August 31, 2005
Turnout has already exceeded last year’s contest, which is friggin’ awesome. We’ve got:
- 15 players who have already submitted round 1 picks
- Three more people who said they’d play but haven’t yet submitted their picks
- Three people who have taken my UT-UGA wager (two of whom have given no indication of whether they’ll submit picks for the general contest, and one of whom has already submitted round 1 picks)
The field is still open, so you can still jump in! You’ve got ’til midnight tonight to enter a pick for Arizona State-Temple, and until midnight Friday to enter a pick for most of the others (except Miami-FSU, which you can hold off on until Sunday at midnight). It bears repeating that there’s a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate at stake, there’s no entry fee, and the field is open to anyone. See the rules for more details.
Thanks to Tony for a plug on the Atlanta Metroblog, and to Mel @ Blog for Democracy and Reid @ Photodude for blog pimping on their respective sites.
UPDATE: Fixed the Photodude link.
UPDATE 2: As of the first deadline, there are now 24 players and four bloggers who have taken up my UT-UGA bet. Schweet! The Temple-Arizona State game isn’t until 10 p.m. EST, so I’m extending the deadline just this once for anyone else who wants to get in (CM and Thomas had expressed interest in playing, but never submitted any picks). You now have until 5 p.m. EST today to submit a pick for that game.
August 30, 2005
It’s round 1, let the trash talking and whining begin! Anybody is welcome to participate and it won’t cost you anything. See this post for rules (how to submit picks, etc.). See this post or leave a comment or email me if you have any questions about just what the hell this contest is. Remember, there’s a $50 Amazon gift certificate at stake, so choose carefully!
Odds are accurate as of Aug. 27 at 6 p.m. Your pick for the Temple vs. Arizona St. game needs to be submitted by Wednesday, Aug. 31 at midnight; picks for Sat., Sept. 3 games need to be submitted by Friday Sept. 2 at midnight; picks for Sunday, Sept. 4 games need to be submitted by Saturday, Sept. 3 at midnight; your pick for the Miami (FL) vs. FSU game needs to be submitted by Sunday, Sept. 4 at midnight.
Thursday, Sept. 1 games
Temple @ #18 Arizona State
Odds: Arizona State by 26
Saturday, Sept. 3 games
Miami (OH) @ #9 Ohio State
Odds: Ohio State by 14
TCU @ #5 Oklahoma
Odds: Oklahoma by 25.5
Ball St. @ #10 Iowa
Odds: Iowa by 38
UAB @ #3 Tennessee
Odds: Tennessee by 23
#22 Boston College @ BYU
Odds: Boston College by 3
Sacramento St. @ #20 Cal
Odds: Cal*
#19 Boise St. @ #13 Georgia
Odds: Georgia by 7
W. Michigan @ #23 Virginia
Odds: Virginia by 32
#1 USC @ Hawaii
Odds: USC by 31.5
Louisiana Lafayette @ #2 Texas
Odds: Texas by 38.5
North Texas @ #6 LSU
Odds: LSU by 32.5
Notre Dame @ #25 Pittsburgh
Odds: Pittsburgh by 3
#17 Texas A&M @ Clemson
Odds: Texas A&M by 1.5
Georgia Tech @ #15 Auburn
Odds: Auburn by 7
Sunday, Sept. 4 games
#14 Louisville @ Kentucky
Odds: Louisville by 21
#7 Virginia Tech @ N.C. State
Odds: Virginia Tech by 4
Middle Tennessee State @ #24 Alabama
Odds: Alabama by 22
Monday, Sept. 5 games
#8 Miami (FL) @ #12 Florida State
Odds: Miami by 2.5
Off this week
#11 Florida
#16 Purdue
#21 Texas Tech
* - No odds were available for this game, so I named a favorite.
UPDATE: “Odds” should be referred to as “favorites” from now on when submitting picks since “odds” was confusing to a couple of people. However, I’m not going to change the format of the games list much because seeing the odds is still helpful when picking favorites.
UPDATE 2: I extended the deadline to submit a pick for the Temple-Arizona State game to 5 p.m. EST Sept. 1.
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August 29, 2005
- Players will pick a football game’s winner with or against the favorites (as posted on Covers.com) in games involving teams listed in the ESPN/USA Today top 25 poll.
- Correctly choosing the winning team with or against Covers favorites is worth 1 point. Incorrect choices are worth 0 points. Whomever has the most points at the end of the season wins.
- If a player misses a week of picks, he or she will be spotted the lowest score from that week in the season standings.
- Picks must be submitted by midnight EST the evening before a game is scheduled, including mid-week games. Players who miss mid-week games can still submit picks for Saturday games, but will receive 0 points for the mid-week game or games they missed.
- Players can enter picks in the comments section simply by noting which games they think oddsmakers are wrong about, i.e. — “I’ll take the favorites except for X game and X game.”
