Michigan resident Dominic Mirabella is apparently amazing at making NFL picks, while certainly having quite a bit of good fortune on his side as well.
The 39-year-old won a $1 million contest on the app FourPlay Football after having a perfect season making picks (four weekly in the regular season, followed by playoff picks). Mirabella went 81-for-81 on picks after the New England Patriots’ insane comeback over the Atlanta Falcons to win Super Bowl LI.
Now, these aren’t “straight-up” picks Mirabella made. They’re teaser picks, which add 14 points in the user’s favor to the original point spread. However, with the NFL and its parity, teaser picks are not nearly as easy as they sound, and FourPlay users — outside of Mirabella, anyway — quickly find this out.
And in the playoffs, the FourPlay teaser spread went down to 10 points in the first two rounds, followed by six points in the conference championships, and just the normal point spread in the Super Bowl.
The Patriots were -3 in the Super Bowl, so they had to win by at least four points for Mirabella to be a winner. So, had the Patriots won by only a field goal in overtime, Mirabella would not have won a dime in the $1 million contest. The contest required going 81-for-81. All or nothing. The odds of a perfect season on FourPlay are considered 1 in 5 million, and when you factor in the Patriots having to win by over three points, after trailing by 25 points in the third quarter? Absolutely unbelievable.
Oh, and one week, Mirabella missed the pick deadline, which resulted in him having to buy a late pick power-up that randomly picked four games for him. And the random picks went 4-for-4 (!), as The Detroit News explains:
Johnson told The Detroit News Monday that Mirabella had to be lucky as well as good to win. In week three, Mirabella made his move too late. He had to buy in using a “late picker power up” to participate. Late picks are made randomly by the app. Mirabella still went 4 for 4 on those random picks, Johnson said.
As I’ve learned by playing the game the last two years, FourPlay really is a fun, unique weekly alternative to fantasy football. And it’s free. The only money you spend is if you want to buy power-ups weekly, like for a late pick as Mirabella used, advice from gurus, or for a look at what teams the other people in your league are picking.
Mirabella told The Detroit News how much he enjoyed playing the game (which is available on iTunes for Apple mobile devices and Google Play on Android devices):
A 15-year veteran of fantasy football, Mirabella said FourPlay has changed the way he watches football. While most fantasy football is about the individual performance of offensive players, picking teams against the spread (which is padded by 14 points during the regular season, 10 points during early playoff rounds, 6 points during conference championship games and not padded at all for the Super Bowl) is more like the binary win-or-lose fan experience he grew up on.
“It gets you back into rooting for teams again, rather than stats,” Johnson said.
The U.S. Army veteran plans to donate much of winnings to charities supporting cancer and Alzheimer’s research.
[The Detroit News; FourPlay Football]
