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November 28th, 2007 And once more I'm back for the once a month blog! 51) This is for Barrington: Though this is a bit late in the season, would you be able to explain the concept of your "shift" I guess Im not completely understanding what the shift is all about. I'll forward this on, but I think Barrington gets so many emails he seldom gives a personal response. The whole shift notion is for two purposes, one to change the team picked eg if it's Team A at 53% and you think Team B has a 5% better chance than the raw odds you would shift it to be now Team B 52% (53% - 5% = team A 48% or, team B 52%) The other reason to shift is if you play in a weighted pool where you have to order the picks from 1 to 16 or so and then the shift can make teams move around in the order even if you are not changing the picked team. Barrington is pretty elusive on how to use all his rules, but it seems a sensible enough approach.
52) This is week 13 now. How much would it be now to subscribe? They are dropping the price $10/week. So this week was $109, next week should be 99 and so on. 53) Please answer me one question.... why would anyone take your advice on spread picks if you're only 55 % accurate ? why wouldn't someone pick their own or flip a coin since it's almost 50/50 anyway ? please explain why you offer picks info If you work for bodog ? oh yeah, dumb question..why wouldn't you give wrong information it benefits' you !! oops my bad You don't have a realistic understanding of the spread it seems. Hitting 55% long term is very good and can make you millions if your bet sizes are big enough (52.4% is break even against a standard 11/10 vig...but you can find -105 and better these days offshore). Hitting 60% is absolutely phenomenal. TMW does not "work for" Bodog. Bodog advertises on the site with a flat rate paid up front before the season begins, but TMW has no incentives and makes no additional money regardless of how many people sign up with Bodog, what results they have, etc. You have a right to be cynical in this industry where there are all kinds of sleazy people (touts claiming 75% winners, books offering ridiculous bonuses only to close up and disappear after the Super Bowl, old school bookies with nasty muscle behind them, etc). Trust me though TMW is one of the few 'good guy' outfits out there, which isn't to try and get you to subscribe. Unless you bet a lot of money I wouldn't recommend it. The owners of the site also don't care about marketing, how many people sign up and so on, they are only focused on their own wagering success. As the only guy around here who ever seems to answer an email, trust me I know the shortcomings of this site well. Dishonesty however is not one of them. 54) Do you guys ever run amateur football handicapping contest? If so please include me, I beleive I can give any one a run for there money as my system goes 70%-75% winners including over / under's score of game ~ spread. well thanks for reading -- Joe hey Joe, They did run a contest several years ago I think. No way I believe you can hit 70% against the spread though. You think you can though, send me your picks a couple of days before the games in a week and I'll post them in my blog. Andy
...Joe wrote back with his picks...let's see if he can hit 70%-75%..I'm thinking NOT! Good luck Joe! 55) I was wondering if you were ever going to put up a copies of the explanation of "The Henry Rules" I remember reading them a few years back but now all that is shown are the summaries of those rules. At one time there each of the rules got a page of explanation behind it and that is what I have been looking for I looked into this a little. It looks like if you start here: http://www.twominutewarning.com/henry10.htm and go back through the links at the bottom week by week for each previous rule, you should get most of it. Not sure his rules help me any though! 56) I am interested in injury reports from previous seasons. what kind of data do you have? There is injury report data for 2001 on I believe. Format of fields is something like week, team, player, position, out/doubtful/quest/prob, injury note (knee, etc) They would probably charge $100/season or something. 57) have subscribed to 2 minute warning for the last 3 years (including last year's free run)& would very much like to subscribe again this year. I have some questions that do not require simple answers so would like to speak to someone personally. I've called you in the past but have misplaced your phone number. There's no phone number these days for TMW. Roland left it in others hands a while back to do basketball and Scott is in the UK. I'm just the grunt but I'm happy to try and answer questions, and can forward them on to Scott if they are complex. Email me at Andy@TwoMinuteWarning.com 58) Do you guys have something against the Pats? :-) I haven't noticed -- does the quick picks guy go against them every week or something? Most of the people involved with TMW like to go against the obvious favorites/public teams so it could be. Not a good strategy this year I think! 59) After watching Eli Manning play great in warm weather and badly in cold weather for his entire NFL career - I was wondering - can you run some kind of analysis of Eli's QB rating versus gametime field temperature? interesting...try asking www.pro-football-reference.com 60) how are things going Andy? Things are going fine overall for me but the TMW stuff is weird. The people involved with the site don't seem to care at all about how many subscribers there are, whether the site is popular or not, what people say about them, etc. Which makes it kind of weird to be the guy they've given responsibility for "customer service." I guess it's good in a way in that I can say whatever I want and no chance of getting fired. But it's kind of sad because I think the site could be very popular and cool but instead just plods along. I won't be back next year, but it's been an experience.
