State Of Missouri Bragging Rights Up For Grabs

The playoffs start with tonight’s kick off between Miami and Carolina. We are all aware a primed for the race to The Ivory Jacket and one million dollars. Another race that starts tonight is the race to become the first Missouri State Open Champion. The current leader is Matt McClure of Freeburg Illinois. That’s right – Illinois! Week 11 marks the first time in 9 weeks that the top spot has been occupied by an FFOC player from outside the state.

Matt got some week 10 stellar performances from Chris Johnson, Tom Brady, Sidney Rice, and the Baltimore Ravens D/ST for a score of 149.00. This gives his XFL Cheerleaders the top spot in the Missouri Open with a total score of 270.82, and gives him an 8 point lead over 4 week leader Glen Malick’s and his Glen’s first and goal squad.

Just like the Las Vegas bracket, the Missouri Bracket will utilize the Live Cutline playoff format. The cutline %’s for the 50 team field are extremely liberal, where just 2 teams will be eliminated from the bracket after week 11 play. Best of luck to everybody who joined us in St. Louis at Pujols 5 and drafted live for the Missouri Open.

As for the rest of you competing in the rest of the playoff brackets, be ready to do some chest pumping if you have any Panthers and Dolphins in your starting line ups tonight, because it will be YOUR teams that will be atop the standings, and ABOVE THE CUT LINE for the next few days.

Good luck to everybody. This is going to be fun.

It’s time to get serious … The 2009 OPEN Is ON !!!

Well it is officially here, week 11 of the 2009 Open Championship. For some this is where the Open Championship and race to become fantasy football’s next millionaire really begins. All that week 1-10 stuff is just a bunch of ‘satellites’ and ‘qualifying stages’. Well that is all over now, and its time for your team to put up, or get cut!

The 2009 field has now been relegated to the various playoff brackets The Open implements for several lower level cash prizes. The big money however is in the LAS VEGAS BRACKET, and all of you must remember that you can still qualify for a promotion to compete in this bracket even if you are starting out in one of the others.

With the regular season and League Championship games out of the way, the leader board has a new look to it. Congratulations to Mikal Mills of Columbia, Pennsylvania, who used a strong week 10 from Chris Johnson, Randy Moss, Brandon Marshall, and Philip Rivers to vault his team Millionaire Dreamz to the driver’s seat for the 2009 Open Championship.

While I am on the topic of the Las Vegas Bracket standings, I want to share that I scanned through the top 250 teams, and found the following players from 2008’s Final 15:

4 teams – Greg Morgan

3 teams – Eric Hefley

3 teams – Dwain McFarland

1 team – Shane Schroeder

1 team – Jeremy Steele

1 team – Chad Schroeder

I think it would be an incredible feat for any of The Open Championship’s inaugural Las Vegas finalists to qualify again this season, and after looking at the top 250 going into week 11 this group is well represented with 13 teams! Without revealing any specifics, I will also share that one of the players listed above personally GUARANTEED me that he was going to make it to Vegas again, so I will be following his progress to see how he does.

The final information I will share with you on the Las Vegas Bracket is a breakdown of the 1,539 teams by tier. I was very surprised by some of these results, and I am sure some of you will be as well:

T1 – 257 teams

T2 – 937 teams

T3 – 345 teams

I am going to cut it off here for today. I will write again tomorrow before the Thursday night kick-off and talk about the standings for the Missouri Open, and brag a little of how well I have been doing in FFOC SnapDraft.

Finally, now that we are about to enter the most exciting part of the Open Championship, it would be great if those who competed last year use the message board and share some of their stories from the 2008 Live Cutline.

FFOC League Championships Are Up Next

Week 9 of the NFL schedule is over, and with that so is the regular season of the 2009 Open championship. Up next are the league championship games for all of the FFOC teams that finished the regular season in 1st and 2^nd place in the league standings.

