Nathan's Nits - Week 6

Six weeks down. Seven regular season contests to go. We're halfway to knowing who will be participating in the six team CKL Cup Championship playoffs. Trends have already revealed themselves. There are clear haves and very clear have nots. This next half of the story is about whose destiny will change. Can one of the unlucky and/or crappy teams whip up some miracle magic and sneak into the postseason ball? Will an early dominant squad lose their way, tripping down the staircase of mediocrity into the dank basement of the CKL. It's all frat goats and weird mushrooms down here, guys. Do your best to stay on the topside.

Bumbling, fumbling, stumbling toward history

Earlier this week, Ben gchatted me with a query about where his current six game losing streak would place him in the ignominious section of the CKL halls of history. At the time I took a quick glance through the various scrolls I have laying about the CKL library, and told him that a seventh consecutive loss would easily put him in the top five losing streaks of all CKL time. With my curiosity piqued, I went back and actually tracked down the most massive consecutive periods of futility. Let's see where Ben places now, and what it would take to reach the depths of CKL despair.

A quick caveat: The records from our first three seasons over at Yahoo! aren't as easy to manipulate, so I might have missed a few smaller losing streaks (five or six games).

Including Ben's current six game bender (and Mark's five gamer), there have been 30 separate losings streaks of five or more games over the course of the CKL's 13 seasons. Change the threshold to six games, and we still have 16 such occurrences. It's only when we consider seven game streaks that we can finally narrow down a top 10. Before we look at the list, here is your answer, Ben: with a seventh consecutive loss (to Kick Azz Giants, will looks possible with Vereen blowing up on Thursday night), you'd enter the top ten losing streaks of all CKL time. So there's that.

What club would you be joining? Let's take a look.

1. 2004 - CKL Whipping Boy - L7. In Mark's first CKL season, and the first expansion season that saw Rookie and Russ joined the league, Mark lost the last seven games of the season to finish a dreadful 2-12. Hence the team name. His team wasn't really that pathetic, as he outscored three of the teams ranked above him (sounds like a case for a historical luck analysis). I'd chock this streak up to the shock of getting handed a CKL squad after John Hall quit the league. For those that weren't there: Ricky Williams unexpectedly retired to go smoke weed or meditate or something and Mr. Hall demanded a keeper replacement. The league said no. He left.
2. 2007 - The Flaccid Stick - L7. Russ' matriculation to the league was often painful, as evidenced by his first playoff appearance last year in his 10th season. The Flaccid Stick (nee The Magic Stick we all know and love) went limp losings seven games from weeks four to ten of 2007. They also lost nine of their first ten. Rough. It was a really strange run, though, as in everyone of those nine loses, they scored between 65.6 and 93.4. Not horrible by any means. And their one win was a massive 147.5 point explosion on the backs of Donovan McNabb, Ronnie Brown (41.1!), and Roy Williams.
3. 2012 - Nth Degree - L7. I don't remember this one at all, but Rookie apparently lost seven straight just two seasons ago, from weeks eight to 14. Their low point came in Week 11 where the team totaled 47.2, where four players scored less than two points. Yeesh.
4. 2003 - Meat Flaps - L8. Brian Steele's era as a CKL head coach was a failure from a win/loss perspective, but a friggin grand slam in terms of legacy and impact. And the name...damn. Brian lost the last eight contests of the CKL's second season, which earned him the right to select Peerless Price with the first overall selection in the 2004 CKL draft. With those kind of footprints, it's no wonder Steele went AWOL after 2004, ultimately replaced with one year wonder Tom Humphries. This is the franchise that Chad turned into a Cup winner last year.
5. 2007 - Southwest Cactus Jockeys - L8. Man, Ben's team was quite the joke before winning that cup back in 2012. Making their first (but certainly not last) appearance on this list is their eight game losing streak to open the 2007 season. In fact, they lost 11 of their first 12. Brutal. This stretch of futility featured scores in the 52.2 to 70.4 range. No juice in those wobbly jockey legs.
6. 2009 - Jesus the Moose - L8. New name, same results. Ben lost every game between weeks five and 12. 46 points in week ten, when Brent Celek led the team with 10.7 points, was a particularly bleak moment.
7. 2010 - Roo Tang Clan - L8. A surprise to these lists (at least to me) is Joe's end of season run back in 2010. He lost every regular season game down the stretch from weeks eight to 14. This was a very unlucky stretch for the Roo, as they reached 80 points in six of these eight contests. Sometimes, 80 ain't enough in the CKL. Naturally, Joe bounced back and won both his conso playoff games in weeks 13 and 14.
8. 2012 - Juris United - L8. 2012 was a season of streaks. Beyond Alan's league leading eight, and Rookie's seven bagger mentioned above, we also had a six spot from Mark and Kirk lost his first five games. The only season that might be able to compete with 2012 is 2007, when there were five streaks of five losses or more. Alan's 2012 season was just awful. If not for a 1.1 point win over Rookie's Nth Degree in Week 9, Juris United would've lost all 13 of their regular season games. I could see this season being the one that took the wind out of Alan's sails. From season two cup winner to historical ineptitude. The game done changed. Weirdly, he won two of three in the conso.
9. 2008 - Old Mother Hubbard - L9. Ben, again. Ben, with the longest losing streak ever. Ben, the only coach looking to join this list for the fourth time. Man, that cup really covers a brutal history. Hubbard beat Paul's Yul Brennar's Bald-Ass Head by 2.3 points in Week 10, but every other game they played, regular season and conso, was a loss. The numbers are horrific. One game in the 30s, five in the 40s, five in the 50s, three in the 60s, and two in the 70s, with a season high of 74.9 in a Week 12 beatdown by Pink Nightmare. I doubt we'll ever see anyone sink below Ben's season total of 795.8 points. Truly a season for the ages.

So buck up Ben, you only have to lose three more to leapfrog yourself for number one on this list. I hope you enjoyed your year with the cup.

WEEK 6 NUMBERS

All-Play Table

• Norris continues to assert his dominance, with only Paul and Russ within a week of his top spot.
• Kendall's standard deviation got a boost, but he needs to build a taller roller coaster if he wants to compete with Patrick and Mark.
• THUNDER BEAR sad. Lowest high, lowest total points, lowest standard deviation. We need some Viagra.

Luck Table

• Better to be lucky than good, right? Kinda amazing that THUNDER BEAR is tops of this list. We don't deserve it.
• Yet again, Russ and Ben are sucking up all the bad luck. Mark is approaching their luck suck, too.
• Pink Nightmare is the closest to "our record is who we are" territory, at only 15 hundredths away from perfect zero.

The Hotness

• Suck on it, Ben, we got you.
• Rare to see Pink down so low.
• Watch out for Russ, particularly if his luck turns.

Jenna Von Oÿ Table

• Two weeks straight riding that magic stick. Jenna like the way you do what you do, Russ.
• The Jenna chase is nearly over for Ben and BEAR, although at least we still have some time to try to turn things around.