COLUMN BY RYAN MILLER & KENNY WARD
Welcome, welcome to the first annual Scouties! The award show where we go over the best highlights of all of our columns from throughout the year. Let’s move right along to the first category…
MOST STATISTICAL NERD: Ryan Miller, A Reaction to the MLB Trade Deadline
Yeah, I’ll take this one, I started getting into WAR, and other advanced sabermetrics like that. My grandma reads these columns, so maybe I need to start explaining what the heck OPS+ is. Column idea for next year…?
MOST WRONG PREDICTIONS IN A SINGLE COLUMN: Kenny Ward, Final NFL Mock Draft
I won’t lie. I did pretty bad. This mock draft looked like my March Madness Bracket every year. I only got two picks right, and they were the two everyone knew would happen. I even did a second round by myself and didn’t get a single pick right. Ouch.
FUNNIEST QUOTE WHILST BEING MAD AT SOMETHING: Ryan Miller, “This is a bad team, this is a bad organization, this is a bad franchise, this is a bad front office.”
Hey, I’ll take it. This was about the A’s org, and while they have been on a bit of a heater recently, I feel my general sentiment still stands
MOST YAP: Kenny Ward, Final NFL Mock Draft
Hey now. This feels a little mean. I don’t consider it yapping. I consider it more… in-depth views of every pick. I think it was a very interesting column. Not yapped at all…
COLUMN THAT TOOK THE LONGEST TO WRITE: Ryan Miller, MLB Power Rankings
This column kept me up till like 11 at night figuring things out to say about the dang Nationals. I feel like it’s pretty clear when I hit you with the “The Giants are looking to be good, they just need to play a little more to show what they can do,” that I was reaching for straws (yes, that is all I wrote about the Giants).
TOP 3 MOST BORING COLUMNS: “Sports Columnist Takes a Look at Turf Related Injuries”,”Sports Columnist Finds the Impact Sports have on FC”, and “Sports Columnist Takes a Look at Officiating in Sports”
Ryan: I can’t speak for my colleague, but I feel like I speak for the both of us when we say that these were not our best work (Look ahead to see what the best work was). These were not very fun to write either, but we learn, so expect less duds in the coming year.
Kenny: Oh yeah, the turf one was bad. I wrote that one in a time crunch. I can’t believe how in depth I went on literal plastic grass. The FC sports impact story wasn’t awful, depending on the P.O.V. The officiating one was just an absolute rant, even though it was definitely correct.
And finally…
BEST COLUMN (KENNY): Sports Columnists Look at Upsets In NCAA’s 125 Weight Class
I have a little bias towards the sport of wrestling, but I feel like the depth of this story and just the fact that it’s something that I know about made this a great story to write. Also, reading this in the perspective of another wrestler made this a great story in general.
BEST COLUMN (RYAN): Could America be a Soccer Powerhouse? A Sports Columnist Ponders
Recency bias? I hardly know her! Anyway, there were four columns I thought could take this spot, this one, the one where I predict the F1 grid, the one where I preview the New Albany game, and the one where I predict the MLB awards. Ultimately, though, I thought this one had the right mix of humor, stats, and analysis to take the top spot.
That’s going to do it for this issue folks, and for the last time this year, stay scoutin’.
The Bagpiper 