Before we talk about the week 10 championships, we need to talk about some of the money that was won at the end of the regular season.

For the second week in a row the overall lead in the 2009 Open rests in the Aloha State. Cheolpin Lee of Aiea, Hawaii got solid weeks from Larry Fitzgerald, Matt Schaub, Maurice Jones-Drew and Dallas Clark to lead The 4 Kings to a weekly total 110.68, and an overall regular season final score of 137.09. This was good enough to maintain a very tight margin of .06 over second place, and claim the 2010 Open Championship’s regular season top prize of $2.500! Congratulations to you Cheoplin – and since you live in Hawaii there is a good chance I will come to your door and personally drop off the money myself!

Congratulations are also in order for the 2009 Open Championship’s League #116. This league drafted at 10pm CT on July 9 with players drafting from as far apart as Florida to Oregon, and one can only guess if any of the 10 players who participated in this draft could have predicted that their league would come from behind in the final week of the season to finish with slightly 2 points more than League #939 to take home some cash. The final scores for each of these leagues were 10,030.76 to 10,028.08. League #116 wins the regular season prize of $2,500 for having the highest score, and congratulations are in order for each of these following players for fielding their best starting line-up throughout the first 9 weeks of the 2010 Open Championship:

Troy Cilley, Henderson NV – Trojan 1

Andrew Van Gilder – Marina Del Ray CA – Daylight come gotta Delhomme

Bernie Cylc, Orlando FL – All Sadden Team 3

Chester Dismuke, Williamsburg KY – WC Stars

Blaine Perra, Warman SK – CDM Legends

Michael Schulte, Dunedin FL – OPT10

Jeff Hall, Waycross GA – Bigg Ballers

Ryan Cullin, Hamilton OH – Reeces Team V

Brett Breazeale, Merrill OR – Gridiron Hitmen 3

Chris Holmes, Rockford MI – Nooksters 1

For the first time in 4 weeks I can speak about somebody other than Glen Malick at the top of the Missouri Open standings. Tom Smegner of St.Charles MO has taken over the top spot in the Missouri Open. Tom used strong weeks from DeAngelo Williams, Tom Brady, Matt Hasselbeck, and David Akers to post a weekly total of 135.54, and move his Gooses Group squad to the top spot in the Missouri Open standings.

As most of you know the final scores in the Open Championship are determined by totaling the points from THREE different scoring periods. Week 10 is the first week of the 2^nd scoring period, so those of you who are not playing in a league championship game this weekend still need to go all out and start your best line up. All of the teams that qualified for Las Vegas in 2008 did so on the strength of their performances during THIS scoring period.

For those who are not in a position to start week 11 in the Las Vegas Bracket, it’s not over for you either because this year the weekly top scoring teams will be promoted to fantasy football only million dollar playoff bracket.

Good luck to all of you that are competing for your league championship this week – and don’t forget to have your line up set for this Thursday if you plan on starting and players from the Bears and 49ers.

FFOC Regular Season Hits Final Week … Aloha!

A great Monday Night Football game last night concluded another awesome weekend of football, and closed the books on the next to last week of the Open Championship’s regular season.

With 8 weeks of action behind us, the overall lead in the race to becoming fantasy football’s next millionaire has taken all of us off the mainland to the beautiful island of Hawaii, where in a low scoring week Cheolpin Lee of Aiea, Hawaii used strong weeks from Maurice Jones-Drew, Reggie Wayne, Miles Austin and Thomas Jones to earn The 4 Kings a weekly score of 128.02, and vault to the top of the overall leader board with total score of 140.39.

In what has become a broken record, Glen Malick of Florissant, Missouri enjoys his 4^th week in a row at the top of the Missouri Open championship. Glen’s First and Goal did not have its best week of the year, but managed to get enough game out of Adrian Peterson, Reggie Wayne, Roddy White and Matt Hasselbeck for a weekly score of 108.18, and a 6 point cushion over the rest of the Missouri Open field.

