Mad, I gotta agree about the early season form being hard to figure, but that's when you can jump on some value if you form the right opinions about teams. It's more a "trust your gut" thing than anything, but if you are right, you can ride out some nice wins.

The "honoring stars... system" is tough to follow as it is usually not announced nationally what the team's intentions are, but it usually plays out for the visitor. If you can get on-line to a team's website and do some research, maybe you can find out what they are doing. Sometimes it is very applicable and sometimes not. it is very much an intangible but the closer the relation of the honoree to the players on the field, the better for the other team. the home team is distracted and can start to "put things in perspective" if the ceremony regards a sick or deceased player or other such bad things. I don't have any stats on this, but I've read about this system in a lot of publications. I have a book describing it. I'll try to dig it up.

Karla, good job on all those observations. it really sums up alot of teams in a nutshell.