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36) Hi been out of contact for past two years. I have been a suscriber in the past. Can you tell me the pricing for the rest of season along with ytd units. I think the price is $150 through October/Week Nine and then will start to drop some in November. As for records, as you may remember there are a bunch of different features/columnists and so it is not an easy matter to state. Through week seven the chart they post in the subscriber area (but which doesn't really cover everything) was
Injury Report Picks 10-2 37) Could please help me use your site. there is so many ways on using your site like ful story upm trends and on and on full story and upm disagree so what do you do Like UPM was pittsburg 75% However trends was denver please help if you have step step by step instructionsthat would help a lot For lots of people TMW is a way to improve their own handicapping (see http://www.twominutewarning.com/faq.htm for some more), but I think most people kind of just decide on a few things they believe in and follow those. If you check out the subscribe page at http://www.twominutewarning.com/subscribe.htm that shows some of the longer term records of the features and then you can follow the in season WL trends by looking at that table on the sub main page. So unfortunately there is no one way to use TMW or a manual/guide. Basically the people involved disagree themselves about what they like and bet accordingly. I know one year they had a three person forum looking for 'consensus games' but had very few plays where all three people were strong about a game (although the record was good I believe when it happened). 38) Is there any way to see Mr. Barrington Henry's past results? I would like to compare versus my ideas. Barrington has been doing stuff on the site for two years. I know in 2005 his simple 'odds of winning' list had the best results of various straight up things we tracked, and then last year he probably was best against although with not such a good record. Be aware though that his whole system seems to be you start with the % and then "shift it" yourself by 5-15% based on your read on the game (or for him I guess, his "rules") 39) So is there actual picks in the subscription? Just came across the site and trying to understand what you offer. Been getting killed this year and need help.If there are picks are they spelled out along with winning percentages for this year? TMW is not a typical "tout" setup. There's actually a bunch of different people involved with the site and subscribers get access to something like 20 different features and columns each week that make their own independent picks. So you can find games where say one columnist picks one side and another columnist takes the other. As a result it's kind of up to you what particular things you want to follow. We do keep meticulous records for each feature however so you can at least get a sense of how the season is going for specific people/tools. Read some of the older questions below on the blog for more. 40) I was hoping to look at last years data from you. could I do so? Last year's tools can all be accessed, but are a kind of a pain to do so. First go to http://www.twominutewarning.com/xxpp.htm and this will bring up the super bowl game. Now for any previous week, change the 'xx' in the URL to the week number you want, so '04' is week 4, '12' is week 12 and so on. Like this http://www.twominutewarning.com/05pp.htm is week five. This works for all the tools down the left side nav bar for the 2006 season. 41) What are your 5 locks this week Andy? I have to have my picks submitted ASAP. So, hit me with them. ah, I'm not one of the handicappers around here, just the grunt! you'll have much more fun making your own picks anyway ... see http://www.twominutewarning.com/gamingtoday6.htm good luck! 42) I was just wondering when and if you were going to do the expert picks for college and pro football the expert picks and Staff Picks were part of last year's experiment but the powers that be here have gone back to the way it was before where there are all these different tools and columns that make picks of their own so no expert picks in the near term from what I know
43)
I am a professional handicapper, and have been
working on constructing a new prediction model that focuses solely on the
passing game. As you are well aware, the NFL is a quarterback driven
league and a team's SU and ATS success is greatly dependenent upon the
effectiveness of their passing game.
