Could you explain your quote in the Salon decade reprise article?

Sorry, and I hope you see this, but what quote would that be?

Two other factors make going for 2 an even better percentage

play than you identify. First, the kick can be missed. I would give

that about a 2% chance. Second even if you miss the 2-point

conversion you can still try an onside kick.

Agreed on the second. On the first, it�s way less than a 2 percent chance of missing the PAT. I looked up last year�s PAT stats recently. I forget the exact figure, but it was something like 7 misses out of more than 1,000 attempts. The odds of making a PAT are better than 99-1.

This whole issue begs the real question: Why does 60 minutes of

great play have to end up in a "crap shoot"

You�re a fine young man, Fast Eddie, for correctly using the phrase �begs the question,� which is rarely done.

Whatever happened to Clipping, anyway?

I know. And when did offside become �encroachment,� and why?

meet TiVo.

Looks like you picked Carolina, but bolded the Bears.

You never heard of hedging your bets?

Thanks for the tip. That's being fixed. Carolina is in fact the pick.

King, with only two exceptions, you picked the team with the better record to win every game. Were you aware of this? ...

I wasn't, but don't I do that a lot? Doesn't everyone? About a third of all NFL games are "upsets," I think, which is why nobody ever does much better than 70 percent picking games. If you picked no upsets, ever, you'd be in the mix in any contest like the Panel o', I suspect. Pick a few upsets here and there and if you get lucky you'll win.

it's kind of funny when you consider ... you don't have to know anything about football to use that strategy.

Well then it's perfect for me!

Good luck with the What the Heck (tm) pick this week!

You were saying? The No. 1 offense almost got tied in regulation at the end there, having gained, what, 16 yards in the fourth quarter. Nice.

About my record: Yes, last week I went 7-7, not 10-4. And my overall record after Week 10 was 93-51, not 96-48. The typos were fixed not too long after publication, once someone brought the mistake to my attention. What happened was I tallied my picks on Buster's sheet and vice-versa. Wishful thinking on my part. He's the one who went 10-4.

I'll update the standings in the column sometime this week, probably Wednesday. Through 10 weeks, Buster was in fact in first place in the Panel o' Experts at 99-45, one game better than Sean Salisbury. I had fallen into a three-way tie for fifth (out of 15), and it's going to get worse. I went 8-7 yesterday. Buster keeps chugging along: He went 10-5 yesterday, picking up a game on Salisbury, though Salisbury will get it back tonight if Green Bay beats Minnesota. If the Vikings win, Buster will have a commanding three-game lead.

Thanks, Eddie. But I thought I'd start with "It was a dark and stormy night."

Or maybe, "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

which I think is catchy.

How much has Buster benefitted by luck?

Good question, and I've been meaning to research it. I forgot to keep track of which teams were picked as favorites, as opposed to coinflip picks, for a couple of the weeks, so I have to find the old odds if I can.

The Yahoo Users' record is 106-54. This represents the opinion of the mob, which hews pretty closely to always picking the favorite. (That's what makes the favorite the favorite.) Buster is four games better than that. So I suspect what's happening is that Buster's batting about .500 with his coin, and picking big favorites yields slightly better results than just picking favorites.

But I don't know that and will research soon.

Is there a precedence for having neither team in caps? Maybe this would hvae been the week to introduce the "No winner" pick.

Sure there is. It's called a typo. There seems to be a few every week, and sometimes it's that I forget to capitalize a winner. Some people have suggested that a good WTH pick would be to predict a tie, in any game. If I hit that one -- wow. There's been one tie in the last, I forget, eight years or something?

The question, above, was whether Buster's Panel o' Experts-leading 110-50 record was the result of luck on the coin flips, or "skill," in picking all favorites of six-plus points. (He flips a coin when the spread is less than six.)

The answer: Looks like both.

I don't have the favorites from Weeks 1 and 2, when Buster went 19-13, but I've kept track of the ones he's picked since Week 3. From Week 3 through Week 11, his record was 91-37. Picking six-plus-points favorites, he was 38-6, an .864 winning percentage. Yowza. But, as you can see, that doesn't account for him being 60 games over .500. In the coinflip games, he went 53-31, a .631 winning percentage. So his coin is outperforming probability by 11 games.

If you're betting on the Panel o' Experts, you might want to keep that in mind before betting on Buster.

Also keep this in mind: At one point, again starting with Week 3, he was 17-0, and he was also 25-1 in picking big favorites. Since then, 13-5. Still good, but not almost perfect. It seems counterintuitive to me that "the odds" do a worse job of picking winners as the season goes on and we know more about teams, but that's been the case this year at least.