There are all sorts of things to watch going into the final week of the regular season. First and foremost, the race for the regular season high scorer is extremely close, and week 9 results are going to play a huge role in who walks away with the $2,500 cash prize. A mere 2.14 points currently separate the top 6 spots, and 36 teams are within 10 points in the race for regular season scoring champ. Week 9 is simply huge for these teams.

For the rest of the field, this is the final chance to pad week 1-9 average totals before everybody starts fresh with a new scoring period in week 10. It’s also the final opportunity teams will have to make changes to their 20-man rosters. It’s the last chance that teams will have to qualify for their week 10 league championship games, and for Tier 2 teams a final opportunity to lock up an automatic bid into the Las Vegas Bracket. Finally, the race for top scoring league is too close to call, and it will be going right down to the MNF game.

So much at stake!

Good luck trying to make the correct roster decisions – every point is crucial when the prize is The Ivory Jacket and the life changing experience of becoming fantasy football’s next millionaire.

We’re back at The B !

The 2008 FFOC Final weekend in Las Vegas was a private ‘invitation only’ reserved only for the final 15 players that survived the cut and qualified for the week 16 extravaganza.

Things are going to be a little different in 2009…

First and foremost, I am pleased to announce that we will be returning to the BELLAGIO HOTEL. On Monday December 28 we will award The Ivory Jacket to fantasy football’s Open Champion for 2009, and also hold our cash presentation ceremony of ONE MILLION DOLLARS to fantasy football’s second and newest millionaire. (Of course some of these descriptions become void if 2008 Open champ Shane Schroeder of Fort Collins, Colorado follows up his 2008 Championship with a repeat performance in 2009).

That which will be different to last year is that we are going to open all of the festivities to a limited number of guests. So now even if your team does not qualify as one of the Final 15, you can still join us for all of the fun and excitement at the Bellagio, and maybe win some money to!

On Saturday December 26, we are going to hold a LIVE DRAFT where players will compete in the week 16 BELLAGIO BRACKET. This draft will consist of a 10-team, 11 round live draft where players will use the first 10 rounds of the draft to select a 10-player FFOC starting lineup. Using the stats from only the games played in week 16, players will compete against 9 other teams for the following league prize structure:  

 1^st Place  – $1,200.

2^nd Place – $700

3^rd Place – $400

The 11^th round of the 10-team draft will consist of a different twist. Each team will select ONE player for a completely separate competition. Very simple – the 3 people who select the players with the 3 highest scores from just week 16 play will be part of the following league prize structure:

 1^st Place – $500

2^nd Place – $250

3^rd Place – $100

In addition to the individual league prizes listed above, there will also be additional prizes awarded to the 3 highest scoring teams from all of the leagues combined. The 3 teams with the highest total scores amongst ALL of the teams competing in the Bellagio Bracket will win the following prizes:

1^st Place – $3,500

2^nd Place – $1,000

3^rd Place – $500

To be part of the Bellagio Bracket and all of the festivities of the FFOC weekend events, we have put together THREE different price packages to choose from:

 1)    FFOC VIP Package for $1,395 includes:

-       FFOC Monday Night Championship Gala with all-you-can-eat dinner and all-you-can-drink adult beverages

-       FFOC Sunday Viewing Party (customized sports book and luxury box configuration equipped with high-speed Wi-Fi)

-       Complimentary Sunday night entry to Bank Night Club and VIP Table & Bottle service (group)

-       Entry into FFOC Bellagio Bracket Live Draft league competition with a top prize of $4,700 (overall and league 1^st places)

-       Entry into FFOC Bellagio Bracket Live Draft single-player high-score competition with a top prize of $500 per league

-       3 nights deluxe accommodations at the Bellagio hotel

2)    FFOC High Roller Package for $1,225 includes:

-       FFOC Monday Night Championship Gala with all-you-can-eat dinner and all-you-can-drink adult beverages

