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Greenbears Update -- July 2000
New Matchups Highlight CFB Schedule In this month's issue:
------------------------------------------------------------- In With The NewIt's July, and that annually means that the Greenbears are starting to make plans for football season. So it's no surprise that news of the 2000 Greenbears College Football Contest leads off this month's newsletter. Your picksheets should be ready in the next few days, and you will receive them by e-mail (or pick one up from the Commissioner). You will have until August 25 to fill out your first half picks and return them to the Commissioner. The 2000 Contest will work exactly the same as before. This format seems to work better than any others that we have used. The season will be split into two halves, plus a third phase for the bowl games. Just pick the winners against the hypothetical point spreads for each weekend's six scheduled games, and then rank your choices from six to one (from best bet to pick 'em.) There will be a couple of seven-game weekends, one near the end of each half season. In previous seasons, we have based our schedule on two factors: televised games, and local games (meaning Big 10 and tri-state teams.) At the time of game selection, all the TV schedules except ESPN's had been released; but lately the networks do not choose many games until two or three weeks ahead of time, making our first selection criteria harder to use. Of course, most good Big 10 games will be on ABC or ESPN anyway, that much is a given. This season, Greenbears players will find that Conference USA has joined the Big 10 as a "local" league. There were two good reasons for selecting C-USA. First, we have two tri-state teams in C-USA (Cincinnati and Louisville.) We would have several games involving those teams anyway, so adding a C-USA game every week only means that we might have a few new matchups, mostly in the second half of the season. In fact, the idea of having some new matchups is the second good reason to add C-USA games. ACC, Big East, and SEC games are usually on CBS or ESPN. And C-USA games are available now on Fox Sports Net. But because of ABC's regional coverage, most Greenbears players will not get to see many games involving Pac 10 or Big 12 teams, even though there are so many good matchups there that we traditionally include in our contest. So it follows that it might be more interesting to switch our emphasis in scheduling somewhat. Sure, Nebraska-Kansas State and USC-UCLA will still get on the schedule. But let's get some new teams on the rise and some more interesting games in there too. Instead of seeing Arizona, Colorado, UCLA, Syracuse, LSU, and Oklahoma so often, look for more of Southern Mississippi, Virginia Tech, Georgia, Oregon State, and Boston College this year. Another note: Notre Dame will be on the schedule a lot, but Indiana will not. The Irish are always on TV, so they're an easy schedule choice. Greenbears players don't like to pick against the Hoosiers even when the odds are against them, so they tend to always pick them with low numbers, which usually cancels out one pick every weekend. Therefore, look for less I.U. games this season. Baseball Owners To DealThe Greenbears Ultra Baseball League trading deadline is coming up on July 31. A large number of talented players will find their contract coming to an end this season, unless traded, so some big deals might be only days away. Remember that the four-year extension is available after July 15. The updated rosters (with current contract lengths) will be available by July 15. There haven't been many roster moves this season, despite an exciting pennant race for the four playoff spots available. Since we will need to concentrate on football (as well as Yahoo baseball) in September and October, it would help us to finish our Ultra baseball schedule before then, and start the playoffs by September. Since we aren't making any player moves anyway, the Ultra schedule will double up each week in August (following the trading deadline.) In the Greenbears single-season rotisserie league on Yahoo Sports, Jeff B. is still leading over Brian W. The other four owners need to start making some moves and try to get back in the race soon.
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General NewsNothing new at Yahoo yet about fantasy football. As soon as they start signing up leagues, we'll let everyone know. Ideally, we would try to keep the rules as similar to previous football seasons as possible; scoring would likely be more like the FSPI format than the Sandbox way, given a choice. Jeff B. is still leading the NASCAR contest, but it's starting to get a lot closer after Brian W.'s drivers have done better in recent races. Go to Yahoo Sports Racing to fix your starting lineup of race drivers and check the scores. You can read about all the things we have discussed on our Greenbears website at:
Also visit the Greenbears' Commissioner's college football website at About.com for the latest features, forums, and chat rooms, all through the off-season. This month, our season previews will begin.
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Well, that's all for this month. We'll have another newsletter in August, with pro football news and baseball trade results.
-The Commissioner
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