The BigFlax Quiz Bowl Farewell Tour, Stop 2

As most or all of you know by now, this is the last year that Alma and I plan to play quiz bowl. It's just not that important to us anymore - I've stopped keeping my own stats, which should tell you something about my priorities. Interestingly enough, I appear to be playing some of my best Trash ever, which could just be because I'm older or could be because I'm no longer overly fixated on game scores and the like. At stop #1 of the Last Hurrah Tour, I put up 48.5 PPG at TRASH Regionals, good for third in individual scoring at the tournament and my second-best corporate TRASH showing ever (half a tossup per game behind 2003 Regionals). At stop #2, I put up 61.25 in eight round robin games at Ann B. Davis, also good for third place individually and my best-ever showing there. (Of course I'm not sure that those stats are exactly right - they rarely are - but it's probably close enough.)

As for the tournament itself, it went all right. We went 5-3 in the round robin with a couple tough losses - after starting off 2-0 by thumping one of the Pitt teams and squeezing past Eric Hillemann and Julie Stalhut's squad on the last question (with all due respect to Eric, he's got something of a Beloit Curse on Colby and myself, as his results against us in Trash are always drastically opposite to the tournament standings), we hit a tough packet for us and dropped a 220-210 heartbreaker to Illinois A. It's pretty hard to win a game when you neg four times - all we had to do was not neg and we would have won, even if Illinois had picked up the questions exactly as they did after we negged. But woulda, coulda, shoulda, after all. We rebounded with three straight routs, including collecting 16 of a possible 21 tossups against the other Pitt team in our bracket. Then we met the Michigan alum team (Traicoffs/Long/Erinjeri) and lost 280-250 on the last question, followed by our expected drubbing at the hands of the O'Reillys + Quintong (because if there's one thing the O'Reillys needed, it was adding one of the country's top ten players as a free agent), though we only lost by 130, the closest anyone got in the round robin (and one of just two games in which they didn't have at least 14 of the 21 tossups available).

At 5-3 and having lost to the three teams ahead of us, we got shunted into the middle playoff bracket, but that worked out just fine for us, as we rolled through it, including hanging more than 500 points on one of the Chicago teams in our last game, to finish seventh. Of my six trips to ABD, seventh actually is just the fifth-best finish my team has recorded, but that says more about the consistency with which my teams have done fairly well at the ABD than about this year. I thought we played about as well as possible and hit one rough packet at the wrong time - had we swapped the round in which we played Illinois A with the one directly following it, we probably would have won both, finished 6-2, and made the top bracket, and given how well we played on the playoff packets maybe we could have been top two or three. On the other hand, we could easily have lost to Hillemann's team, finished at .500, and had to cling to a top ten place. All told, I'm perfectly happy with how we played. It was, I thought, a solid question set (ABD usually delivers on this count), which is all I'll say as there is a mirror yet to come.

I used to sequester this stuff in the Quiz Bowl section, but since I'm not copying down everything for a full recap anymore, you're stuck with them here. Sorry. There'll be three more of these at most, and those'll be in March, April, and August (only the April one, TRASHionals, is guaranteed), so I think you'll live.

Three and counting

First of all, Drew insisted that I post final standings for the Bowl Challenge just so everyone knows that he officially won. So, fine. Here you go:

1. Drew (22-10)
2. Stan (21-11)
3. Rudnik (20-12, -6 winner score)
4. Flax (20-12, -14 winner score)
5. Dad (19-13)
6. Tyler (18-14, -1 tiebreaker score)
7. JQ (18-14, -7 tiebreaker score)
8. NJ Dave (15-17, -7 tiebreaker score)
9. Rich (15-17, no tiebreaker)
10. NU Dave (11-21)

Happy? Good. Moving on.