Since 1996 the team that had a higher passer rating won ATS nearly 74% of
the time...which is a mind-blowing statistic! I have been focusing on
Passer rating, Average Yards Per Attempt, TD and INT % rates, sacks, and
sack yards. The key is to be able to consistently, and accurately,
project these statistics for upcoming games.
I would be greatly interested in speaking with you further....I hope you
find this endeavor interesting and are willing to discuss it with me.
Keep up the great work and I look forward to hearing from you!
There is lots of research that has been done over the years...see http://www.twominutewarning.com/research.htm for some of the classics! If you come up with some kind of nifty passing focused tool you could see if they want to run it on the site and get yourself some publicity. They have done guest handicappers in the past (see http://www.twominutewarning.com/guest.htm for example) 44) Enjoy your columns. How can I access historical Quick-Picks from previous weeks? They do a bad job archiving the free features, but I think it's generally qp+week#+07.htm so http://www.twominutewarning.com/qp507.htm is week five and so on 45) hello, can you tell me what the turnover difference has yileded since 2000? the winning percnetage, that is? you said it did not hold up as well, having been 57.5% from 1991 to 2000? From what I can tell the Turnover stats are
weeks 5-12
INT
FUM
CC * don't see CC records in 2001-2003 46) I am new to sports betting and I would like to know how a teams odds of winning a game is calculated. Eg. Cleveland and New England. According to your website it shows New England has a 96% chance of winning the game. How did you arrive at this figure? Thank you very much for your time. Barrington Henry has his own chart that he made. I don't know how many years of games it involves and I assume there is some 'smoothing' of the %'s but it's based on what has happened in the NFL over the years. 47) are there no more red zone picks (or at least none to date this year) because all I see are Inside the 20 picks and one Inside the 20 best bet but nothing that refers to a "Red Zone" column pick (of course, if you're inside the 20, you're in the red zone). Thanks. "Inside the 20" is just the name of the Red Zone column, so they are one and the same. One of many silly things at TMW that confuses everyone! 48) I was just trying to find out previous years records 03-06 mostly on the systems. I have been an avid reader for years, but this is the first year I have subscribed. It would be nice to know the most recent track record before I plunk down my money. Thank you. Records are the big snarling problem with this site as I've discovered being the frontline of customer service. There are so many features and a lot of them don't have simple 'picks' but some kind of prediction that then needs to have some kind of somewhat arbitrary cutoff applied to it (for example the Full Story no one at TMW would suggest a 50% confidence pick is a 'pick' to track records on, but what level do you start at? 54%? 58%, 60% etc) So while some features are straightforward like the Trends column where every team listed as a play is an official pick, most are not. There are some things listed on this page you might have already seen: http://twominutewarning.com/subscribe.htm but I don't have any easy way to display year by year records. I think that any feature live this season must have had at least decent performance lately since they did cut a few things out they had going last year (like say the Regressor for one thing). I've been bugging Scott to get some better records pages but unfortunately it hasn't happened yet. 49) Where do I find DC Dogs on the website and what are they? They refer to "drive chart overlay underdogs" so you look under the overlay feature, which is a subscriber feature but you can see last year at http://www.twominutewarning.com/xxover.htm and the teams picked as the overlay which are underdogs are the "DC Dogs". The PBP Dogs are the play by play overlay underdog picks.
50) [A spam email to TMW]
2.The LeadINC Price Sheet has been revised and LeadINC clients can now take advantage of the new low rates. Instead of $38 per lead...you can now get a top LeadINC qualified bettor phone lead for just $26.60 and as low as $21.67. These are activebettors within the past 30 days. Call us at
1-888-xxx-xxxx for more details on quantity and new price breaks.
Scary.
That's all folks for this time out!
