Hey ZONERS, Your Vote Can Help

[Mavs Man]

Only 13 votes away from tying 4th place.

 

[Mavs Man]

I'm now tied.

Also, I made it easier/faster to vote - just click the link on my signature below and your vote will automatically be cast once the page loads.

 

[lockster]

We are like 1000 votes short of 1st place

 

[Mavs Man]

We are like 1000 votes short of 1st place

Don't worry about that. It's really a weekly ranking that gets tallied up at the end of the year (I'm guessing).

Even though they still show the overall votes, they restart the vote every week when they release their overall rankings (Thursday afternoon), so everyone starts at zero again on Thursday/Friday. When the Cleveland intern got 600 votes last week and finished out of the top ten, those votes were wasted because he didn't place AND they don't help him for the rest of the competition.

I only use the overall votes to gauge how I'm doing. Yeah, people might go up and down the fan voting ranking, but if I can consistently stay near the top, and pass those who had a good week here or there, that shows I'm still competitive.

Despite trailing the two leaders by 1,000 votes, I've finished 6th, 3rd, and 5th the past three weeks. We'll see where I land tomorrow afternoon.

Thanks for voting, and don't be discouraged. There are quite a few quality interns at MaxPreps, but only five or six of us are getting enough votes to seriously contend in this contest, so your vote is definitely making a difference.

 

[Mavs Man]

Just went over 1,000 votes!

 

[Mavs Man]

I dropped one spot to #6 overall with last night's new rankings - here's why:

Overall Rank - Last week's votes (Tuesday 10/9 - Tuesday 10/16):

#1 - Minnesota - 350+ (note: wasn't even in the top 15 in fan votes the week before)
#2 - Denver - 250
#3 - Arizona - 313
#4 - So Cal - 249
#5 - Cleveland - 239
#6 - Dallas - 170

I would be very surprised if Minnesota can keep that pace up over the long haul, and I was outvoted by only 10-20 votes a day. That's really not that much.

I'm trying to get the word out more as much as I can to the schools, coaches, ADs, booster clubs, and online high school sports websites. If you can help further, I'd appreciate it. I'm trying to cut into their weekly lead, and am already on pace this week for 287 votes (41 votes/day the past three days). Let's keep it going!!

 

[Mavs Man]

I think I have a shot of moving up quite a bit tomorrow. Here are the main tally of votes starting from last Friday till today:

#1 - Arizona - 197
#2 - Minnesota - 164
#3 - me - 157
#4 - Denver - 156
#5 - Cleveland - 142
#6 - SoCal - 80

Keep getting in your votes this week to see if I can jump up in the top ten!

Thanks!

 

[DA FAN]

Hey MavsMan,

Sorry I missed your post...

You can count on me Voting for ya!!

 

[Mavs Man]

Hey MavsMan,

Sorry I missed your post...

You can count on me Voting for ya!!

No problem. It's more of a weekly contest now, anyway, so I don't mind more people jumping in as we go along. Thanks for the vote!

 

[Mavs Man]

I moved back to fifth place. Here's why:

Rank - Votes over the last 10 days

#1 - Arizona - 382
#2 - Cleveland - 431
#3 - Minnesota - 446
#4 - Denver - 404
#5 - me - 383
#6 - SoCal - 190

It's still very close in this competition - the difference being no more than 5 or 6 extra votes a day.

 

[Mavs Man]

SoCal has really fallen off lately. Even with modest votes over the weekend, I'm only 50 or so votes behind catching him for 3rd place in the overall tally.

 

[Hostile]

SoCal has really fallen off lately. Even with modest votes over the weekend, I'm only 50 or so votes behind catching him for 3rd place in the overall tally.

I'm still voting twice a day.

 

[Mavs Man]

I'm still voting twice a day.

Thanks, Hos. Even though I'm 1,000 votes behind the two leaders in the overall vote, the past two weeks I was within 50 or so votes each week of the top spot. Also, as the guys from Minnesota and Colorado have shown, you can jump to the top pretty quick.

