Standings, 1/2

Well HOLLL-EEEE COW, ladies and gents, things just got topsy-turvy.

A lot of scoring was done on New Year's Day, and we have a new leader: Brendan Mooney. He went an unbelievable 6 for 6 on Saturday, accumulating 157 points and taking a 3-point lead over Dan Ryan. What's more, he has 173 PPR, the third-highest in the pool, making him the overwhelming favorite to walk away with the top prize.

As predicted over the past couple days, the honeymoon is over for the Currys. Patricia's days of hanging around are over, as she plummeted to 29th place on a 3-3 day. Mike is out of the money for the first time in a long while as well, falling to 7th with little hope of regaining any ground.

In family time, they've dropped from the lead for the first time in over a week. Our new leaders are the Kairallas. They're followed by Rob and Richard and the Ryan brothers. It's still anyone's game with a week and change left.

The New School, on the other hand, seems to have stomped the Old School into submission. Leading 290 to 262 in average score, they look all but uncatchable.

The Toms have taken a big lead on the Eric(k)s and Females, with the females taking a particularly hard hit when poor Robin Cohen became the only competitor to go 0-6 on Saturday.

Just like last year, Tom Cowell has surged ahead of Spike Friedman late, striking a blow for all old-timers against fresh-faced upstarts.

Interesting statistic: Of all points wagered thus far in the bowl by all competitors, 54% have been converted successfully. Before January 1st, that number was 44%. This was a very successful day for the field. In all, 43% of possible points for the entire pool have already been earned with a week still to go. It looks highly likely that the overall success rate will be above 50%.

Also: Herman Rodriguez won last year's pool with 393 points. It's likely that number will be surpassed as early as tomorrow, and the eventual winner this year should annihilate the total. 500 is a real possibility. And it's not because the favorites are winning more than they did last year. In fact, favorites are only 13-15 straight up, compared to a final total of 16-17 a year ago. For the second straight bowl season, it's better to be the underdog than the favorite. However, there have been several match-ups that nearly everyone identified as easy wins for the favorite, and many points were converted on them. The two most glaring were Oklahoma over UConn today, BYU over UTEP, and Boise State over Utah. Those kinds of gimmes weren't as prevalent last year. This year, though, those three games alone produced at least 90 points for a majority of contestants.

That'll do for now, more updates tomorrow.