The Top 100 and ties will collect season prize money. The list will be updated weekly in this column. Full standings can be found at the Standings link.

5-for-5: How tough is it?

	The Road to 190

While we admittedly aren't mathematicians by trade, we have done a little math to answer the burning question: Just how hard is it to make five winning picks?

Searching the internet, we came across a formula that says the chances are 3 in 100. (The actual formula is one-half to the fifth power, which is 0.03125.) This is good information when you realize that most sports books pay 20-to-1 for a 5-for-5 parlay.

Anyway, applying that number to the number of players in the pool, there should be an average 23 perfectos per week.

Why do we bring this up now?

The pool had it's poorest showing of the season this week with only eight perfect weeks. On top of that, the pool has yet to reach 23 in any week so far this season. The season high is 20 in Week 6. This was the third time this season that the pool didn't get past 10.

Even so, a handful of players are making it look easy. Phil Choler, who moved back into first place, became the fifth player to record two perfect weeks this season. The others are Mike Hart, Jason Hatala, John Jameson and Nick Mitrano. Not surprisingly, Mitrano and Hatala are also in the top 5 in the standings.

The good news is that the dearth of perfect weeks is preserving the pot for the season payout. As of Week 7, the first-place prize is projected at $5,818.

While we're on the subject...

Mike Feder got one week closer to the dreaded record streak of weeks without a perfect week.

It was over pretty quickly when Feder went with three late afternoon college games and missed two of them, Arizona St. and Tennessee. He also missed his two NFL games for a season-low score of 0.5. He is in 240th place with 17.5 points on the season.

Two weeks to go for the tie and three to break the record.

This and that

• One of the simplest explanations for the aforementioned lack of perfect weeks is that the pool just isn't performing up to snuff. With more than 400,000 picks recorded since the start of Pigskin Mania, the pool has a predictiable .488 winning percentage. But for the first seven weeks of this season, the pool is only at .467.

• Another telling stat is that the game that is supposed to be the surest winner, the Lock of the Week, is being lost at a near-record clip. Players have won only 45 percent of their locks, a number that has hovered closer to 50 percent over the years.

• There were two NFL games that ended in a push leading to a sub-par week in that category. The Rams-Lions and Texans-Colts both pushed.

• There was one more game that was cancelled due to the weather conditions in the Carolinas this week. Navy-East Carolina was postponed, and one player picked the Midshipmen.

• The pool had its first No Line game, Kent St. vs. Miami, Ohio. Two players jumped on that one and ended up with disqualified picks.