The Wildcats win the Big Arms Classic

NEWBURYPORT - Here in this provincial harbor town (population 17,416) in scenic Essex County, Massachusetts just 35 miles northeast of Boston, the winter weather can get pretty nasty. Did you see the end of the Sunday Night Football game on NBC this week? It was torrential. To combat the frigid, wet weather of the region, New Englanders mainstay is the proverbial harborcoat. Long, dark, warm and water resistant, the harborcoat is as common in the Northeast as clam chowder and lobster. It is usually one of the first things newcomers buy when moving to town. The song of the same name Harborcoat was the first song on side "L" of R.E.M.'s critically acclaimed second album entitled Reckoning released on April 9, 1984. Never released as a single, Harborcoat is vintage 80s R.E.M. Most of the song's lyrics are not easily discernible, but the band's lead singer Michael Stipe said the song is about Nazi Germany from a Jewish viewpoint, a rewriting of The Diary of Anne Frank, so to speak. With lines like "they've shifted the statutes for harboring ghosts" and "can't go outside without it", we will take Stipe's word on this one and leave it at that. In Week 10 of the BDFL with Squeaky, Bufu, Big John Staples and Tommy Walburn in attendance, the Western Hills Wildcats defeated the Fairfield PowerSleds in the Big Arms Classic 50-25. With this upset vict'ry, the BioCats picked up a crucial win to move to 5-5 on the season and into first place in topsy-turvy Yellow Hammer Division while the PowerSleds fell to 6-4 and into a tie for first place with the Southside Cheetahs in the rough-and-tumble Gray Beard Division. Harborcoat by R.E.M. (1984)

Final Scores

CHE

DOG

32

18

BLZ

BUL

22

27

PS

WIL

25

50

FRE

GAM

17

19

BEL

SM

10

38

MAY

DOR

27

15

ARM

JUG

20

36

BD

GRE

20

26

Complete 2020 BDFL scoring data from the Aladdin Scoring System (@$$)

The first Pucker Factor Poll of 2020

NORTH CORBIN, KY - The Pucker Factor Poll (PFP) doesn't apply to all the teams in the BDFL. At this point of the season, some teams will be able to coast to the Big Daddy Championship Series (BDCS) while others are already out of it altogether. However, the PFP does apply to a select group of teams that are trying to advance to the BDFL's Big Dance. The PFP is neither subjective, nor objective, but it does go by an intricate win-loss-total points secret formula that is more complex than Colonel Harland Sanders' Kentucky Fried Chicken famous recipe of 11 herbs and spices. So don't try to figure all this out at home, just know that the poll has always been 100% accurate. By the way, back in the day, the Colonel could play some football.