The first season of 17 Games is now complete, and we have crowned our champions. In the overall competition, Fat Phil has captured “the Duke” and will be free to punt, pass, and kick it all over the place. Brian of Awful Announcing came from behind to defeat MDS for the Ballhype Invitational title, which gives him the satisfaction of giving money to charity. It’s up to you to decide which one made it out better.

Before we get into the specifics of how these players won, let’s first take stock of the NFL teams and how they performed against the spread this season. For most of the year, the Patriots dominated this area, blowing teams out and winning theoretical money for anyone who placed a theoretical wager on them. However, the insanely high spreads that attended all of their later games resulted in a severe drop-off. In fact, the Pats ended up as only the second-best team against the spread this season at +97. It was the Packers who bested them, finishing at +109 to take the crown. That result is certainly not something most would have predicted after Week 8, but it does set up an interesting gambling situation if those teams match up in the Super Bowl. The Rams suffered the ignominy of finishing last at -100, and I will refrain from piling on by making a joke at Scott Linehan’s expense.

In regards to the most popular picks of the year, the Colts stand out with ten more picks than their next-closest competitor, the Patriots. Part of the reason for that margin could rest on 3rd-place finisher pjohnson’s strategy of taking Indy every week. A truly stunning strategy, and it turns out it’s better than thinking about every game and working out a logical pick. Perhaps the oddest issue with picking popularity, though, was that the Jaguars, who finished fourth in overall performance at +81, were picked just eight times the entire season, which tied with the Dolphins for fewest clicks. Apparently teal isn’t that popular a color these days.

With that number-crunching out of the way, we can now toast our victors. Three cheers to the aforementioned Fat Phil, who survived his three-point loss with the Seahawks last week to best my friend and colleague Carter Blanchard. Carter’s borderline insane decision to take the Jets (-3 points) against the Chiefs ultimately proves that knowing nothing about football can eventually bite you in the ass, although his failure now allows him to stop pretending that he likes football. Phil defeated Carter by 16.5 points, which is probably enough to constitute a mandate in 17 Games Land.

In the Ballhype Invitational, MDS squandered his 6.5-point lead by taking the Steelers (-9) against the Ravens. With that result, Brian just had to make sure he didn’t lose points, and he did that by winning 10.5 points in the Bengals’ victory over the Dolphins. Brian will be donating his charity winnings to The V Foundation, a decision that could arise from some latent desire to associate with Dick Vitale as much as possible. We should also praise Unsilent Majority, who will match Brian’s gift out of the goodness of his heart. Everyone else in the group, myself included, is obviously a heartless jerk.

And, with that, we say goodbye to this season of 17 Games. I can only hope that you all join us once again next season for more picks and awful advice. I hope everyone enjoys the playoffs. I would give you my picks, but I fear those would hurt more than they’d help. Good luck to all.