- Results and new favorites to pick against will be posted no later than Tuesday the following week unless I give prior notice otherwise. Posts will contain abbreviated results and links to detailed results in PDF format. If I think it’s necessary because of time constraints, I will make up a line for a game or games for people to bet against, with a footnote attached notifying players that I did so.
- There is no entrance fee to play, or restrictions on who can play.
- Players cannot enter separate picks under an alias (I’m looking at you Patrick). If I find out someone has done so, I will disqualify their highest-scoring alias.
- The prize at the end of the contest will be a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com, paid for by me. If I win, whoever places second will receive the certificate, but I will retain bragging rights.
- Rules may be added as the contest progresses, though it’s not likely. In the event of a tie at the end of the season, players not involved in the tie can suggest and vote on potential tiebreakers.
UPDATE: Clarification to Commandment 5 added: “comments” is now “comments section.”
UPDATE 2 Clarification to Commandments 1, 2, 5, and 6: “odds” are now referred to as “favorites” to avoid confusion.
MARIETTA, GA — From behind the control desk in the Radical Georgia Moderate War Room, Rusty announced the prize for his 2005 NCAA picks contest and challenged University of Georgia fans who run their own blogs to a friendly wager.
“I’m offering a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate to the winner of my picks contest,” Rusty said, holding an ice pack to his head and trying to avoid eye contact with the empty Gentleman Jack bottle on his desk.
The surly bastard, a University of Tennessee graduate, also found out this afternoon he made a bet with The Goddamn Girlfriend, who attended graduate school at the University of Georgia, pertaining to the Oct. 8 football contest between the Volunteers of Tennessee and the Bulldogs of Georgia.
“If UGA wins, I have to make my blog theme red and black for a week. If UT wins, she’ll have to make her blog theme orange and white for a week,” Rusty said.
And, giving an indication his brain might have been permanently damaged by the previous evening’s festivities, he extended the wager to any other blogger who is also a University of Georgia fan.
“For anyone else who wants to get in on the bet, I’ll add a week to the length of time I keep up the red and black theme if Georgia pulls an impossible upset out of its ass,” Rusty said. “That means you only have to risk a week of embarrassment to my multiple weeks or even months, depending on how many of you participate.”
Lack of technical expertise is not an excuse to pass up this wager, Rusty noted.
“If you can’t design your own orange and white theme, I’ll be happy to help you design one,” he said.
The deadline to accept Rusty’s wager is Sept. 16 for those who need technical assistance with their theme, he said.
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August 28, 2005
MARIETTA, GA. — With cheers from his private cabinet of adoring (and intoxicated) sports and political nuts echoing throughout the Radical Georgia Moderate War Room, Rusty announced today there would be a 2005 iteration of his popular NCAA football picks contest.
“It’s a great opportunity for my real-life and Internet friends to drive up the traffic on my Web site,” he said before swigging delicious bourbon from a plastic flask marked with an Orange Power T [the University of Tennessee logo - Ed].
“And there’s gonna be an actual prize this year rookie beeotches!” he added before falling off his bar stool. When asked what the prize would be, he started to climb back up his bar stool and said, “That’s what marketing types refer to as a teaser. It builds The Hype surrounding an event.”
Rusty said he always uses improper capitalizations when he speaks. That habit is rumored to stem from his delusions of grandeur.
“Ben Franklin did it, so why not me?” he said, chortling and letting out a breath flammable enough to blow up the upper deck at Neyland Stadium had some dumbass lit a match within 500 feet of it.
What made his contest successful last year, said Politics 101 Web mistress Mae, was a lower entrance barrier than other similar contests.
“It’s not, like, other, like, contests, where you, like, have to bet against the, like, spread,” Mae said.
Its mechanics are simple: Rusty posts a game schedule for all top 25 teams accompanied by Las Vegas odds. In the comments section, players write down games where they want to pick against the odds. Every game where a player chooses the winning team with or against the odds counts for 1 point. Whomever has accumulated the most points at the end of the year wins.
“If a Georgia grad can do it, anybody can,” said Jen, Web mistress of Audacity, who won last year’s contest.
There are two changes to the format this year, Rusty said.
Last year’s contest was based around the Associated Press Top 25 poll. Since AP will not be factored into the Bowl Championship Series standings this year, Rusty decided to switch to the ESPN/USA Today poll.
“The polls are bullshit anyway, but what else can a school’s athletic department measure its dick against?” Rusty asked rhetorically. “People need defined boundaries of cocksmanship, even if they are superficial.”
The other departure from last year is bowl games will be integrated into the regular contest since demand for a second set of picks was low last year.
There’s no entry fee to enter the contest. A full set of rules and information about the prize to be offered will be posted tomorrow along with another special surprise wager opportunity just for bloggers who attended the University of Georgia.
