Steel Balls

Fellow Ballers, another year has come and gone. Sadly it ended a little sooner than hoped, but it was a fascinating season with many positives.

Now is the time for us to review our 2015 season prognostications and crown a new Steel Balls Trophy champion.  It was a tough competition with over 50% of participants correctly predicting the Steelers’ regular season win total. This meant we had to dig deep into the complex and secretly guarded tie-breaking procedures in order to determine a winner beyond dispute.

Please read on to discover this year’s winner.

The following table shows the actual season results versus the predictions of each participant, listed in the order that predictions were originally posted. Actual results are shown in red. Successful predictions are shown in green. A “-1” value is designated where a prediction was not provided or left blank.

The first tie breaker is correctly guessing the number of Steelers wins. Because eight of fifteen participants correctly guessed 10 wins, it was necessary to move to the second tie breaker: closest guesses across the division. In order to measure this we add up the total differences in final win records of each team in the division, subtract away the predicted values, and take the absolute value. In other words guessing 4 wins or 6 wins for the Ravens would result in a score of 1 (off by one win). The person with the lowest total across the division was the most accurate predictor. We then add additional points for prediction of Steelers final position in the division (guessing 2nd place would yield 0 added points, while guessing 1st or 3rd place would add one point). Finally we add points based on playoff wins predictions (guessing 1 would add 0 points, while guessing no playoff wins or 2 playoff wins would add a point to the total.)

The final tallies are shown in the table below. The results are sorted first based on accuracy of Steelers wins predictions, and then sorted secondarily by total accuracy.

As you can see, the 2015 Steel Ball champion is none other than my humble self, followed closely by Tuskegee_Brown and abennihana. Honorable mention must go to our other honorable warrior Army who tied for second overall, missing out only by under counting the Steelers win total by one game and for failing to provide a prediction of playoff results.

Winning this year’s Cleveland Browns trophy is Earl who pretty much whiffed across the board. But no worries as we are confident Earl will step up his game for the 2016 season, clearing out his front office and coaching staff and bringing in a new QB.

Here are our historical Steel Ball prediction winners:

2013 Season: (tie) malsor, Bill S, jeffmi

2014 Season: (tie) steelerfan58, bgintn, Tuskegee_Brown

2015 Draft: copanut

2015 Season: copanut

Up next: start your prep work for your draft predictions for 2016, as we’ll be calling for your prognostications in the not too distant future.

*Abennihana failed to identify the final divisional positions and gave both the Steelers and Bengals a 10 win finish. Rather than appoint this non-answer with a -1 value, I split the difference between a first place and second place prediction, hence the addition of a half point to his total.

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