Part of the problem is that I am not much of a writer and so rely on people sending questions. More Q+A then! 22) Your office pool picks still show last week We get this a lot. 99% of the time from AOL people. The office pool picks were published by Tuesday by 3pm as usual. The problem is you have AOL which saves a page when someone on AOL visits it and then shows this saved version to all other AOL visitors instead of loading the actual current page from our server. Consider dumping AOL and getting a real ISP, but another thing you can try in the meantime is to log on and then open up a non-AOL browser like internet explorer, netscape, firefox, etc and then go to the TMW page you want to see and hit 'refresh' or 'reload' on the browser which should then call out to the server for the real version 23) I was wondering when The FALCON PP'S will be available? Also how can I get the software for the falcon pp's so I can do my own capping? I have been told that the Falcon PP's feature will begin in week five. However it is a subscriber only feature this year. I know a number of people this week have asked about it, so maybe it began earlier in previous seasons? I don't know what you mean by the software. The Falcon PP has its own page format like this: http://www.twominutewarning.com/F8ARIGNB.HTM is that what you mean or you are looking for something else? The other thing people ask about is the Red Zone column and I think that usually begins in week six? 24) wanted to know if there was a way to figure out the final stats score from the various columns in the week that was article? How do you come up with the score is my question? Do you weight the rushing differently from the passing yds,etc. Where is defenseive strength come into play? Also, since the stat score predictions are after the games are completed, is there a way to take past stats from the previous weeks by matching the teams in week 4 against each other and coming up with the stat score before the games are played? I don't know the formula they use to calculate the stats score. Funny I guess since I'm now writing the comments! I think I heard that passing is somewhat more important than rushing but as to how the different factors compute I will have to investigate although my guess is the powers that be here may not want to disclose that. The TMW PP feature does allow you to see the prior weeks stats score and get averages and so on. That was free access last year (see http://www.twominutewarning.com/PPBALTEN.HTM say for a sample) but is now a subscriber feature. 25) I was wondering if you still allowed access to previous years data to allow for handicapping research? You can still go back to last year easily enough: http://www.twominutewarning.com/xxfull.htm is the Full Story and then down the left are the other tools. Also you can change the 'xx' to the week number to see a specific week (so 02full.htm is week 2) . Prior to that if you were a subscriber in a given year you could still access those years. 26) I see your best-performing systems listed here: http://www.twominutewarning.com/subscribe.htm . But do you have full year-by-year records for all your systems (good or bad)? A spreadsheet would be easiest, but a HTML table would be fine instead.
Therein lies the problem, there are so many features that are published, both stat models that predict scores or cover% to columnists and so on, and then most of the features are geared to be used with some selectivity, eg don't just playe very game where the stat model shows a one point different from the spread, that it is very hard to state records unlike a simple tout who can say I was 20-13 or whatever. The real purpose of all this is to help with your own handicapping, see http://www.twominutewarning.com/faq.htm for more So sorry I don't have any real detail on records beyond what they've already put up there ...I don't mean to be rude, but certainly if you have a list of your best performing systems, you can create a list of your worst performing ones. I think you guys know what you are doing overall (or I wouldn't bother to write), but without an objectively recorded track record, there is no way I would risk money on a system. More than whether or not you choose to publish it, it is concerning that you appear not to be tracking your results precisely internally, other than to create a "best of" list. I hear you and I wish I could give you more data. Unfortunately there's two things at work really on this: 1) the people who own TMW just flat out don't seem to care about attracting subscribers since they are totally focused on their own betting (which I guess makes sense at the stakes they play at) which means customer service is non-existent and there is zero effort in just doing basic things to get new subscribers, like say marketing! 2) there literally are tons of different features and you could express the records in so many ways. For instance with the Full Story simulator, it gives a confidence value of covering for each matchup every week at a specific line. Now you can just show the overall record for every game, using that line. However no one at TMW would suggest playing a 51% simulated cover team since that's saying only that the game is a coin toss. So then you have to set some arbitrary cutoff for games which would qualify as playable...they have done this at times, so something obvious like 60%+ simulated games have done very well, but are uncommon. So then they lower it to 55%, or now they are using 54% this season. The bigger issue though is what about the variance in lines? You might find a game that is say +3 and the team simulates covering at 53% so no play. But if you can find that game at +3.5 or higher it's an obvious