In sports news, my new hero is Greg Archuleta of the Albuquerque Journal, the only AP voter who cast his #1 vote in the final poll for the country's last unbeaten team, Boise State. (BSU finished #5 in the final poll; Florida, of course, finished first.) Could Boise State beat Florida? I don't know; quite possibly not. But as a team that won all the games they could, don't you think they should get a chance? If anything, a playoff system is more necessary in college football than in most other sports; in basketball and hockey each team plays every other one at least once, for example, and the same is true within each league in baseball. In college football, you're lucky if the top teams play two strong out-of-conference games. (Ohio State played one, against a rebuilding Texas team, and while Florida did play two bowl-winning teams, they also played Central Florida and I-AA Western Carolina, both of whom they slaughtered.) So the national title contenders probably aren't going to play, unless they're in the same conference, and yet the two best are determined by human polls and computer formulas, and not anything that happens on the field. It's getting pretty ridiculous. Ohio State/Florida was probably the best pick for the title game, but it was by no means the only reasonable pick, and that was so because these teams don't play each other. Set it up so that the contenders meet in a playoff and the eventual title showdown will be much more conclusive. I know some people value tradition over finality, but if that's the case you should be rooting for a return to the old system, where the big bowls had specific conference affiliations and if the #1 team was from the Big Ten and the #2 team was from the SEC, there was no way in hell they were going to meet. Now that's the way to be unsatisfied with an outcome!

In other news, this is a real website. I don't know whether to be impressed or alarmed. Doesn't it just seem really, weirdly, oddly specific? I mean, just burritos? Maybe I should set one up for bubble tea, or turkey sandwiches.

January 9 means it must be Alma's and my anniversary. Happy three years, baby! I know other people are reading this so I'll spare you too much mush, but it has to be said, over and over again: I love this woman.

Bowled over

Cincinnati and Southern Miss won, so Drew, at 22-9, takes the title in the Bowl Challenge. Monday's game is irrelevant, since everyone had Ohio State (and even if they didn't, the only person who could catch Drew with one game is Stan). Since it's Drew, the token of my esteem will probably be candy of some sort, although I should probably try and make it slightly more interesting than just handing him a bag of Skittles. I suppose we'll see.

Final Standings (prior to Monday's game)
1. Drew 22-9
2. Stan 21-10
3t. Flax 20-11
3t. Rudnik 20-11
5. Dad 19-12
6t. JQ 18-13
6t. Tyler 18-13
8t. NJ Dave 15-16
8t. Rich 15-16
10. NU Dave 11-20

Drew has sewn up the second-best winning percentage in Challenge history (if anyone ever tops Marc's 19-6 from 2001, I'll be pretty surprised). Meanwhile, though I hate to keep piling on Dave, his picks were kind of amazing. He started 0-7, then went 3-3 to get to 3-10... and proceeded to go on a 6-0 run, getting all the way to 9-10 before missing another. He then went 2-2 to get to 11-12 following the Cotton Bowl - and hasn't gotten one right since, dropping to 11-20 with an 0-8 run, which actually manages to beat his 0-7 start. Talk about being streaky!

Anyway, that's the Bowl Challenge for another year. I'll update the actual page after the title game, but this is the last I'll write about it here. And with good cause!

The home stretch

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I don't have internet at home right now (thanks, RCN). Updating the picks has been hard enough, since I have to do it through the website's control panel (much, much harder than with a WYSIWYG editor), so I've been doing it more sporadically than I otherwise might have. That said, they should all be up to date now, and assuming I haven't miscounted, our post-New-Year's-Day standings look like this:

1. Rudnik (19-8)
2. Drew (18-9)
3t. Flax (17-10)
3t. Stan (17-10)
5t. Dad (16-11)
5t. Tyler (16-11)
7. JQ (15-12)
8. Rich (13-14)
9. NJ Dave (12-15)
10. NU Dave (11-16)

If Wake Forest wins tonight, Rudnik will have things virtually locked up; he'd go two games up over Drew and three over Stan and me. Drew would need Cincinnati and Southern Miss to win just to tie Rudnik (not that that's not possible, but obviously it doesn't leave him any breathing room as those are the only games they have different of the final four), while everyone else would be mathematically eliminated.

If Louisville wins, however, Rudnik and Drew would be tied at 19-9 with Stan and myself at 18-10 (I've included Tyler and Dad, who would be at 17-11 with a Louisville win, in the below scenarios, even though I calculate that they can't win at this point). The Sugar Bowl and title game are both non-factors in the race at this point, meaning it would all come down to the International and GMAC Bowls. So assuming Louisville wins tonight, the following scenarios could happen:

If Western Michigan and Ohio win:
Rudnik 22-9 (or 21-10 if ND wins)
Drew 20-11 (or 19-12 if ND wins)
Flax 20-11 (or 19-12 if ND wins)
Tyler 20-11 (or 19-12 if ND wins)
Dad 19-12 (or 18-13 if ND wins)
Stan 19-12 (or 18-13 if ND wins)

So we'd have a three-way tie for second, but since Rudnik had UWM and Ohio, he'd win going away. But what if he's wrong about both?

