Week 5 Is ON!

I wish I knew more about college football, but it is always fun to learn a new sport. I have been following it for a few years, just not nearly as religiously as NFL.

But I digress…FanYard is growing faster every day, people, and we want you to know that we are very appreciative of this early support.

We have more goodies on the way very soon, so enjoy the games this weekend and keep out a close eye.

Don’t forget about the NFL prognostication contest between myself and Jon Pyle at Pyle of List! This week’s version should be up soon-ish. Now, I must drive ten hours to Banff, Alberta. Hopefully, they have wireless there…

Faves are Favored

Not surprisingly after last week, the NFL sees not too many upsets being projected, at least yet, by the FanYard community. The only underdog we think will pull out a win over a favorite at the moment, is the Niners to beat the Seahawks. I am a bit biased here with this pick, being a Niners fan, but they do seem to know how to beat their division rivals from the Emerald City, having done so in both meetings last year.

There were two college football games tonight, with the Yardstick correctly predicting both games after a big comeback was staged by Arkansas State, and Boise State lit up Southern Miss 38-16.

How much trouble are the Rams in, with Steven Jackson out while they trip over to Dallas to play the Cowboys? About as much trouble as all the people who had the first and second round picks in this season’s fantasy drafts and took him and LT, I would say.

Pyle of List

There is now an NFL picking contest that I should have told you about last week, but I got lost amidst the shuffle of UFC and college football and NFL and MLB pennant races and…you get the picture.

Basically, myself and Jon from Pyle of List are picking each NFL game and then seeing how we do based on FanYard rules of engagement. Jon is a funny guy with a thing for Joey Harrington and USC. USC, I can understand. Harrington, on the other hand, well, he had an OK game last week.

Jon is not a huge watcher of NFL. He’ll fit in one game a week, but not usually more of that. He also has college to contend with, and a wife and a dog, and a job and all that jazz, so he does not ’study’ the game quite like I do. As such, we are billing this matchup as sort of a Pro vs. Joe theme. Check Pyle of List for this past weekend’s scores.

Find Your NCAA Team More Easily

While we work on a search and/or sortables system to make finding the college game you want to pick easier, we now have RSS feeds available. In the address bar, at the far right of the URL of the site, you will see a little orange icon. Clicking that icon will open a page listing all the games. You need to be in either the NFL or NCAA main page to be able to see the icon. When you see the list of games, after clicking the RSS icon, you can then subscribe to the RSS feed, or simply scroll down and find the game you want.

It will be quicker than scrolling through the pages. For faster results on the RSS page, hit Ctrl + f and then type in the name of the team you are looking for to Find it.

Weird Week…

Sometimes you get weeks like this in the NFL, especially after a week with so many upsets as Week Two of the 2007 NFL season had. As well, it is a little early to be able to pull away from the the hype machine of network television and actually be able to open your eyes to what is happening on the field. For example, on Sunday, the Packers were at home on Lambeau Field, on six-game win streak, facing the Chargers. The Chargers had lost two of their previous three games, albeit to the Patriots, a playoff team. The Pack, however, had beaten three playoff teams in a row going into Sunday. Still, the hype was all Chargers.

Denver had won its two games this season – against two of the worst teams in the league – by less than two seconds and were facing the Jags at home. Remember who the Broncos have barely beaten this year: the Bills and the Raiders. Still, the Broncos were favored going up against the tough defense of the Jags.

FanYard had the Browns to win, and they should have. Watch and see, the league will make a new rule soon that does not allow coaches to call a time out at the last second as the winning field goal is flying through the uprights, forcing the kicking team to do it over; the way the Raiders beat the Browns and the way the Broncos beat the Raiders the week before.

As for the Giants? Who knew they still even had a defense? The Redskins know now.

With the distractions surrounding McNabb in Philly, it is amazing that he was able to have the day he did. His passer rating of 158.3 against the Lions is the best rating possible.

So, overall, our Week Three Yardsticks correctly predicted 8 of 16 games, with one undecided: the Cowboys at Bears. Will Rex start against the Lions this week? Coach Smith has kept him as the starter after posting a zero rating last season, so it is anybody’s guess.

