The A2K football pool

Tampa Bay (35)
New England (33)
New York Giants (38)
Pittsburgh (51)

Washington is peaking at the end of the season. The Skins over Tampa Bay (46).
Jacksonville over New England, unless it snows (54).
Panthers vs Giants. Tough choice. I'll go with the Giants (44)
Pittsburgh rocks. They are my team. They beat the Bengals in Cincy earlier and they have only gotten better (38).

Washington 39
New England 52
Carolina 44
Cincinnatti 48

TB (27)
Pates (41) --> i have it on good authority that its gonna be in the low 20's by kickoff...
Panthers (34)
Pitt (42)

I was expecting, Region, predicitions of points as being 27, 27. 27 and 27.

nope -- only one (27) per pool... or else something bad'll happen... like herm edwards takes the KC job... and the jets get stuck with ~tice~ (i shudder to think!)...

For absolutely no logical reason, the scoring for this week-end's Wild-Card games will be as follows: you will get 5 points for each game successfully picked. You will get a 10 point bonus if you get all four games right. So a perfect score would be 4 games times 5 points per game plus 10 bonus points = 30.
In the total number of points per game category, 6 points will be awarded for each game. So 24 in total. If you are closest, you get all six. If someone else or two someone else's tie(s) you, you split the points.
If your team loses the game in which you were closest, you still get the 6 points. So the maximum score is 30 + 24 = 54.
So I am off to Portland OR in the morning. First time I'll have been there since June 12, 1970, when I was on my way back from 15 months, 10 days and 6 hours in Vietnam. I will spend two days visiting my brother and his wife. On much of Saturday, I will do the tour of Portland with my niece and her husband. In a past life, or maybe in a future one, I was/will be an architect/urban planner. I am looking forward to seeing Portland.
I didn't have a chance to get to the library before I leave, so I asked a few of my employees to bring in some paperbacks for me to take along. Preferably non-fiction, although historical fiction works. There have been three submissions, one of which (Albert Einstein's "Relativity" -1916-) may be over my head. The second is by Jonathon Weiner and is called "The Beak and the Finch" from 1995. A book based on Darwin's theory of evolution. It looks interesting. The third one, which I won't get until tonight, is a collection of stories from the New Yorker magazine written by one guy over a span of decades about boxing. A grim and corrupt "sport;" but the writing, according to Andy, who is lending it to me, is great.
Anyway, I'll be back Monday night and will check in with yall Tuesday.

I promised no nagging from me this week. But we still need to here from Dragon (go Horns, tonight), El-diablo, Panzade, Liontamerx and Ray. If someone else feels like nagging before the 4:30 kick off time on Saturday, go for it.

Have a great time in Portland.
(Man, do we have widely divergent views of what constitutes good travel reading!)

Wash (33)
NE (29)
NYGiants (39)
Pitt (41)

(Hoping johnboy gets to visit Powell's bookstore in Portland...One of the best in the country)

TAMPA - 37 - Skins paid the price for those 5 wins
NE - 38 - Too cold: too much experience
GIANTS - 44 - Home field advantage
PITT - 45 - Revenge factor

Stick with the New Yorker stories

frig -- had the correct score in the skins-bucs game, but there's the small matter of not picking the winner

the bengals were doomed when their QB's knee got wrenched...

whooda thunk the Jints would play so poorly?
eli's still green...

Region said:



Like a little sapling...

This game killed me, because I'm a lifelong Giants fan transplanted to Panthers country...

Go Panthers, I guess.

I was 3 for 3 and on a roll... then came the Palmer injury

don't kid yourself...Steelers are a playoff team...Palmer couldn't gettem there this year. Next year

Good evening to yall. I made it home an hour or two ago and was eager to see how we all did. It certainly didn't turn out as I had envisioned-either as a player or as the moderator. I was confident that one of us would get all four games correct and collect the bonus points. Instead the ten of us playing ended up at 3-1 or 2-2. And I was doubly sure that the tiebreaker points would be divided in each game without all six going to any one player. Wrong there, also.

Region was 3-1 (+15) and got (+6) for nailing the points in the WA-TB game = +21
Fbaezer finished 3-1 (+15) and got (+6) for predicting the number of points in the PI-CI game = +21
Child went 3-1 (+15) and saw the CA-NYG as being a low scoring game (+6) = +21

So those three players have to share the Wild Card limelight.

Lion also went 3-1 (+15) but had to split the tiebreaker points in the NE-JAX game with Cowdoc (+3 each). So Lion = +18
George was 3-1 (+15) but that was it = +15
RJB, Cowdoc, JPinmilw and Panzade could only muster +10 each but Cowdoc did get +3 for his half-share of the NE-JAX game, so he finished at +13.
A less then satisfactory ending, methinks, in that we didn't have a clear winner. But so it goes.
Thanks for playing in this cobbled together Wild-Card-Weekend-Pickum game. Tomorrow we will get serious.

As for Portland: it was raining when I got there on Thursday; it rained the entire time that I was there, and it was raining this morning when my plane took off.
The local newspaper, The Oregonian, is pretty pathetic.
And as for the city and its suburbs, there is something about the place I found disturbing. I know that I am a country boy from the mountains of Virginia, unaccustomed to life in a (relatively) big and growing city. I tried to articulate my feelings and a couple of friends of my niece and her husband seemed to catch my drift. You should visit California, they suggested. (I may try to catch up with Osso on this in another thread).

Lion, I did get to spend two hours or so at Powell's, wandering through the different colored rooms. I could spend days there (I think some people do spend days and days there).

Panzade, here is a passage from A J Liebling's The Sweet Science (the collection of stories from The New Yorker, ostensibly about boxing):
"He then put a handful of BB shot in his mouth and started to pick his teeth. He uses bamboo toothpicks, which he has tailored for him at a novelty shop on Broadway. From time to time, by means of his toothpick, he propels the pellets, one by one, through gaps between his teeth, hitting with perfect accuracy any object up to ten feet away. A nightclub hostess with a plunging neckline is his favorite target, but a busy bartender in a dimly lighted joint will keep him almost equally happy.
...'I got hit with an automobile a couple of years ago and got three new choppers on the right side, with no holes between them. So now I developed a curve out the left."

So, are yall ready for some football? It is time now to pick through the rest of the playoffs. All of the marbles are on the table as we compete for the coveted Golden Jockstrap Trophy. It has had a place of honor in my garage for a year, but it is time to pass it to someone else.

The deadline for submission is 4:30 pm on Saturday, January 14th. Remember that.

I was trying to bump this all up to the top of a new page.