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In 2018, the first Saturday in November was dubbed "Statement Saturday", as teams were looking to set the tone for the most crucial stretch of the season and declare themselves true playoff contenders. Some teams did so in spectacular fashion, while others simply were not up to the task. It's important to improve each week into the season, hitting your stride and playing your best in the final month of the regular season. As much as we all love to hate on Michigan, the Wolverines are the only team in the conference that is truly embodying this ideal with an absolute demolishing of what's supposed to be a very talented PSU team on paper. Not only are they improving week to week, but they are also getting healthier, and seem to be setting themselves up nicely for a playoff run.

(This was easily the highlight of the game for PSU fans. UM and PSU did a combined halftime show themed around Game of Thrones, and it was actually pretty badass, including this dragon that takes up the entire field. Definitely check out the video if you have a few spare minutes, it's cool to see them pull this off, considering they didn't get to rehearse together beforehand.)

While we've been getting worse and worse each week in October, the OTE ATS contingent also made a statement on Saturday. Although cutting it a bit close, we made money as a group for the first time since week 6. As we look forward towards the last month of football for 2018, I think we'll be able to build on this and close out strongly, as we've had enough time to learn what most of our teams are capable of. Sometimes, stopping the bleeding is just as important as getting better. This week we went 120-104, good for a pick rate of 0.536, and a cool $560 in our pockets. Overall on the season, we are 1300-1517, good for 0.461 pick rate and a net of -$36,870.

The results for Week 10:

6-1 (+$490): hoeger, beezer07

5-2 (+$280): BradNortmansActingCoach, SDWYO, bucksfan92, GoForThree, trasch_man, vaudvillian, Crab_cakes

4-3 (+$70): Bagels are for champions, M1EK, 87 Rides A Surfboard, StewartRL, RockyMtnBlue, Turtle Shell, HoyaGoon, dbl5030, MNWildcat, Purdue19

3-4 (-$140): K_Sull, 87Townie, TheJrod, Hollywood Hawk Hogan, Green 96, Badgers & Bruins, thevinman

2-5 (-$350): Dead Read, ziowa9, thibtwin, boilerlion31, Boilerman31, AlltheIowanamesaretaken

Smarter Than Everyone Else Pick of the Week: Congrats are in order for hoeger and beezer07, turning in fantastic 6-1 weeks. They both missed Minnesota, but to be fair, so did 20 more of us.

Wishful Thinking Pick of the Week: 8 people were oddly confident in Maryland after the last tumultuous week, thinking the Terps would be able to keep the game within 3 against one of the conference's best defenses. Sorry ziowa9, BradNortmansActingCoach, HoyaGoon, Bagels are for champions, Turtle Shell, boilerlion31, Badgers & Bruins, and Hollywood Hawk Hogan - better luck next time.

Adventures in Picking - The Costanza Method: When every decision you've ever made has been wrong, then doing The Opposite must be always be right. That was George Costanza's crazy idea in Seinfeld, and the idea behind the strategy for a few moribund ATS pickers, choosing the team opposite to the one they think will actually cover. It was first utilized by HoyaGoon in Week 7, and was picked up by RockyMtnBlue week 8, with Badgers & Bruins utilizing it in weeks 9 and 10.

In Seinfeld, doing The Opposite was a magic pill for George, landing him a new job, a new girlfriend, and moving out of his parents' house. Meanwhile Elaine got dumped, evicted from her apartment, and lost her job. RockyMtnBlue was definitely Elaine rather than George, going 1-6 the one time he tried utilizing The Opposite. Interestingly enough, no one has been George yet. HoyaGoon and Badgers & Bruins are both Jerry, who comments that life always evens out, and his life was unaffected as Elaine and George both flipped. HoyaGoon is 13-13 utilizing The Costanza Method, while Badgers & Bruins is 6-6.

Race to the Top: All good things must come to an end, and this unfortunately is even true for K_Sull. After spending the first half the season kicking all our asses, she's come down to earth in recent weeks and has finally been surpassed, turning in her 3rd negative week in a row and 4th in 5 weeks. She's fallen to 3rd, surpassed by our new leader hoeger and BradNortmansActingCoach in 2nd. Those 3 are all within 2 games of each other. boilermaker5 stays steady at 4th, while GoForThree has climbed his way back into the black and into 5th place.

Race to the Bottom: The good news for HoyaGoon and 87 Rides A Surfboard is that they went back above the -$2000 mark with decent weeks. The bad news is that they're still tied for last with Green 96. ICEICETHATGUY13 and Turtle Shell round out the bottom 5, although they have flipped in the order.

On to the standings:

An asterisk (*) indicates a player that has participated every week

Standings - by $$$

Standings - By # of games picked correctly

Standings - by %