicappers out of 12 total handicappers each churned out 2-0-0 best-bet records, and with the remaining four participants going 1-1-0 to round out the weekend's best-bet handicapping. Additionally, for the first time this season, not a single handicapper registered a scoreless outing, meaning that no goose eggs nor golden goose eggs were laid. For the record, the last time a Challenge field did not produce a scoreless outing occurred back in week #11 of last year's competition. This past weekend, the Challenge field's handicapping turn around was so deft that even its consensus record for this year's regular-season turned out to be in the black (11-10-0 win% .524). But even more notable was that this past weekend the field produced two PERFECTA outings, one by Jets69 and the other by jcvike28, of which the two PERFECTAs were a big deal when considering that the total of two PERFECTAs almost matched the Challenge field's previous total of three PERFECTAs it had tallied before the start of this past weekend's handicapping action.

As already mentioned in the main article of this weekly review, this past weekend was the first time Jets69 connected on a PERFECTA outing, and the PERFECTA could not have come at a better time. The opportune PERFECTA outing was a strong set of selections that improved Broadway Al's playoff qualification, from that of a lowly "at-large participant" to that of a Special Wild card. What's more, Jets69's weekly selections over the past weekend consisted of two best-bet winners, Philadelphia -6½ over Washington and New Orleans -4½ over the New York Jets, while Jets69's parlay combo comprised Atlanta -3 over Arizona, Jacksonville +3 over Denver, and the LA Chargers +2 over Dallas. Already known is that Jets69 also connected on a 1-point exact-score winner after predicting that Indianapolis was going to score 27 points against San Francisco on this past Monday night's exact-score game (Final SF 48-27). But as good as Jets69's handicapping fortunes got turned around this past weekend to the better, even Broadway Al knows he still has his work cut out for himself. He still has to outduel a tough handicapper in dbucc to at least maintain his Special-Wild-Card status, and what's more, he'll have to hit another 6-point parlay winner if he wants to possibly uproot his friend in real live Kr@tos and seriously challenge him to win the Hail Mary divisional championship, not to mention that he'll also have to stave off second-place rookie Kennypie86 on his way to usurping Kr@tos. Come what may, let it be known that the 6-point parlay winner that Jets69 finally corralled this past weekend was only the first 6-point parlay hit of this season, but it was his 4th overall when including the three 6-point parlay hits he connected on in last year's competition, which was Jets69's rookie season. Granted, it's been 20 outings since Jets69 last produced a 6-point parlay hit (wk #15 of last yr's competition), but one can bet the farm that Broadway Al will be desperately trying to slam out another 6-point parlay winner, maybe even two, before the end of this year's regular season gets here. One thing is for sure, Jets69 is not going to just roll over and settle for a Special-Ward-Card playoff status, not if he can help it. Oh, and by the way, the week-won that Jets69 was credited with winning on this past weekend, it was his second week-won in as many seasons he has handicapped the Bookie Challenge competition.

Robert Burns once wrote a line in his 1786 poem entitled "To A Mouse" that went as follows: "the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry." Back then, little did Burns know that one day his epic line from his famous poem would come to describe Theopholis' handicapping season in the 15th Annual Bookie Challenge competition. Yep, when it rains, it pours! And so it went that Theo's season was majorly sidetracked through self-imposed screw ups in which his disqualifications and his failures to submit several weekly selections were the catalysts that led to one of his most disappointing seasons ever. After missing last year's competition due to health problems, this year was supposed to be a comeback tour, of sorts, one in which Theopholis was supposed to unleash one of his best handicapping seasons out of the previous 10 competitions he has handicapped. But no, he is appearing in this WHO'S-NOT-HOT segment of the weekly review just in time to receive his gift from Santa Clause, of which is a huge stack of dusty, dirty, and dingy coals. But Theo's horrific handicapping season was a man-made disaster that he can only blame himself for producing. In the opening week of his touted "comeback", he posted his weekly selections after Sunday's posting deadline and had all of his picks disqualified, of which included his preseason Super Bowl selections. Subsequently, in week #3, his parlay combination was disqualified, and for good reason. Believe it or not, for his parlay selections in week #3, Theo had the bright idea to use his parlay as an audition to introduce a new parlay entry for the competition. In other words, he tried to submit the first two-team parlay combination in the history of the Bookie Challenge, as in he posted just two parlay picks instead of the normal three parlay picks for his three-team parlay combination. He then proceeded to miss posting his weekly selections for week #9, and worse yet, he failed to post any selections for the Thanksgiving day outing of this year's annual Turkey Shoot extravaganza (week #13), of which Thanksgiving day was a can't-miss outing in which a handicapper had the best scoring opportunities of the regular season. And finally, this past weekend, for whatever reasons, Theo failed to post another set of weekly selections. In total, "Scarface" (as Theo is known in the competition by his number-one moniker), has missed posting his weekly selections for four weeks of this year's competition, has had a parlay combination disqualified in another separate week, and has had his preseason Super Bowl selections also DQ'd. And that's not the whole story, as Theo has compounded his handicapping woes by failing to select any of this year's Thursday-night exact-score games! When doing the math, Theopholis has missed submitting a league-high 10 exact-score selections. So when keeping all the aforementioned in mind, after Theo's slew of missed opportunities so far for this season, it's no wonder why he enters this upcoming weekend with the lowest point total in the league (just 19 pts). Unfortunately for Scarface, he didn't get the memo: "If you dig yourself into a big-ass hole, at some point you're going to have to get rid of the damn shovel!