Pickem Dash Football

We are all human... except Chris, he's a robot. But for the rest of us, most of our picks are made by rationalizing pickem decisions made from reasons lying somewhere between emotion and wisdom. Generally speaking, the more clouded your judgment or distorted your reasoning is... well let's just say the more money you are going to lose in Vegas. I do a lot of research for my picks, but when it comes to regional matchups or games involving the Longhorns, I'm as guilty of being a homer as the next guy... although, I usually employ a reverse homer approach. For example, I often pick against Texas. This way if Texas covers, I'm happy (this usually means a win for the good guys). If they don't cover, well, at least I got the pick right. It's win/win! The same works for ou, but in the reverse. Being a homer is one thing, but this award goes out to one of you that has taken emotional picking to a whole new level (no seriously, worse than my reverse homer approach). The ...

This is a quicky pickie that won't require much type-y. The High Roller Award And the Pickie goes to... Kirby. Kirby bankrolled the most players this year. Although his post season win didn't give him a positive net cash flow for the pickem year, I'll make up the difference in malted beverages next time we are out (Kirby has called in his winnings to be paid in kind via beers). Now that's high roller treatment baby... or something.

We keep a small-ish group here, but there is plenty of room to ride somewhere between Amanda (she puts up with my online picking friends, but probably deletes all the emails) and Gary (who is frequently referenced, misquoted, and translated here). If you are winning, it's hard to ride the entire season under the radar *coughchrissneeze* without being called out. But with 15-20 people every year, that leaves the majority in of the league landing somewhere in the middle, regardless of perceived skill. So fear not, award recipient, there is always next year and we all find ourselves somewhere in the middle, like, most of the time. The Silent (but not so) Deadly Award And the Pickie goes to... Mark. You may not have noticed, since he clearly played under the radar, but Mark had a bit of an off year. It’s cool dude, it happens to the best of us. Runners-up: uhh... several of us

Through my Pick'em years, I've seen all different kinds of pickers... casual pickers, technical pickers, ooops-I-almost-forgot-to-send-these-in pickers, and people who have the picking style of a morgan ensburg at bat... just to name a few. I've already given out awards for picking early (presumably "going with your gut") and picking late (maximum research), so here is one for something........ a little in between. This award goes to one of you who tried to follow his brain, always picked with his heart, and despite sub-par results, still had the courage to stick with it week after week. The Wizard of Oz Award And the Pickie goes to... Bob. Bob, I'll leave it up to you to decide whether this is better than getting an award for prematures... Follow the 2008 Pickies online at http://pickem08.blogspot.com/

The presentation of this award leaves at a loss of words. In fact, I'm not even sure this email makes it through to everyone's inbox (maybe not even the award recipient's box). The Carnality Award And the Pickie goes to... Crystal. Congrats and stuff. For some of Crystal's greatest hits this year, you can go to the website and search for "CJ" or "Crystal" and find most of the post stuff. All her private dirty notes to me will stay... private.

Most awards shows have that "other" show where they give out all the awards not worthy interesting enough for the big show. Since I gave out the Guest Poster of the Year Award earlier today, it seems like a good time to break and give a few technical pickies. Post with the Most Unique Visitors: http://pickem08.blogspot.com/2008/08/week-1-ncaa-results.html 20 different people visited this post... Hmm... I guess interest waned from there. Runners up (tie): http://pickem08.blogspot.com/2008/12/2008-bowl-pickem-challenge-official.html http://pickem08.blogspot.com/2008/12/week-14-ncaa-bonus-results.html (each had 14 unique visitors) Most Active Day on the Website: October 1st What were *you* doing that day? Most Used Label: results (71) And possibly more interesting, the least used labels were (all tied at 1) - brewing - errors admit make them - ou sux - three illegals without insurance or id - vote

I remember it like I just spent 4 1/2 minutes trying to find it... On September 8th, the website was blessed with its first (and *sigh*, only) guest post. It's not like it was worth any extra points, and I'm probably the only person that appreciated it, but it's deserving of some hardware (er, software, er whatever these imaginary awards are). The Pickem08.blogspot.com Guest Poster of the Year There was only one of you... And the Pickie goes to...... Gary. By far, my favorite guest post … EVER.