-       FFOC Sunday Viewing Party (customized sports book and luxury box configuration equipped with high-speed Wi-Fi)

-       Complimentary Sunday night admittance to Bank Night Club

-       Entry into FFOC Bellagio Bracket Live Draft league competition with a top prize of $4,700 (overall and league 1^st places)

-       Entry into FFOC Bellagio Bracket Live Draft single-player high-score competition with a top prize of $500 per league

-       3 nights deluxe accommodations at the Bellagio hotel

3)    FFOC Week 16 Package for $875 includes:

-       FFOC Monday Night Championship Gala with all-you-can-eat dinner and all-you-can-drink adult beverages

-       FFOC Sunday Viewing Party (customized sports book and luxury box configuration equipped with high-speed Wi-Fi)

-       Complimentary Sunday night admittance to Bank Night Club

-       Entry into FFOC Bellagio Bracket Live Draft league competition with a top prize of $4,700 (overall and league 1^st places)

-       Entry into FFOC Bellagio Bracket Live Draft single-player high-score competition with a top prize of $500 per league

Registration for the event will begin at ffoc.com on November 10, and all you will need to do to reserve your place with the FFOC at the Bellagio for week 16 is a $100 deposit towards any of the Packages listed above.

All of the specific details regarding the rules for the competition will be available at ffoc.com this Friday evening October 30. It goes without saying that those of you who sign up for this event will be refunded a portion of the registration fee should you end up qualifying as one of the Las Vegas Bracket’s Final 15.

Look forward to seeing all of you in Vegas!

FFOC Regular Season Down to Final 2 weeks!

It is really getting down to crunch time for all of teams in the 2009 Open Championship. Clearly the race to the Ivory Jacket and status as fantasy football’s next millionaire is a sprint – and that sprint is very close to the wire. There are just 4 more wins out there for everybody to make that final push to qualifying for the Las Vegas playoff bracket. With all of the several consolation playoff brackets that the FFOC offers the season is never over for any team until the final gun goes off in week 16 – but we all know which playoff bracket is the one that everybody wants to make it into.

Week 7 of the NFL season gave the Open Champion a new overall leader. Don Lacknett of Hoboken, New Jersey has managed to get his NYTCxpress2 team to the top with a total overall score of 142.28. Don got excellent week 7 results from Aaron Rodgers, Adrian Peterson, Miles Austin, Peyton Manning, and the Philadelphia Eagles D/ST to post a very strong score of 176.34.

I should also take a moment to point out some other notable players that had an impact in week 7. The well known fantasy football franchise known as Cocktail and Dreams operated by Chad Schroeder of Omaha, Nebraska posted a 190.40 and suddenly finds himself holding down the 3^rd place position. Of course, Chad finished the 2008 Open Championship by qualifying TWO teams into the Final 15 that made it to Las Vegas, placing 2^nd and 12^th.

Greg Morgan of Westerville, Ohio is no stranger to nationwide fantasy sports contests, managed to get a 166.04 out of his SEEUUBW team, and now find himself sitting in 6^th place overall. In the 2008 Open Championship, Greg qualified as one of the Final 15 that made the trip to Las Vegas as the player with the 15^th highest score in week 15 of the 2008 Open. After adding up his averages for weeks 1-9  and weeks 10-15 together, Greg showed up at the Bellagio in 2^nd place overall. He went on to finish the 2008 Open in 5^th place.

Fantasy football veteran and FFOC message board regular Don Terminiello used a 176.08 to vault his WhoKnows team into the 5^th place overall position. Former overall leader Jim Tracy of Batavia, Illinois is still hanging around the top of the overall leader board with his The Dreamer XVI and Super System XXIV teams holding down the 19^th and 23^rd spots respectively.