play. Now there is even another wrinkle: this season the NFL has changed their injury reporting from wed night to friday night. In the past the Full Story sims were published on friday morning, but without the injury info it's not as good, so now due to subscriber demands there are two versions: a friday version without injury info included in the sims, a saturday version with the injury...even though it's stated the saturday version is the one that will be counted, I'm sure some people will gripe about how the record shown doesn't reflect the friday one they use because they have to turn in office pool picks by then or something In the end to me it comes down to two things: no amount of past history guarantees anything about future results since the game is constantly changing (coaches, players, rules, officials, etc), the bettors and linemakers are changing, the speed of line movements is changing etc etc And two, it doesn't matter what the feature records are, just what your own records are using the information. If it helps you great, if it hurts you not great. TMW is "back to" being about helping people do better in their own handicapping, after the one year more touty experiment. You can see all of the last year tools for free to get a sense of what it all looks like: http://www.twominutewarning.com/xxfull.htm is the Full Story and then down the left are the other features of 2006. So that's about all I can tell you. Good luck this season
27) are you offering power rankings this year-can't find them yup, still not happening yet...I'll bug Scott about it but I'm not sure he's too interested in them. I guess it wasn't that popular of a feature...people prefer picks! Maybe if more people ask for them it will happen... 28) has two minute warning ever done any research into halftime betting lines. I am interested in the tendancy of teams that are down by double digits in the first half to come out strong in the second. I would like to know if there was anything that supported this hypothesis. I found this: http://www.twominutewarning.com/nflhalftimebetting.htm but it doesn't include actual halftime lines. There may have been some research I'm not aware of, and it's quite likely the main guys who own this site don't reveal everything since they are so focused on their own betting and might fear the halftimes couldn't handle 'disclosure' 29) You should charge for the free picks.To many people in my pool use it. I look at it too but im second guessing cause i know what they have. Just a suggestion for you to make more money for yourselves. thanks... ha! having been here only a couple of years I will say the people who run this site don't seem to care at all about how many subscribers there are or how much money the site makes... good luck this week! 30) if i sign up how are your 2 team parlays handled if both teams i pick tie? I think there is a misunderstanding -- TwoMinuteWarning.com is not a sportsbook. We don't take bets. All we do is make predictions about the upcoming games. 31) i always liked the summary sheet, now i'm surprised you don't have it any more. How come? pls put it back, its really handy for me. thanks I think it's just too early in the season. Probably by next week or week five they will start doing it when there are more 'live' features 32) I was wondering do you have a service which would be helpful to winning an office pool that uses a spread? The subscriber service provides all kinds of different features, statistical predictors and columnists where the focus is entirely spread based. It is however more geared towards finding select key bets over picking every game (although many features do pick every game). At $150 for the season though you would need to be playing in a reasonably high stakes pool to make it worthwhile... 33) I have been using this site for a few years. Suddenly this year, I cannot see any of the research tools I have used in the past (Trends, DC/TO, Inside the 20, etc). Have those all been moved to the subscriber only portion of the site? That's right, the tools are now part of the subscriber content I'm afraid. There's still a fair amount of free content too though. 34) where can i find mon nite's game total? it used to be on the office picks but i don't see it. They are not doing that anymore I guess. I think with the MNF total there is a theory that it depends on how many people are in your pool. If you have lots of people then playing a number somewhat more extreme (low or high) is a good idea, whereas if you have only a few people than playing something right around the O/U line is a good idea. The thinking is that more people take 'typical' total points numbers so in a big pool that hurts them, in a small pool it puts you closer to the more common outcome.
35)Your Full Story explainer article begins with a chart that I, for one, would be very interested in seeing for every pick that the Full Story tool makes over the course of the seasons. The "Line2" and "Line3" data would be extremely valuable to your paying subscribers during the week as the real pointspread moves (or stays the same while the juice moves from -110 or -105 to -120 or +105)
Matchup Line Pick Cover % Line2 Line3
If multiple thousands of simulations are actually run, then it would seem that this data is easily available for every game. Alternatively, I suppose, you might produce a chart with "rule of thumb" reductions/increases in the percentage number for each of the common half point moves. Not all half point moves are created equal, obviously (3 to 3.5 having much more impace than 5 to 5.5), but a not-too-complex chart would help your customers with at least some sense of how attractive a selection that was "59%" at -3 would be at -3.5.
