RJ - thanks so much for your thoughtful feedback. I very much appreciate your taking the time to address these issues and the fact that you have acknowledged that the situation could have been handled better. You make some valid points, and I would like to acknowledge that my analysis of the situation obviously included some assumptions based on my perception of how everything transpired. A few thoughts in response, then no more from my end as there's no need to beat a dead horse:
I completely agree with your point that Fezzik made the right choice by passing instead of releasing non-expert picks. I also agree that each capper has his own unique style and relies on different factors, and I would never want a pro to release picks just for the sake of doing so. The issue I had with the message that Fezzik posted in the latter half of the regular season is that I don't think it was entirely accurate. I believe that he got too busy with football to pay attention to WNBA, period (which he essentially finally acknowledged). I've followed Fezzik closely for an extended period of time, and I know that the factors he mentioned (i.e., who is playing hard and who is tanking) are frequently taken into account in his analysis. It's hard for me to fathom that had there been no other sports going on that he would have determined that it was too hard to keep up with these factors. I fully appreciate that pros are human as well, and that there is a delicate balance between staying marketable and being candid about your limitations, but it's not fair to customers to NOT be honest about limitations that arise (and I think Pregame is generally very good about trying to be forthcoming about those) at the expense of being more marketable.
To address your point about the fact that he didn't release picks for awhile and then began releasing again proves that he wouldn't release picks without being fully informed, I think that is absolutely a valid explanation. I think another valid explanation is that releasing picks at the end of the season may make customers feel like they got a full season's worth of picks, notwithstanding a hiatus in the middle of the season; contrast that with a situation in which there were literally no picks released after a certain date, in which case it is quite clear that the full season was only really a half season. I think you and I are both speculating here, and the only person who really knows the answer is Fezzik himself. I may very well be wrong about his thought process or his preparation, but based on his final post, I couldn't help but feeling like he wasn't devoting his full attention to WNBA, and if that was truly the case, I think we can both agree that he should not have released picks.
In any event, the upshot here is that I believe there is a degree of transparency that is warranted about the pros' limitations. I very much appreciate that Pregame is doing right by the WNBA package subscribers, and I hope the appropriate lessons have been learned here and we can move on and avoid similar circumstances going forward.