When you put together a contest

.... like the blog's Murray Holiday Invitational, you need to be careful about who you invite. I take full responsibility for the chaos that ensued last night over the refusal by entrant "Big Red" to submit his picks. I did everything I could to get BR to participate but his demands were just too unreasonable. I think it all started when Jeff signed with superagent Scott Boras. The bottom line is that Jeff thought he was too big for the event and in the end he was right. I have to admit - I'm a little impressed. I think "The Big Guy" put it best when he said that it wasn't like I could have got Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan for this event. So what made me think I could get Sherman?

I don't know what I was thinking but it's time to move on. In the end this may work out for the best. "Fountain Blue" was also too busy to make any selections, so I will simply condense the field from 8 bowl games to 7 and pit "Louis Vuitton" and "Milton Bradley" against each other in the first annual "What did you major in? Oh, well I majored in gaming so my classes were probably a lot more interesting than anything you studied" Bowl. Now that we only have 7 bowl games, we can have the 7 winners and one wild card entrant advance to the next round. The logical solution is to have the highest score among all the losing players advance, so I am not doing that. Instead we will put it to a vote on Monday morning to determine the 8th member of the Elite Eight. (Pause for Chris Bennett's head to explode.)

Okay, here are the picks:

"+ Units": Cardinals, Ravens, Cowboys, Lions, Rams, Broncos
"NBA League Pass": Falcons, Jets, Titans, Ravens, Broncos, Giants


"Mr. Three & Out": Falcons, Rams, Ravens, Cardinals, Broncos, Packers, Titans
"Darts At a Board": Bills, Jaguars, Steelers, Vikings, Raiders, Giants, Texans

"Pit Bull": Falcons, Jets, Packers, Cardinals, Broncos
"Mr. Salmon": Titans, Rams, Patriots, Broncos, Skins, Chiefs


"Fernando": Packers, Falcons, Titans, Ravens, Cardinals, Raiders, Giants
"Bennie Silman": Jaguars, Rams, Ravens, Vikings, Cowboys


"The Player": Colts, 49ers, Rams, Bills, Broncos, Patriots, Cowboys
"The Dealer": Colts, Steelers, Chargers, Redskins, Panthers, Seahawks, Dolphins


"The Talented Mr. Roto:" Redskins, Falcons, 49ers, Rams, Raiders, Chargers, Jets
"Angelo Dundee": Lions, Redskins, Titans, Steelers, Broncos, Patriots, Giants

"Louis Vuitton": Lions, 49ers, Jets, Ravens, Raiders
"Milton Bradley": Raiders, Chiefs, Bengals, Texans, Rams, Jaguars


Here are some notes regarding the Round 1 picks:

* Make sure I got your picks right. I'm watching the Georgetown-Memphis game as I'm doing this and I could have easily made a mistake.

* The award for best strategy has to go to Ed. He tried to make picks in both the Bengals and Eagles games. Why? Because you get double the points if your game ends tied. That's just smart thinking.

* The award for paying the least attention to the rules also goes to Ed. I clearly stated that the contest was for Sunday's games only and no one else picked the Monday Night game. Not even my little sister.

* If one of these bowls were to be "Flexed" to prime time it would have to be the one pitting Chris Bennett against my sister. That match up has a little bit of everything: The longest and stupidest bowl name in human history, the uberstar capper, considered by many to be the best gambler this city has ever known, the Cinderella that the media and all of America is pulling for, and they are going head-to-head in 4 games! It just doesn't get any better than that.

* The "Matt Metcalf Bowl" also has the makings of a classic showdown. When Matt made his picks, he was even nice enough to point out which of them are "Old School" and which are "New School." I feel like he's just making this shit up at this point. Either way, he and I are going head-to-head in 3 games and only have one throw away game (We both picked Baltimore.) I also want to thank Matt for doing his best to get Jeff involved. I know how hard Jeff is to get a hold of and I appreciate your efforts.

* My plans to name the event The Murray Holiday Invitational Presented by GolfOdds.com fell through, so if any of you know of someone interested in sponsoring the tournament (Or if you are personally interested and have 5 bucks to spare) please let me know.


I've been blogging too much lately.


Enjoy the game.