If Cincinnati and Southern Miss win:
Drew 22-9 (or 21-10 if ND wins)
Stan 21-10 (or 20-11 if ND wins)
Flax 20-11 (or 19-12 if ND wins)
Rudnik 20-11 (or 19-12 if ND wins)
Dad 19-12 (or 18-13 if ND wins)
Tyler 18-13 (or 17-14 if ND wins)

In this scenario Drew would win, and Stan would actually sneak all the way to second.

If Cincinnati and Ohio win:
Rudnik 21-10 (or 20-11 if ND wins)
Drew 21-10 (or 20-11 if ND wins)
Stan 20-11 (or 19-12 if ND wins)
Dad 20-11 (or 19-12 if ND wins)
Flax 19-12 (or 18-13 if ND wins)
Tyler 19-12 (or 18-13 if ND wins)

In this case it would come down to a tiebreaker between Rudnik and Drew. Rud has 48 total points, while Drew has 59. (I'd call that advantage: Rudnik.)

If Western Michigan and Southern Miss win:
Rudnik 21-10 (or 20-11 if ND wins)
Drew 21-10 (or 20-11 if ND wins)
Flax 21-10 (or 20-11 if ND wins)
Stan 20-11 (or 19-12 if ND wins)
Tyler 19-12 (or 18-13 if ND wins)
Dad 18-13 (or 17-14 if ND wins)

The final scenario, which involves me turning around my January 1 fortunes (2-4!) and getting all three remaining difference games right, would actually lead to a three-way tie atop the leaderboard. More problematic? Guess who has the same tiebreaker score. That's right, Rudnik and I both took 48 points (35-13 for him, 27-21 for me).

In the interest of full transparency I am announcing right now the resolution to this situation should it actually arise. (Of course, if Louisville, Cincinnati, or Ohio win, it becomes moot.) In the event of two players with the same tiebreaker score, the player whose score for the winning team is closer wins the tiebreaker. Should this fail to resolve things (say Ohio State wins 31-17, for example), the winner will be the player whose birthday is closest to the birthday of the game's MVP, much like the second tiebreaker (never used) for the Tournament Challenge.

(Troy Smith: 7/20; Ted Ginn: 4/12; Antonio Pittman, 12/19; Chris Leak, 5/3. Rudnik, with his March 20 birthday, would beat me in three of these four.)

So anyway: advantage Rudnik, for the moment. But it's not over yet.

Not much toil or trouble, actually

Alma, taking a page from my dad's book, couldn't wait until the ninth to give me at least one of my "thirdiversary" presents, so she gave it to me tonight: a make-your-own bubble tea kit. She kept on telling me how much I was going to like it (until I had to tell her, "Stop overhyping it!"), but of course she was right. Although she cooked the first batch of pearls; we'll see what happens when I'm boiling them up myself at home. They have all kinds of syrups and powders you can get for flavor, but I think it's probably healthier just to make yourself a real fruit smoothie and get some pearls into it. (I did that tonight with frozen raspberries and it was plenty delicious, although incredibly full of seeds.)

Considering how often I stop in at Boba Bee these days, this is a nice alternative to have. I mean, you can get 90 servings' worth of pearls for 13 bucks, which will buy you three or four bubble teas at retail price, so... mmmmmmm. I wonder if Alma realizes she's created a monster.

Feliz Navidad

So the Bowl Challenge is off to a hot start. Currently JQ and I are tied at 5-2, and then there's a big group at either 3 or 4 correct picks, so it's still on. Unless you're NU Dave; I think my new rule for making picks is going to be wait for his to come in, then take the opposite for every game. I'm teasing of course, but damn, 0-7? That is a major confluence of bad luck picking. There are quite a few bowls coming up where he picked with the majority, so odds are he gets off the schneid soon, but wow. Previous long 0-fer to start a Challenge? 0-2. So congratulations, Dave - you may not win the Challenge, but you've made your way into history, however ignominiously.

"Back" in DC for Christmas, which is tomorrow. It's been pretty laid back, which is just as well, since work was stressful as hell for the second half of last week. I miss Alma, though.

Business: does anyone out there like Camera Obscura? They're playing Logan Square Auditorium on February 3. I actually know nothing about them besides the name and an album title, but they're playing with the Essex Green, whom I love. (And if you're wondering why I didn't just ask about the Essex Green, I figured you'd be much less likely to have heard of them, unless you are Marc Hogan or someone I told about them.) I suspect Alma isn't all that interested (our musical tastes don't have a huge amount of overlap) so possible company would be appreciated. (If Alma does end up wanting to go, well, even better.) Let me know in the comments.

