New year, new champion

It is indeed a happy new year for the Junior Bro, who on Sunday at last got to celebrate the Gehlke Bros. Football championship he had long anticipated. And he did it in fine fashion, adding two more games to his lead for a final standing of 10 games up on second place. With just four splits on the day, about the only suspense was whether Sean would win by double digits (he did) and which teams would complete the NawFuL's playoff picture.

It was a long and frustrating season for the Senior Bro, whose disappointment continued in Week 17 as he dropped three of four split games. Indianapolis fell at Jacksonville, 19-13; Tennessee nipped Houston, 23-22; and it was the Giants winning the NFC East in the process of beating Dallas, 31-14. Only Kansas City's 7-3 victory at Denver averted the sweep. Perhaps the only consolation for the dethroned two-time defending Gehlke Bros. champ was moving past Ben into second place in the overall standings. But a loss is still a loss, and in the words of Glenn, he said he is "firing my coach and rebuilding the offense for next year." Whatever.

In the meantime, the Surfy Trophy returns to Sean's mantel. He goes out with a 14-2 record to win the week, while Glenn was second at 12-4, and Ben brought up the rear at 9-7. We all correctly predicted the wins of Atlanta, San Francisco, New England, Miami, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Arizona. There were no games we all guessed incorrectly.

FINAL STATS
Now comes the part where we crunch the season's numbers and produce some year-end trivia that we can take with us and chew on until September.

BACK ON TRACK: Sean won the season with a 170-86 overall record (66.4% prediction success), which represents a 30-game improvement over 2010 (140-116, 59.4%) and three games better than 2009 (167-89, 65,2%). Glenn saw his performance improve as well, just not enough to catch Sean. The Senior Bro was 160-96 (62.5%) compared with last year's 158-98 (61.7%). Ben took a modest swing the opposite direction, finishing at 158-98 (61.7%) vs. his 2010 record pace of 169-87 (66.0%)

FEWER SPLITS, GREATER VOLATILITY: Surprisingly, there were just 52 splits this year between the Bros, compared with a whopping 62 in 2010. Glenn might have liked more, as he dominated those matchups last season. This year, Sean won 31 while Glenn took 21. The most splits in a single week was seven in Week 5, with Sean taking four of them. There was at least one split every week, with odd numbers of splits occurring in nine weeks to even numbers happening the other eight weeks. A Bro made a gain of 2 games or greater in eight of the 17 weeks.

WHAT MONDAY NIGHT CURSE?: The legend of the Monday Night Curse began after the Junior Bro won all seven Monday night split games in 2003. Since then he's pretty much dominated the Monday splits, but this year there were just two splits on Monday, with each Bro winning one of them, and there haven't been any Monday night splits since Week 8.

WEEKLY WINS: Sean dominated in weeks won. churning out the best record eight times and tying for it once. Ben had 4 wins and 2 ties. Glenn was 3-1. The best single-week record was 14-2, which Sean accomplished three times, in Weeks 2, 4 and 17. Ben went 14-2 in Week 12. Glenn's best was a 13-3 in Week 12. Ben set the low mark for a single week with his 5-11 finish in Week 1, while Sean and Glenn stumbled their way to identical 6-10 records in Week 10 for their worst marks of the season.

KEY MOMENTS: Glenn got off to a fast start in Week 1, jumping to a 2-game lead in his quest for a third straight Surfy Trophy. But Sean was equal to the task, and after some seesaw action through Week 6, he bumped his advantage to three games in Week 7 and never looked back in dominating the Senior Bro down the stretch. Glenn says his fate was likely sealed in Week 11, when he lost four of five splits to fall seven games back. Ben, despite stumbling in the opening week, eventually hit his stride and got as close as tying his uncle for the overall lead in Week 12. But the Chaos Kid faded after that, winding up in third place, 12 games down, at the end.

SURFY DOMINATION: With his win, 2011 marks the 13th time in the past 20 seasons that Sean has held the title. His past two streaks of dominance were each four years long, punctuated by Glenn's two back-to-back titles. If the trend continues, the Senior Bro may not see the Surfy Trophy again until 2015.

That's it for the 2011 season. Join us in September when we kick off another thrill-packed 17 weeks of Gehlke Bros. Football!