I began creating football pickem games circa 1999 after getting hooked on the idea of making games exciting to watch without the huge letdown that goes with real gambling. At the time, it was just Amanda, myself, and the dog. Over the years, a game that was expanded among co-workers at Sempra turned into this motley crew of awesomeness that it is today. The football season is still every bit as exciting to me as it became in 1999, but soon pickem unexpectedly gave birth to a new little member of the awesomeness family. Every week, two, three, or six of you will send a little extra with your card. And soon what seemed like just diaper duty (so am I supposed to respond back to everyone's little note?) turned into a cute little awesome-child of the league. Eh-em... uhhhh... where was I?? Oh yeah, awards... This award goes to the person that sends the best notes/anecdotes/random thoughts with their card. The award had a little competition this year, but one of you was both the most con...

If I were to name presenters for these awards, Dave would be my choice. Sometime a several weeks into the contest Dave sent me an email requesting the return of the open ended bonus question. I guess I had gotten kind of lazy in both the formulation of open ended questions and the duty of judging the answers. But it only took a few weeks of their return for me to remember how much fun it is using random (well actually pretty simple and precise) criteria to hand out ambiguously earned post season points. They also made for some entertaining (I think), but extremely time consuming to write (M. D. Anderson will be sending you a bill Dave) blog posts. A few of you were sometimes brilliant. Many of you were consistently funny. However, only one of you was most deserving of the first award given in this category, the award for the unofficial king of open ended bonus question answers. The Kolache Award And the Pickie goes to…… Kevin. I’m not saying there weren’t a few a you who rocked the bo...

I'm going to keep this thing rolling with award #2 in the 2008 Pickies. To juxtapose the Early Bird Award for "finishing quickly" (thank you Jess), this award goes to the person that took the longest to make their picks.... and I'm not talking about just being late, I'm talking about someone who researched and scrutinized their picks more than anyone else. I present the 2nd award of the year (and I can't believe I'm not winning this award): The Professor Award And the Pickie goes to...... Rich. Trust me, no one analyzed and re-analyzed their picks this year more than Rich. I remember years where competitors used to check the weather forecasts before making their picks, but Rich was all up on the gameday details, often sending his NCAA picks Saturday morning and his NFL picks Sunday morning. Unlike my picks, Rich's hard work seemed to mostly work (well, he didn't win either of the pickem contests). Well done Rich... and good luck next year.

All good things must come to an end. I never really know how to end these things, but I did think of something (and I can’t believe I never thought of this before)... an end of the year “awards” presentation. I spent several hours coming up with this crap, and it is still rather unsatisfying. So to spice things up and to give us something to do until March Madness rolls around (someone needs to point me in the direction of a good NCAA Tourney pool), I'm going to stretch this "award show" out. Every few days or so I'll present another award. This way it'll give you guys a chance to cheer, jeer, or give a little acceptance speech for the award. Each award will be sent by email and posted to the blog (for us to remember from here until the end of time... or the internet... whichever comes first). Without further ado folks, may I present: THE FIRST ANNUAL* "PICKIES" * I love the use of "first annual", so you can't make me change it I can't ...

Playoff Week 1 - Wild Card Weekend 1/3 10:39PM update: OT baby, and the Chargers move on... AND, no one picked that. 1/4 3:27PM update: Baltimore breaks the streak of upsets and gives some of us our first win of the week... but more importantly, everyone will have at least some points left over for next week. 1/4 6:58PM update: McNabb gets it done, and with that, the first NFL playoff week is up. Kevin comes out of it all with the most points... and it looks like Kyle will be getting his room comped. 1/5 1:07PM update: I made some administrative edits to the card. Playoff Week 2 - Divisional Playoffs 1/10 3:39PM update: Week 2 begins... 1/10 6:25PM update: I've got a new drinking game if Baltimore pulls this game out. Anytime a TV personality says "Joe Flacco," you must take a drink. Not just "Flacco," but "Joe Flacco." You won't remember the 4th quarter. Trust me. 1/10 6:40PM update: Look, I'm not the biggest Titan fan out there, but it may be...