As for the Missouri Open, Glen Malick of Florissant, Missouri has managed by has run his consecutive week streak of being at the top of the standings to 3. Glen’s first and goal used strong weeks from Carson Palmer, and the Houston Texans connection of Matt Schaub and Owen Daniels to post a weekly score of 165.28 to remain in 1^st place.

As for last week’s Tuesday blog where I used some space to celebrate the Raiders big win over the Eagles, I am sad to say that it was followed up this past Sunday by suffering the worst home shut out in franchise history. Hopefully I will have more to be excited about NEXT week after we travel to play long time state rival San Diego.

Don’t forget that this is the final week that team owners in the 2009 Open Championship will need to respect the No Drop List. With only TWO weeks remaining to add/drop players, the upcoming week 8-9 waiver and free agent periods are the final opportunities players will have to shape their rosters for the what is the most thrilling part of the Open Championship – the weekly Live Cutline playoff eliminations.  Once the rosters lock up for week 9 play – those will be the 20 players that you will be riding through all of the playoffs. So be sure to use these last two weeks of the FFOC regular season to look ahead and plan your strategy for being the person who is next to wear The Ivory Jacket.

I will be back tomorrow to post my ‘not so bad’ results from week 7 FFOC SnapDraft.

FFOC SnapDraft Results – Week 6

Well it turned out to be a nice little bounce back week for me. Going 2 for 2 in my NHL match-ups was a good feeling. Maybe I need to just stick with what I played for 16 of my first 21 years on this planet???

That’s two weeks in a row now that I have been blown away in NCAA football. Keep getting crushed by guys that know the elite players on some of the smaller schools. By smaller schools I mean the non-traditional powers, as all of NCAA SnapDraft only uses the BCS conferences. I have been going with players from Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, USC, etc. But its been players from some of the lesser teams that have been pucnhing up the HUGE stats. Two weeks ago it was the QB and two WRs from Kansas, and this past week it was a QB from Houston, and a RB from Georgia Tech that did the damage.

My NFL matches turned back a 1-3 record. Certainly nothing to write home about, but it felt good to get back into the win column. I got just enough out of Antonio Gates to secure my single NFL victory.

As always, feel free to invite me to play with you by posting in the FFOC SnapDraft forum on the message board. I welcome any challenger!

Here are my week 6 results:

$5.00 – NFL 10 teamer, 3^rd place

$10.00 – NHL 4 teamer, WINNER

$2.00 – NFL 5 teamer, WINNER

$5.00 – NCAA 4 teamer, 3^rd place

$10.00 – NHL Heads Up, WINNER

$5.00 – NFL 5 teamer, 4^th place

$5.00 – NFL 3 teamer, 2^nd place

FFOC Week 6 Provides Flashback to 2007

Well…kind of.

The Open Championship did not commence play until the opening kickoff of the 2008 season, but this week’s past set of games in the FFOC painted a picture of what the contest would have looked like had we existed during the 2007 season. Teams with New England Patriots in the starting line-up would be the direct beneficiaries of Bill Belichek’s habit of running up the score.

Tom Brady, Randy Moss, Wes Welker and Laurence Maroney all had spectacular weeks, as did the GM’s on the Open Championship that had them in the starting line-up.  One of those GM’s is Julius Horvath of Austin ,Texas – who along with Wes Welker also got strong weeks from Maurice Jones-Drew, Ray Rice, Kyle Orton and Marques Colston to post a score of 184.06, and propel his The 27 Moons of Uranus team to the overall lead of the 2009 Open Championship with a total score of 144.41.

There was no change in the overall standings of the Missouri Open this week. Glen Malick of Florissant, Missouri did not have any Patriots in the starting line-up, but he did have Matt Schaub, Thomas Jones, Owen Daniels, and a shut out from the Green Bay Packers D/ST to post a strong week 6 score of 148.96. His Glen’s First and Goal squad now has an overall score of 124.57 keeps the State Championship in the hands of a Missourian for now.

