nothing edifying » sports

March Madness — Done for weeks!

mim — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 21:12:56 +0000

Sorry everyone, I don’t know why but I just never got around to posting this, even though I watched the championship game more or less.

So, let’s do the Final Four:

Standings:
YB: 81
Kay: 67
mim: 62
CT: 60
Seth, Yut: 58
Lew: 56
misa: 55

So wow, YB was like a million points ahead already, and I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I say that it won’t change. (Congrats!) But, just to be all official, here’s the rest of the scores.

Final Standings:
YB: 89
CT (!!!): 68
Kay: 67
Seth: 66
me: 62
Yut: 58
Lew: 56
misa: 55

There was actually some movement in the rest of the standings, but YB won it all! This is her second win. I’ll think of something but so far there’s been nothing in terms of prizes. I figure I have ’til May when I am actually going to see YB to worry about it. (Master Procrastinator)

Somehow, CT ended up being 2nd. I don’t even know how this happened. I almost feel like maybe I need to go double check all of her scores. :) Then Kay. Sheesh! Meanwhile, on the bottom, misa didn’t even manage to beat Lew, whose championship team was out by the first weekend! Sorry Lew, I should’ve given you more credit. Turns out the rest of your bracket must’ve been ok!

So again, congratulations YB! Enjoy your Winner’s title ’til next year. :)

Second Weekend at an End

mim — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 03:38:27 +0000

Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games were played this weekend. In the Sweet Sixteen, there were two regions that ended up with the 1 and 2 seeds, one with the 1 and 3 seeds, but luckily in the West Region, Louisville (4) beat Michigan St (1) and Florida (7) beat Marquette (3) to make things more exciting. Of course, Yut doesn’t think it was too “lucky”, since he picked Michigan St all the way.

Standings after the Sweet Sixteen:
YB: 61
Kay: 53
Yut: 50
mim: 48
CT: 46
Lew: 42
Seth: 38
misa: 35

Hey look, no one’s tied with anyone else anymore!

Okay, now on to the Elite Eight games. Somehow, even though we picked different teams to win, all of us picked two games correctly no matter what, although no one picked Louisville. Amazingly, Lew’s random coin + UVa bias is still working out ok for him since Virginia was in the West region with Louisville, and no one picked Louisville anyway.

YB: 69
Kay: 61
Yut: 58
mim: 56
CT: 54
Lew: 50
Seth: 46
misa: 43

So how is it that YB and Kay are the only two with scores in the 60s?! And why didn’t I pick Kansas to the Final Four?! Darn UNC.

Scores After the First Weekend

mim — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 05:18:59 +0000

On Saturday, YB picked every. single. game. correctly — that’s sixteen points! Needless to say, she took over the lead. On the other hand, Lew’s coin totally failed him, and he only got two. He still had a the best day of any of us on Sunday, but it wasn’t enough to beat the YB juggernaut. She has 8 points more than the next possible person; she’s basically reached new heights of basketball awesomeness. I am totally shocked!!! (I know, and I was being so nice, too.) :)

It seems like what’s going on is that on half the round, it’s almost completely following the seeding, but on the other half, things have gone crazy. Not that I mind — I love upsets, even if they are totally messing up my bracket.

Standings after the first two rounds:
YB: 46
Kay, Yut: 38
Lew: 36
CT: 34
mim: 33
Seth: 29
misa: 26

Madness, Indeed

mim — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 06:32:32 +0000

Wow what a day! If yesterday was almost completely chalk, today … well today for the first time ever (right?), two 15 seeds beat two 2 seeds! There have been 15 beating 2 before, but never two in the same tournament. And one of them was Duke! I don’t even care if it screws up my whole bracket! Upsets are more exciting anyway, and no more Duke! Actually, I don’t know why I dislike Duke… seems like an ACC fan sort of thing to do. Although I suppose if Duke won, at least there’s the fact that they are ACC. It’s just that I’m so sick of it always being about UNC and Duke. Hopefully, K is right and Florida State goes all the way or something. Even if that means K wins again, and I die from shock. :D

The only thing left that would make me super happy is if Kentucky lost. I don’t like that Calipari guy who’s their coach, I don’t think.