They used to do it that way where they showed the line +/- a half point either way and the corresponding cover%. I am not sure why they stopped. Maybe because too many people were getting confused? I'll ask Scott about it. I know with most lines the difference was pretty minimal (maybe 1%) but on the 3 it's pretty pronounced, like 5% maybe, and the 7 might be 2-3%?
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In the meantime here are some questions that came through to me: 11) Could you please send me the final 2006 staff picks records?
regular season
playoffs
12) How come you guys aren't going to have staff picks again this year? See the FAQ at http://www.twominutewarning.com/faq.htm where it talks about picks vs handicapping yourself. You'll still pretty much get the same thing (picks) from most of the people anyway since Craig does the red zone column, Alan does the Injuries, Scott does Trends and the simulators, David does the regressor (although that may not make the cut). I guess Nathan would be missing since he doesn't have a feature. And he was the best last year! Shucks. Maybe he's being talked into doing something else.
13) Does the subscription include the 5 picks for the Station contest? 14) On the 'subscribe' page, the 'highlights' from the NFL 2006 season: Are those records full season records, or from NFL Week 4 or Week 5 onward? The records depend on what it is.
Full Story is week one on It's confusing! I think the general rule is anything totally stats is week four on. Angles and other things can start in the first month.
15) Is Roland still a part of TMW?
16) Is your sportsinsights really legit?
17) Your injury report method doesn't make sense to me. Doesn't it matter if a player is a star or a backup? There is also as you say a difference you would think between a key player being hurt and some special teams backup. Still the method has done very well for many years so there must be something to it. There will be an article coming out soon that looks at injuries by position. So what happens when a team has 2 WR's hurting and so on.
18) I am a professional handicapper and I am interested in contributing some content to your site.
19) Will Your Web Site Have 2007 Football Projections Soon ?
There was a part II of the Predicting Season Win Totals series posted recently. I have been told the official TMW Season Win Picks themselves will only be available to subscribers. Preseason articles as I wrote at the top are already out and the weekly picks for preseason games will be free to everyone. 20) No offense, but without the forum, it's going to be hard to attract a lot of viewers to your website. The disastrous season two years ago put the kibosh on the site's statistical analyses and thus put off many long time viewers from signing up again. So you have to attract newbies and without some hook I don't how you can do it. But I wish you the best in the upcoming season.
Scott pulled the plug on the forum but it wasn't very popular. He felt there weren't enough posters, not that the posts themselves were not good quality, but without enough people it wasn't generating a lot of 'conversations' on a subject with back and forth discussions. I think it was that more than the occasional spammer or heckler. I agree it seems a bad decision. What could it hurt to have one and given more time maybe it would take off. I can tell you that I am amazed how little the main TMW people seem to care about attracting subscribers, so I don't think that weighed in the decision. As far as I know there is zero advertising for the site planned this year and in most past years. One email sent to past subscribers to let them know the site has launched for 2007 but that is it. At the same time you would be surprised how many subscribers there are. Lots of people just renew like clockwork year after year. Now I have access to the customer database there are also some eye-popping names among the subscribers, e.g. famous people. It sounds like you were a subscriber in 2005, which was the first year I was helping out on the site. That was a horrible season for almost all the columns and tools. I'm sure it must be hard for you to have much confidence in the features after that. I have only been doing sports betting since 2004 so don't have much experience in terms of how often something like that happens. Never again would be good! 21) I just ordered your service today and I feel a little foolish because I am not totally sure what I get with my subsciption. For example will I get the staff picks. Are the tools for everybody or just subscribers.
