The Doughnut Party

Way back in Doughnut Party Season XLV, titleixforce missed the championship by the thinnest possible margin. And that’s not just sportswriter hyperbole; after leading the competition for the entire playoffs, she ended up losing to Slim Sadies Sly Superbowlers (Head Coach Julie S.) but exactly 1 point. 611 to 612. That had to hurt.

So this year’s victory must be especially sweet for titleixforce Head Coach Jennifer C. Her teams are always tough. She has placed 7th or higher in 5 of the past 7 seasons. But somehow the Dougball always evaded her—until now. This year, with a lineup that was unchanged from wildcard weekend through the Superbowl, she emerged on top.

Congratulations titleixforce!  And congratulations also to 2nd place finisher Hijo de Sanford y Hijo, who had the highest Superbowl score in the league (318 points vs. titleixforce’s 300) and almost pulled of an upset victory.

Thank you everyone for playing. Get some rest in the offseason, give those mouse-button muscles time to heal, and see you next year!

Apparently my offer of “thanks for your cooperation,” which attentive readers will recall from last week, was premature. Because no teams with uniforms that include the color yellow were victorious last week (or held a lead at any point in time).

So with melancholy hearts, we bid adieu to the Packers and Steelers.

The impact on the Doughnut Party leader board was dramatic:

But, look who is leading the way now: titleixforce!  I must say that it is deeply gratifying in this new era to see the champion of fairness and equality at the top of the list. Congratulations titleixforce. You rocketed from 14th place to 1st in one game. And with 611 points and a Superbowl roster 100% filled with 4x players, the future looks bright.

The teams currently in second and third are almost tied: Hijo de Sanford y Hijo (583) and
Turquoise Ocean 34 (582).  Nice work! son of son of sanford and son is also close with an impressive 574.

Here’s a line chart that shows the history so far:

Thank you everyone, good luck in two weeks, and I hope to see you at the Award Ceremony on Saturday Feb 18!

There were some exciting games last weekend (at least on Sunday), and here’s where the Doughnut Party Leaderboard stands now:

With 374 points, outofthefryingpan has a solid 71 point lead over current runner up bluewalls picks. Is that a big lead? It looks like one now, but if the Packers and Steelers don’t win this weekend it could turn out to be pretty meaningless. So outofthefryingpan respectfully requests that you cheer only for players in uniforms that include the color yellow this Sunday. Thank you for your cooperation.

Side note: outofthefryingpan is now in 8th place among all participants in the NFL Playoff Challenge. Out of hundreds of thousands of participants, only 7 have a higher score. There are 39 other teams tied for 8th, so outofthefryingpan is among the top 50 teams in the world. For perspective, the next best team in the doughnut party, bluewalls picks, is in 29,302nd place. I think this is the highest national ranking any Doughnut Party team has achieved so far.

Thank you all for playing, don’t forget to update your lineups,  and good luck on Sunday!

 

Well, the Doughnut Party is off to a late start this year, but that does not mean that the competition is any less fervent than ever. Here’s where we stand after the first week:

Isn’t it nice to see outofthefryingpan on top of the leaderboard? I think so. But he or she should not get too comfortable, as wildcard weekend scores really don’t mean much. Many of our teams have “bye players,” meaning players on teams that did not play in the wildcard round. Those bye players couldn’t contribute to this week’s score, but they are queued up for 2X damage next week.

Here’s how many bye players each of the DP coaches deployed last weekend:

You can see that two of our teams, the DONs and titleixforce, went for 100% bye players. And five teams used none, including this week’s point leader and runner up. If you think you are seeing a correlation between points and the number of bye players, you may be onto something:

In general, the fewer bye players a team had, the more points they scored. This is due to the subtle principle known as “ONLY PLAYERS WHO ACTUALLY PLAY CAN SCORE POINTS.”

We have one last chart for you. This shows how many points each team scored per player played. Meaning, if you had 4 bye players and 4 players who played last week, what what your average score just for the players who actually played in the wildcard round? I’m glad you asked:

In general, this is a good indication of which coaches are good at picking players who rack up points.  I see a lot of familiar names at the top of this list… and some new names too.

Thank you all for playing and good luck next week!