Bowl challenge lineup

It's a bit late to put up everyone's picks, even if the first game is already over (if you had NIU... sorry). I'll try and get them up tomorrow, but until then, here's who you're competing against for a small token of my esteem to be determined (in order of picks received):

Me
Dad
NJ Dave
Stan
Rud
Tyler
Drew
JQ
NU Dave
Rich

A healthy field considering nothing is officially at stake, I think (the token of my esteem could potentially be pocket lint, after all). Good luck to all!

Bowl-a-Rama

In answer to the couple people who have asked, the BigFlax.com College Bowl Challenge is making its triumphant return for yet another year. Once again I will not require an entry fee (since I wouldn't get half of them anyway), but the winner will receive a small token of my esteem (to be determined).

To enter, simply send your pick for the winner in each of 32 bowls - PLUS YOUR TIEBREAKER SCORE FOR THE TITLE GAME (someone always forgets this, so here it is in bold type; please don't make me hound you for it) - to bigflax (at) gmail (dot) com by 6 pm CST next Tuesday, December 19th (one hour prior to kickoff of the first game).

Those of you looking for a lineup of bowls from which to make your selections can find it here. You'll have to do your own research.

Any questions? Let me know in the comments. As usual, the contest is open only to people I know in at least some capacity (i.e. FOAFs are okay if you really want in, but no random strangers).

"Jason History: Giants lose ace to rival Dodgers"

Tyler and I make it a game of trying to guess the lame, often pun-based headlines on ESPN.com to accompany various major sports stories. I actually nailed one exactly a couple weeks ago, though regrettably I've already forgotten what it was.

Anyway, today Jason Schmidt, probably second-best in a middling class of free agent pitchers, signed with the Dodgers (only the biggest rival of Schmidt's old team). ESPN, in their infinite wisdom, chose the headline "Schmidt Happens in L.A." Hey, ESPN: did it occur to you that with a last name like Schmidt, this guy has probably had to put up with jokes like this for the last 30-plus years? Way to rub it in his face. With that in mind, I tapped my secret contacts at ESPN and discovered that there were actually a number of similar headlines that the Worldwide Leader considered, but rejected, to lead the story:

"Know Schmidt? Dodgers Do"

"Schmidt Bullish on Dodgers"

"Dodgers In Deep with Schmidt"

"Dodgers Jack Schmidt from Giants"

"Schmidt Out of Luck in San Francisco"

"Taking a Schmidt: Dodgers steal rival's ace"

"Money Talks, J-Schmidt Walks"

"Dodgers Have Schmidt Where They Eat"

"Schmidt Happy as a Pig with New Contract"

"No More Schmidt-Talking in Bay Area"

"Giants Up Schmidt Creek Without a Pitcher"

God, how does he *always* know?

Winter has a knack for showing up like clockwork every December 1, like its alarm clock went off and it suddenly realized it was late for work. This year's edition of the Two Days Ago It Was 60 Degrees show saw a blizzard whomp Chicago. I was staying at Alma's up north and ended up being so snowed in (by about a foot of snow) that I couldn't get to the Metra and eventually had to miss work. That's always pretty embarrassing, because there's really no such thing as a snow day once you're out of high school. I'm going to end up going in either tomorrow or Sunday (preferably tomorrow, but we'll see just how badly I got plowed in and how easy it is to dig out, especially if the snow freezes up overnight) to make up the time, which is always fun.

The annoying thing was expending all this energy trying to dig the car out and just failing miserably. I'd dig out the wheels, try and dig out the space into which I was planning on driving, and then get back in the car - and then I might go two feet and the whole process had to start again. It was a big-time losing battle, considering that there was no fewer than about six inches of snow on the ground in the parking lot and sometimes more where the plows had pushed it up during their first pass some hours before. I ended up having to dig the car out just to get it back into the space from which I had been trying to extract it. Bad, bad times. I've been inside for the past thirteen hours and my pants still aren't totally dry.

You have to expect weather like this when you live in Chicago, and I've dealt with worse (although honestly, it rarely has been this bad for the first snow of the year, the October 14 non-stick aberration notwithstanding), but coming so soon after the balmy weather of midweek (I was able to wear my Man City windbreaker to work on Wednesday!) it was a real kick in the butt.