Saints Lost…

After the spanking they took at the hands of Vince Young and the Titans last night, you just knew things were going to get worse before they got better for the Saints. Sure enough, they did. Deuce McAllister is done for the season with an ACL injury. I have a feeling there won’t be many Yardsticks pointing in the direction of New Orleans for the rest of this season. Updates on weekend games coming right up after this break…

Favre Ties His Shoes…

…and the all-time touchdown record, too. Nice work, Brett!

There will be an update tomorrow on how the FanYard community did today. Suffice it to say, there were, as always, a few interesting finishes.

Wow…my friend Marc here, watching this Cowboys at Bears game, just called out that Romo’s next pass would be tipped and then intercepted by the Bears. Sure enough, it was…I have chills. This Yardstick is the first we have had that was EVEN at gametime. Enjoy!

Lady Liddell Loses Again

If any NFL team plays tomorrow like Chuck Liddell fought in the octagon tonight, they will be beaten like a rented mule. The NFL and the UFC are about being wrriors until you can no longer be.

Liddell is no longer a warrior. Forrest Griffin, now…there is a freakin’ warrior. The Niners will have to fight like that tomorrow in Pittsburgh if they want to win.

On to FanYard. All the underdogs from yesterday are still just that. And, still, we seem to think Grossman and the bears D can beat the firepower the Cowboys will bring into Chicago.

As they say in the octagon: Bring it on!!

More Dogs and an Update

Another couple of gutsy calls are on the board of NFL games now, as FanYard users have used their predictions to point the Yardstick in the direction of at least a field goal win by the Cincinnati Bengals, visiting the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday. The Tennessee Titans are also favored now by two points over the seemingly hapless Saints, in New Orleans no less, on Monday Night Football! This oughtta be interesting.

One of the Yardsticks has swung back toward a home team that was a dog, according to the Yardstick yesterday. The Chicago Bears are now expected to beat the Cowboys by at least a point.

This, from an email sent out earlier by our Founder:

“This week you may have noticed a change in you’re “My Yard” page.
We now only show a few of your friends, following, and followers,
and have a link on each that shows you a list view of all your
friends. We’ve also included on this list each of your friends’
scorecards, so that you can easily see the ranking, win/loss,
accuracy and points earned by all your friends without having
to go to their Yard page. We hope that you will find this useful.

Next big release will be a referral system that will allow you to
easily invite your friends to FanYard, send them your picks for a
given week, or brag to them by sending them your scorecard.

Also, many of you have asked about having a way to view college
games by conferences or easily search for your favorite college
teams. With some 60 games on any given Saturday, we certainly
agree that our current page view could be improved, so we are
working on something now that we hope to release soon that will
address these issues.

One of the things that you don’t see is all the work that is
going into the site behind the scenes. All the development on
our database, competition and score feeds, maintaining our
servers, etc. This is surprisingly a lot of work, so I want to
say a big thanks to our team in Texas for keeping us up and
running, and the guys at Chalk, without whom much of the data you
see on a daily basis would not be possible.”

NFL, Doggy Style

FanYard users are going against the grain this week, big time. As of writing this, we are predicting four upsets for NFL Week Three. Ballsy. I like it. What are the games, you ask?

Philadelphia is a home favorite, according to most sources, but we have Detroit getting at least a one-point road victory. After the poor performance and questionable coaching I witnessed when the Redskins beat the Eagles last Monday Night, I find it hard to disagree.

The Yardstick for the Vikings at Chiefs game, has the home team losing by at least a touchdown. The Chiefs suck right now, and Herm Edwards is one of the worst coaches to walk the sidelines these days. But seven points might be a lot for the (relatively) quarterback-less Vikings to win by. Anything that brings the pink slip closer to Herm’s next handshake with the owner of the Chiefs, however, I am totally down with.

The Cleveland at Oakland Yardstick says the Browns are going to get a rare road win by a field goal at least. I guess new quarterback Derek Anderson gained his team a flock of new Dawgs with his impressive outing last week in that shootout win over the Bengals.

Apparently, most of you are not so sure about the Bears being able to beat a quality team, even at home, with Rex Grossman at quarterback. Although many sources call Chicago to beat the high-falutin’ Cowboys, the FanYard Yardstick for the game is calling for at least a two-point road win for Dallas.

Way to lay it on the line, people! Let’s show the world that we know best when it comes to calling the NFL.