Phig Newton, 'mystery picker' move into first place in football contest

The fourth weekend of our local ESPN College Football Pick ‘Em Contest has come and gone, and last weekend’s slate of games resulted in another shakeup in the local standings.

Phig Newton and a mysterious player known only as “Murder Creek Man 78” are tied for the No. 1 spot in the standings. Last week, Newton was in eighth place and “Murder Creek Man 78” was further on down the line. (If you’re reading this, Murder Creek Man 78, I need you to send me your real name, so we can run it in the newspaper. Some of the other contestants are urging me to remove you from the contest because they don’t like playing against an anonymous contestant.)

We had a five-way tie for third place, which was held down this week by Travis Presley, Sharon Peacock, defending champion Drew Skipper, David Parker and past champion Hunter Norris. Ricky Taylor and Mike Dailey were both tied for eighth place, and Mark Peacock was in the No. 10 spot.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I was No. 15 in the standings.

With that said, if you’re playing in the contest and didn’t make the Top 10, don’t give up. The contest will run for a total of 14 weeks, and we’ve got 10 more weeks to go. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

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This coming Saturday, there will be eight football games involving SEC teams, including five games that will feature head-to-head matchups between SEC teams. 

Here’s how I see those games coming out. I like Alabama over Ole Miss, Auburn over Mississippi State, Florida over Vanderbilt, Georgia over Tennessee, Texas A&M over South Carolina, LSU over Troy, Arkansas over New Mexico State and Kentucky over Eastern Michigan. Missouri is off this week.

Last week: 8-0. So far this year: 36-8.

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This time next week, another season of Atlanta Braves baseball will have come to a close, and even though they don’t have a great record, I wouldn’t say they had a bad season. A number of untimely injuries cost them some games that they needed to win, and several young, emerging stars got some valuable playing time this year. They also lost a lot of close games, and always seemed to have a shot at winning every game they were in, despite the score.

As of Monday, the Braves were 70-84 overall, a winning percentage of .455, that is, a hair under .500. They wrapped up their home schedule Sunday in Atlanta, leaving them with a 37-45 overall record at home this season in their brand new ballpark, SunTrust Park. On the road, through Sunday, they were 33-39 overall.

As of Tuesday morning, the Braves were third in the National League East, 24.0 games out of first place. This doesn’t sound great (because it’s not), but when you consider that they actually have a winning record against NL East opponents this season that takes some of the sting out of it. Through Sunday, the Braves were 31-29 against NL East opponents with seven games left to go in the season. All of those game will be against the Mets and the Marlins. Atlanta is scheduled to close out their season Sunday in Miami.