Robservations: Laying it all ‘on the line’
Just in case you’re wondering, there’s very little chance I’ll become your friendly neighborhood psychic any time soon.
And thank goodness I’m not the kind of guy who plays the sports books on the weekends, because it’s obvious if I were I’d be living in a shotgun shack, eating potted meat on generic saltines.
The Southern Standard’s in-house contest, “On the Line,” ended Tuesday night, with USC’s shellacking of Oklahoma. And, as much as it pains me to say it, Duane Sherrill — yes, that Duane Sherrill — came away with the championship.
Dale Stubblefield represented the sports department well, finishing four games back, while the contest’s guest pickers (represented in the final week by Ronnie Brown’s stellar 15-5 mark) were eight back.
Pat Zechman was fourth at a respectable 115-75, while James Clark took fifth at 110-80, followed by the Nunley boys (one human, one canine) at a miserable 93-97.
Some say my demise was caused by making wild — and wildly wrong — upset picks in an attempt to catch the leaders. I say it was due to Duane Sherrill being luckier than the guy who “adjusts” the models at Sports Illustrated swimsuit photo-shoots.
To Duane’s credit (ugh, that hurts to say), what a lot of people may not remember is Sherrill had to come back from dead last to win the crown with his 129-61 record.
In Week 1 of our contest, Duane was on vacation, you see. And — since we wanted to include him in our little six-member panel, but he wasn’t around to make his picks — we elected to make the first week’s selections for him.
And we elected to make them badly, picking against the majority of the rest of the panel for all 10 games.
Naturally, Duane opened up the season in last place, while yours truly took an early lead. Somewhere, through the course of the season, we passed like two ships in the night — he on his way to the lead, and myself on the way to my eventual home in the cellar, which prompted the “turning over” of my picks to Rocky, the football game-picking wonder dog.
By the way, many people have asked me how I got Rocky to pick football winners. There are several methods, many of which you can try at home.
Method 1: Write each team’s name on a separate piece of paper, and lay them on the ground. Whichever gets piddled on or near, that’s who you go with. Messy, and gross, but effective.
Method 2: Put a treat, or maybe a chew toy, on opposite sides of the room. Assign each team in a given game to each object, and see which one Fido goes after.
Method 3: Teach your dog all the intricasies of football, including trends, point spreads and home-field advantages, and keep him or her up-to-date on the league injury report. They’ll respond by pointing to the team they feel will win on the scoreboard page of the newspaper. (Note: Only effective with genetically-enhanced, super-intelligent dogs.)
Method 4: Make your picks just the way you would normally make them, then replace your goofy photo at the top of your column with a cute picture of your doggy. Trust me, this one works. You may still finish last, but at least you can have some fun while losing.