On a personal note, how about them RAIDAAAHHHZZZZ ???!!! We obviously haven’t had much to boast about lately, but that was just a great victory over the Eagles on Sunday. The defensive front four played a huge role in the upset, and any fantasy team that started TE Zach Miller got a superb game. With the Jets losing Chris Jenkins for the rest of 2009, the Raiders should be able to pound the rock against the Jets next Sunday, and open up passing lanes for JaMarcus to connect the retuning Chaz Schilens. Am I the ultimate homer optimist or what?

With 2/3 of the Open Championships regular season behind us, the most critical weeks  7-9 are now upon us. Teams that are middle of the pack in their leagues still have SIX more wins up for grabs. Teams that are higher in the league standings can now start looking at the post week 10 schedule to evaluate the matchups that they may be able to exploit with some shrewd work via free agency and the waiver wire. League play is always fun and challenging, but FFOC veterans know that you can’t make it to Las Vegas without surviving the cut. Each week we get that much closer to the most exciting part of the Open Championship.

Be back tomorrow with my improved FFOC SnapDraft results from week 6.

FFOC SnapDraft Results – Week 5

I didn’t have the chance to play as much SnapDraft this past week. Looking at the results from the games that I did enter, it was probably for the better!

I am guilty of mismanagement of my teams. In some cases I am to blame, in others I am not. I am ti blame for choosing Tim Thomas as one my starting goaltenders for my hockey team this past Saturday night – only to find out that he did not get the call for the Boston Bruins. One thing about SnapDraft hockey – you can’t put up a ZERO with your goaltenders (a high scoring position) and expect to be succesful.

I can’t be blamed for the ZERO I posted with Mike Sims-Walker. As many of us know he was a late scratch from the Jacksonville Jaguars line up on Sunday, and unfortunately with SnapDraft your line up locks up once the early games kickoff. So I really got shafted there with no opportunity to sub in an active body.

I am planning on playing in more games this week, which based on my past two weeks is good news for all of you – as you should be rushing to sign up for the same leagues that I am in. Probably going to be some easy money for you again! Check out the FFOC SnapDraft forum on the message board to see which leagues I register for. As always, Im looking for challengers.

Here are my week 5 results:

$2.00 – NHL 4 teamer, 3rd place

$2.00 – NCAA 5 teamer, 4th place

$5.00 – NHL Heads Up, 2nd place

$10.00 – NFL 10 teamer, 9th place

We’re More Than Half Way There!

The 2009 Open Championship officially moved past the half way point of the regular season with the conclusion of last night’s great Monday night game between the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins. Most FFOC team owners who are sitting with 5-5 records still have reason to be very optimistic. With FFOC scoring making TWO wins available on a weekly basis, teams with just 3 wins still have a shot at an 11-7 finish, which in most cases last year was good for a spot in the week 10 League Championship.

For the first time this season we have a repeat team in the top over all position. Jim Tracy of Batavia, Illinois managed to get just enough out of Peyton Manning, Adrian Peterson, along with a late TD from Dwayne Bowe to post a week 5 score of 99.38, and keep his The Dreamer XVI squad as the one everybody else is trying to catch.

There was a change at the top of the Missouri Open Championship. Glen Malick of Florissant, Missouri got exceptional production out of Roddy White, Matt Schaub, T.J.Houshmandzadeh, and Lawrence Tynes to earn Glen’s First And Goal the second highest weekly score of 156.48, and vault himself to the top of the Missouri Open leader board with an overall total of 119.70 points.

There are just 4 weeks left in the FFOC regular season, and it is the key period where owners will be able to put the final touches on the roster that will hopefully lead them to winning one or more of the many cash prizes available. With no more player acquisitions available after week 9, FFOC team owners need to use these final 4 weeks to conduct their final evaluations of players that are on their roster, and the players which are not.

It was right about this time last season when some people picked up a free agent by the name of DeAngelo Williams. Most of us know all too well how that turned out….