 

[Mavs Man]

For what it's worth, for the first time since day one in this contest I'm back in the top three based on total number of votes, currently at 1,435 and counting.



Thank you for your help, guys (and gals)!

 

[Mavs Man]

Random comment: Looking at the map on their intern page, maybe I need to retake the Texas Quiz on the Off-Topic Zone. I didn't realize that Dallas is really where Austin is, Houston is actually south of San Antonio, and Austin is in West Texas.

 

[Mavs Man]

I really wish I had done this earlier, but you may notice that I now have the actual vote button added to my signature! It's linked to my vote, so all you have to do now is click the button and boom, you vote! (in Madden-ese)

 

[Mavs Man]

One more thing, an NFL Films unit will be at the same game I'm going to tonight Plano East at Plano. Pretty cool stuff! They're going to show it on the Versus network for their series "Greatest High School Football Rivalries" starting Nov. 15th at 7pm (presumably CST).

 

[Hostile]

One more thing, an NFL Films unit will be at the same game I'm going to tonight Plano East at Plano. Pretty cool stuff! They're going to show it on the Versus network for their series "Greatest High School Football Rivalries" starting Nov. 15th at 7pm (presumably CST).

How did this go, and where do you stand now?

 

[Mavs Man]

How did this go, and where do you stand now?

It was neat to watch. I thought they would use some sort of HD camera, but they were using an Arriflex film camera, so it was literally shot on 35mm film. They had the camera mounted on a piece of 2-3" thick board, about two feet square, so they could set it on the ground and it would lay flat. The camera guy would go down on his knees and shoot every play from that angle. They had one guy whose job was only to move the camera around for different shots. They had another person who would switch out film canisters for them (I'm guessing they used standard 10 minute long reels, so that's a lot of changes for a game). They also had a second unit using the big, news broadcast type BetaCam's with a sound guy carrying a boom mic. Plus another unit I'm guessing just going around for game sound, as I saw another group with just a boom mic.

I'm used to seeing at least five or six camera guys from local news stations at games, plus the obligatory four or so camcorders from each of the schools getting their own game tape, but I've never seen a crew that large at a game. It was interesting to watch.

As far as where I stand, I'm solidly in third place in the overall vote and have actually gained on the two guys from Colorado and Minnesota. Looks like their votes are starting to finally level off and decline. I didn't move up or down in the latest overall rankings.

I'm doing a rivalry game in my hometown this week. Neither team is very good this year, but since last Friday was game 15 for me and that's all I'm getting paid for in my contract, which make severything from here on out a freebie for MaxPreps, I figured I'd do a game for me. I'm going to pass out a lot of flyers that MaxPreps sent me and add an intro to the video that goes into the 101 year history of the game, and with that maybe I can get some hometown votes and move up, if only for one week.

Though, you know what they say about "artists" and their hometown...

 

[Mavs Man]

Good News!

1) Yesterday evening a parent from one of the Dallas area schools contacted me about doing a recruiting video that her son can send out to colleges. He already has received letters of interest from Texas, Kansas, and SMU, so there's definitely interest from major programs. This is something I've had my eye on doing for a while, and thanks to this job it kind of just fell into my lap. If I can produce something good for them, I know I can get a lot more work from this. These are fun to do, and it'll be cool to see how these guys progress through their college careers. Maybe one day we'll be able to watch a few of them on Sunday afternoons.

2) I counted up the votes from last Tuesday at lunch until now - I was second in votes this week to Arizona! If I can maintain this lead through Thursday/Friday, I'm almost positive I'll jump into the top three this week.

3) I sent in my last invoice today for my 15th game, and they sent me a new contract for 15 more games! I don't think I can do 15 games in the next seven weeks (including six weeks of playoffs), but they said they'll pay me for basketball games in place of football. I thought I'd be doing them for free, so this is awesome! I took out loans for professional equipment at the beginning of the season, and with this and other jobs I've picked up throughout the season (AFL tryouts, a weekend basketball tournament this Saturday in Wichita Falls), thanks to this job, I can basically pay it all off!