No Luck Needed...Nats Win 7th Crown

 For only the fourth time in our Performance Scoring era, the Top Two seeds squared off for the EHFL championship, and, as has been the case three times previously, #2 is taking home the hardware. 

The Nats, who last won the Hughes Bowl in 2004, downed the Sticks, 117.28 to 101.12 in a game in which they never trailed. Dan's crew bounced out in front by 50+ points on Christmas Day and kept their lead more or less intact throughout the weekend. They were up by 42 points as the 2nd Sunday afternoon window drew to a close. The Sticks, the league's top club through much of the second half of the season, rolled out their star, Christian McCaffrey, on Sunday night, but that deficit was simply too much to overcome, even for him.

The Bengals' Chase Brown led the Nats in scoring with 27.6 points, which gave him nearly 60 points for the postseason as he turned in his two best 2025 performances when the Nats needed him the most. He was named the Hughes Bowl MVP. QB Dak Prescott, mid-season trade acquisition 🫩 RB RJ Harvey, and kicker Cam Little all turned in point totals above their yearly averages in helping the Nats to the win.

The Sticks fell short of their goal to win their fourth title, but Keith had a great season.  It's tough to win, especially against a solid team like the Nats, when two of your receivers score under two points combined. But Keith can take solace in knowing that there was no other lineup configuration at his disposal that would have changed the outcome. 

Hughes Bowl 45 MVP Chase Brown of the Nats

Streaks Broken and other Nats-related Hughes Bowl Trivia!

-13 wins by the Nats in 2025 (inc. two postseason) ties them for 2nd all-time with 8 other clubs as far as winning lineups in a year is concerned. The record is 14 wins set by the Giants in 2021 (12-2 +2 in the postseason).

-The Sticks and Nats had won 24 games between them when they began the weekend with both having gone 11-3 in the regular season and both having won their semifinal game. The only previous time two Hughes Bowl participants had brought 24 wins to the title game was back in 1993, when the Heroes and Nats (then known as the HebePokes with Dave as GM) had followed the same path. Dave prevailed in that contest.

-In the twenty-two Hughes Bowls of the Performance Scoring era, the average winning margin has been 20 points, which puts this 2025 game near the middle. 

-The win ends what had been the league's third-longest non-title run (21 years). The Rbacks (32 years) and Heroes (31 years) are the teams with longer waits for a crown. The #3 wait now belongs to the Bombers (12 years).

-The Nats' last championship, in 2004, was unique in that it was the only Hughes Bowl ever won on a tiebreak. In fact, that season the Nats won two, yes, TWO! postseason games on tiebreaks. And they only won their semifinal by three points. Here is the box score from that Hughes Bowl and some of the remnants of the league site from that year. 

The fact that in the very first year of performance scoring, with much greater odds against a tie, we got two of them in the playoffs is nuts! It is one of those things a commish never really gets over. I still have facial tics from that '04 postseason. 

A Note About Steve Barenholtz: 

I fell asleep early on Sunday night, well before the Bears-Niners game was over. I woke up about 2 a.m., checked the scores, and put up the league site's banner marking Dan's win. I also started digging into the Nationals' history, making notes for this entry. Of course, our late friend Steve even today has his fingerprints on the franchise and this league. He brought David, Dan, and, by extension, Jack into the Hughes League. 

And I wasn't alone in thinking of Steve last night. The first email I saw this morning was from Rick. He noted that Steve would be proud of the job Dan had done with the Nationals. 

When he moved back east, to NYC, Steve would usually call me on Saturday mornings to turn in a lineup. Back in those pre-Internet days, back when the newsletter and scoresheet were a snail mail effort, most weeks he hadn't yet been to the Post Office, so his first question was 'How'd I do?'. If I had good news, I'd hear that chuckle that I can still hear in my head to this day. 

I agree with Rick...Steve would be excited about this week's result. Miss you every day, my friend.

And other notes:

I'm ducking out for a few days since this is a 'dead week' for fantasy. Next Monday, the rosters will be available for the Second Season contest. I will email everyone when that happens. Check the site using the link on the regular league's homepage. 

Everyone who enters a lineup will receive a 2026 waiver cash bonus. Prize money (also in the form of 2026 waiver cash) will go to the top three (at least) finishers. The cost of our league's Hughes Bowl trophy jumped this year, and I do mean jumped! So expect an increase in yearly dues going forward. I will try to discount those dues for Second Season participants. 

Also, be aware that I won't 'carry' non-payers in the future. Hopefully, the cost of the league stays stable for a few years, as they have bumped it twice recently. 

When I decided to install the new template back in the spring, I had hopes that it would make my job easier. After all, the template came fully loaded with the features I had been using on the old site without me having to install and maintain them. I think I can finally say that I have the site where I want it to be. But, lord, it was a struggle. here's kind of how it went. I may be leaving a few things out. I was in denial for a while. LOL

The template itself conflicted with some of my amateur coding, and it took weeks to untangle things with the help of the developer. Meanwhile, I installed and uninstalled it about a dozen times. 

Once loaded correctly, I spent a lot of time tweaking it around the edges to get some of the old functionality incorporated. I ended up compromising, and some of the features from the old sites were transferred to the Hughes News blog. Not ideal, but that's how it had to be.

A few weeks into the season, all hell broke loose as many owners, mostly Windows users, had problems with the lineup, roster, and scoreboard pages. After coming up with many 'work-arounds', the site was usable, and eventually the issues cleared up. At least I haven't heard anything to the contrary.

The waiver money tally seemed 'off' to me about mid-year. But without having kept a close eye on it (never felt the need to hand-tally it all), I couldn't be sure. I still think something occasionally goes south with it. My suspicion is that too many leagues use the same time as us (9 Central) to run their blind bid waivers. It puts a strain on the servers, and things get like waiver costs get fubar'd. I'm basing that on the fact that my couple of dynasty leagues send out the automated emails at 9 pm or a minute or two after. Our transaction email has been as late as 10 or 12 minutes. I may move our waiver time back a half an hour next season. 

Late in the year, as a Thursday night NFL game was wrapped up, much of our site (everything below the top banner) just vanished. It turned out to be a DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) Attack on the template owner's website. Since he hosts much of the code, everyone using the template was S-O-L until the attack ended sometime during the night. 

If this all sounds like a 'Whoa is Me' plea for sympathy, it is not. It is a way for me to document issues for next year in case they recur. I am hoping that now, with the template in place and working to my liking, I can count on moving forward next season and not having to spend nearly the time I did this year working 'under the hood'. 

Finally:

I'm planning to have our Houston owners' annual get-together on the Saturday before the Super Bowl (Feb. 7 this year) as usual. This will be the first time since 2021 that we will not have a 'live' trophy presentation. But that's fine. We can talk shit about the champ even easier when he is not around! Hope to see all the locals there. Details will be sent as we get closer.