The subscription gives you access to the subscriber area each week. There you will find something like 20 different features and columns that use a variety of handicapping methods and each make their own picks for that week's games. So for example there is a columnist who uses trends to make picks, another one who focuses on using red zone statistics, another one who uses the injury report in specific ways (see the article off the main front page of the site). In addition there are various stat models that make predictions using drive chart data, play by play stats, simulation of games, etc. So there is a lot of different analysis for the upcoming games. For more I would suggest reading the FAQ at http://twominutewarning.com/faq.htm Now the subscriber area won't open for a little while since the real regular season games don't begin until September (all the preseason coverage at TMW is free access). You should though receive your login codes shortly and will be alerted when the subscriber area starts up.
22) Re: Handicapping Yourself Article (Note: see "Handicapping Yourself" for the article in question) Thank you for the comments. We always appreciate hearing from people who liked an article and it helps us better understand the type of article which gets the best response. There are many factors you can consider in assessing a football game and who is likely to win. We have developed many methods here at TMW and many have research articles you can read for free all about them. So I would recommend looking through things off the research page at www.twominutewarning.com/research.htm You also can see some details on some of the more popular TMW features by going to the subscribe page at http://www.twominutewarning.com/subscribe.htm and if you scroll down to the first "results" table you will see there are some 'research links' that take you to some good articles there. I only started football capping in 2004 and have only been helping at TMW for two years, so I myself still have much to learn!
July 2nd, 2007
1) Who am I?My name is Andy and I have been the TwoMinuteWarning.com intern for the last two seasons. Think "The Office" TV show. That guy who is picked on and laughed at and ridiculed and ignored and anonymous and forgotten and given nothing meaningful to do. Me.Until one day two weeks ago when TMW president Scott told me he wanted a blog on the site this season and thought I should write it. Yay! So here I am. The next Bill Simmons. Twenty-three years old and thrust into the spotlight.
2) What's new at TMW this season?Biggest news I guess is that Scott has moved to England to take advantage of the betting options in that country. I plan on writing about some of his experiences on the betting exchanges.The site slogan this year is: Dead Serious. I like it. The attitude is let's kick butt. The ace features will be back. I have pitched two new columns I would write that have been given a tentative green light. One idea is thanks to the "Blind Side" book that came out about the importance of the left tackle in football. It's predictions from the left tackle-defensive sack specialist head to head. The other idea is a QB column that predicts games based on the starting QB's. I still have to do more research before these get the final stamp of approval.
3) What happened to Tim?Tim is taking a year off. He jokes it is his Adam Pacman Suspension.
4) Why isn't this a real blogHey I just got the job! and don't know much about blogging software. I am looking into options to make this more professional. I want readers to post comments for one thing. Right now this page layout was just taken from Tim's old blog.
5) Will Barrington Henry be back?
I'm told the answer is no. Barrington was not happy with the emails being sent to him and doesn't want to do it again. There will be an addition to the office pool picks page showing expected win percentage based on the line. So you can still "give it the shift" as Barrington liked to say.
6) Where are the Message Boards?Scott said no message boards this year. His feeling was that there weren't enough posts and TMW readers were not that interested overall. A Survey done in 2004 said that 63% of subscribers didn't want message boards. I guess we should have listened.
7) I never got my T-Shirt!Tim ran some contests on the message boards last year with t-shirts as prizes. If you won a t-shirt but have not yet received it send me an email with your name and address and your message board name last year.
8) Can I find the Bet Tracker stats again this year?
Good news on this one. The Bet Tracker feature will return, thanks to SportsInsights.com and their bet counting numbers.
9) Convince me to subscribe!Not my job. I'm sure hoping this blog is more than just a "shill for TMW" thing. If you want more information on subscribing there are three main links I can point you to:- Subscription Info - Frequently Asked Questions. - Comparing NFL Handicapping Services
10) Will Andy's Blog have Picks?Short answer: yes. From me, from special guests...from you!I do want to add: TMW is pushing hard this year on the Learn to Handicap Yourself theme.
...Any Questions?I need your help! As offical TMW spokesperson I will try to answer any and all questions to the best of my ability. Fan mail, hate mail, it's all good. With any luck the readers will write the blog!
Contact Andy:
Andy@TwoMinuteWarning.com
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