Does It Help to Pick #1?

Curious to see if draft order predicts performance, we looked at who’d gotten the most #1 overall picks, as well as the last picks, and if that had ANYTHING to do with winning that season. Short answer: Nope. But let’s dig in.

Out of twelve seasons playing fantasy MTV Challenge — can you believe it’s been twelve going on thirteen seasons! — we’ve had Jon, Kim, Susan, and Victor each grab the #1 overall pick once. HT and Dan, both now out of the league, each have also gotten it once. And shockingly, Yasmine has never picked first, ever.

So that means the person with the most #1 overall picks is George, who had back-to-back #1s as well as back-to-back-to-back #1s, isn’t that amazing? Out of a possible thirteen tries, George has won more than half of the lotteries she's been in. She should be going to Vegas, not playing MTV Challenge!

As for the most last picks, that’s more evenly distributed. Victor has four, Yasmine has three, George and Jon each have two, and Susan has one. Kim has never picked last, yet...

So what’s the correlation here between picking first/last and winning the title? Well, The bad news is that nobody has ever won the season’s championship after picking first. But three separate times, the eventual winner has picked last (Yasmine in Invasion, Jon with Rivals III, Victor with Rivals II). Thus it could be argued that picking last is better than going first. Counter-intuitive right?

Maybe it has to do with the snake style drafting, so that the #1 pick tends to be left with the butt end of the players, or maybe it just reflects that our league and contestants are so small that it doesn’t matter where you pick. I mean, how does Yasmine win five championships to every else’s seven combined (and that includes HT’s three before she retired). Victor has two wins, Susan and Jon both have one, so it’s up to George and Kim to notch their first title soon!

Since Kim is picking #1 this upcoming season for Champs vs Pros and George is picking last, maybe we’ll get a chance to see if our script gets flipped! Use that pick wisely Kim!