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August 27, 2005
Steve over at Distance wrote an excellent post titled American Legion Call For End Of Free Speech and Steve Calls for Arming The People. A long title, yes, but chock full of good points. I dread the day when I have to bust a cap in the tax man who comes around to collect my tithe to the Holy American Church. But make no mistake, I will bust a cap in him (it wouldn’t be a her, because women would be back in the kitchen by then). I’m already mega-pissed about the faith-based initiative, and wish there was a way to calculate exactly what percentage of my tax dollars it eats up. Any accountants out there? A “faith-based tax calculator” has seemed like a good idea for a website for a long time, but I’d have no idea how to find out an exact number. If I could figure that number out, I’m more than half-serious when I say I’d refuse to pay that part of my taxes on grounds of it violating my non-religious principles.
August 26, 2005
Jimmy Carter was a bad president for the exact opposite reason that George W. Bush is a bad president: he was too eager to please everybody, which led to solutions so watered down they didn’t please anybody (when he could even make a decision at all, that is). That’s a contrast to the George W. Bush “dive head-first into the pool before checking to see if someone bothered to fill it” approach. Disaster has followed in both of their respective wakes. Goddamn, I got some mileage out of that metaphor.
Anyway, none of that is particularly relevant to today’s news. What is relevant is Carter has developed a penchant for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong after retiring from the Oval Office (see: lunching with Castro). I, like most Georgians who read this story (login), could only instantly react, “What was he thinking?” In fact, that was Governor Sonny Perdue’s exact reaction.
Former President Jimmy Carter was the target of scorn in his home state after he lobbied to save a Connecticut submarine base at the expense of thousands of jobs in Georgia.
One member of an independent panel said Carter was part of the reason it voted to reverse a Pentagon recommendation to close the Naval Submarine Base New London, which would have shifted six subs and 3,367 jobs to Georgia’s Kings Bay base.
Surely, there must have been some practical reason. Let’s read further…
The Pentagon estimated that shifting fast-attack submarines, a maintenance facility and the Naval Submarine School from Groton, Conn., to Georgia would grow the overall work force in St. Marys, a coastal town of 14,000, by 22 percent. That was the largest predicted percentage gain for any military community in the nation.
But Carter — a former Georgia governor and the only president ever to serve as a submariner — sent a letter to the Base Closure and Realignment Commission last week, pleading to keep open the Connecticut base where he had been stationed as a young engineer in the 1950s.
In his appeal, Carter said he feared that closing the Groton base would result in “a loss of some of the proud submariners heritage of our historic association with service and training in New London.”
Umm, a museum could be housed anywhere. How would moving the base have any effect on the quality of training submariners receive? It’s not like submarining is an indigeounous skill that can only be soaked in by osmosis from the hallowed Groten soil.
Carter is a former Georgia governor and a current Georgia resident. If he’s going to stick his goddamn nose into the country’s affairs, the least he could do is work to help his fellow Georgians. Please crawl into the peanut fields and stay there, you washed up old bag.
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August 25, 2005
Smack in the heart of liberal, free-swinging Atlanta, the Kroger on Peachtree keeps prophylactics in a cabinet behind a lock (The Goddamn Girlfriend, or GDGF, and I found this out during our walk back home from Mellow Mushroom trivia, where I — like the trivia slut I am — had little-to-no effect on the Olson Twin’s second place finish). Here in Gawd-fearing, sex-hating Cobb County, prophylactics are available on normal shelves just like deodorant and toothpaste, where juveniles and deviants can discreetly access them to insert a layer of latex between them and their perverted, sinful endeavors.
The key issue that arises from keeping prophylactics behind a lock is it requires the buyer to ask someone to open the lock. Fueled by a couple of Sweetwaters, I marched downstairs to customer service and demanded in a gruff, stentorian voice, “Who’s in charge of the condom cabinet?”
This is where the story is supposed to get funny as an awkward exchange between a half-drunk me and a tight-ass clerk drags on, but the guy didn’t seem particularly phased, even when I went out of my way to make things embarrassing for him. And so that ends without fanfare. Most of the embarrassment from that episode was on GDGF’s end.
That leaves us the question of why were the prophylactics behind a lock? Were they trying to keep minors away? To keep people from stealing them? Do they secretly like to record people working up the courage to ask someone to unlock the cabinet? Inquiring minds want to know.
August 24, 2005
So, what I’ve noticed about the long threads that show up on my site lately is they quickly break down into snarky, condescending insult matches and become totally devoid of anything even remotely intellectually interesting. I’m certainly as guilty as anyone of fanning flames in both posts and in follow-up comments, as are many commenters here from every corner of the ideological spectrum. Now, lots of people are into the aggro venting flame war-type threads, and that’s fine. The question, I suppose, is whether to let that keep going, or to institute a civility policy. That would mean I’d have to play nice too, which might get boring.
I am so tired of the Cobb County school board being the laughing stock of… well, the entire country, really, but certainly the state. Hopefully, the retirement (login) of Cobb schools Superintendent Joseph Redden will be the first step toward moving past the last few years of chaos and proactive stupidity. He’s responsible for the popular theology-as-science and laptops-for-everybody programs, which received rave reviews from theocrats and an Apple sales rep (and nobody else) respectively. Good riddance!