Okay, okay, enough basketball talk (such as it is). Standings!

Lew: 24
Kay, YB, Yut: 22
CT: 20
mim, Seth: 19
misa: 16

Okay, for some reason this year, two of you (2!) didn’t take my free advice about 16 vs 1 seeds! Yes it’s true, CT picked UNC Asheville over Syracuse (which was a close game) and misa picked Vermont over UNC. Craziness!

Also crazy, all of us loved Florida State and Kay and Lew picked South Florida (only I doubt they knew they were picking South Florida, since South Florida had that play-in game vs Cal).

Even crazier (or at this point craziest? Have I gotten to craziest yet?) Lew, who picked Virginia all the way, and I believe took my advice about 16 vs 1 games, but otherwise threw a coin for all of the rest is leading. Yes he’s ahead of you. All of yous! Random coin FTW!

Is it just me or does he manage to lead for at least a day every year? Still though, I don’t think this is going to be his winning year since Florida (a state that has at least three teams still in it) beat UVa. I’m sorry, Lew!

Day 1 Scored

mim — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 08:15:54 +0000

The first two days are always the most exciting in a way. There are just so many games!

So after the first day, here’s the standings:
YB: 14 Alone at the top!
CT, Kay, Lew, Misa, Seth, Yut: 12
mim: 11 LAST! OMG I am LAST!

I take back what I said about the first day being exciting. I think it’s all about Day 2!!!

Brackets 2012

mim — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 06:41:06 +0000

The number of people willing to self identify as Know Nothing or willing to play for Not Much Upside was lower than usual this year. I’m assuming that the No Downside part wasn’t too much of an impediment. Nevertheless, we have a game! And all of the previous winners are back!

Sorry I’m so slow — crazy busy. But here are all the brackets! And I’ll restate everyone’s picks, too, since we got two more that I didn’t have time to deal with this morning. CT (“Kentucky Fried Chicken FTW!”) sent hers in while I was sleeping, and Lew sent his in late because of an exam. Must be an extra mean professor. I mean, scheduling an exam for the first day of the tournament?! Sheesh! Now normally, I would penalize him by discounting points from all of the games and teams that had already begun when he turned it in, but I actually have no idea which ones had started so unless it’s super close I think I’ll just calculate it like normal. If it’s super close at the end, I’ll go back and figure it out to the best of my ability and subtract the points. But if Virginia wins, he wins it, and I’m not gonna bother ’cause he wins!

YB: Kentucky – Kansas (165)

Seth: Kentucky – Kansas (130)

Kay: Florida St – Kentucky (122)

misa: Kansas – Kentucky (135)

Yut: Michigan St – Ohio St (130)

CT: Kentucky – UNC (117)

Lew: Virginia – Kansas (123)

mim: Ohio St – Kentucky (130)

Ides of March … Madness

mim — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:30:45 +0000

I will be posting up the brackets, but filling mine out took me a long time, so now I am way past sleepy (it’s like 1 am!), so I am just going to post up the quick and dirty stats so you know what everyone picked. I’ll add on more if anyone else submits, and publish at around 9:30am Pacific.

YB: Kentucky over Kansas (“Ok! Ok! Here ’tis. :)” After my mild strong arming.)
Seth: Kentucky over Kansas (The defending champ… likes every St. school not in the South Region)
Special K: Florida St over Kentucky (“kickin butt this year. ohhhh yessss!!!”)
Yut: Michigan St over Ohio St (“Winner winner chicken dinner!”)
misa: Kansas over Kentucky (“A little on the late side but it’s on time! :D”)
mim: Ohio St. vs Kentucky (extreme indecision this year, more so than usual! But that just means I thought extra hard, so I’m gonna win.)

I had to resort to threatening bunnies to get some of these. What is the world coming to?!

Let the Picking Begin

mim — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 04:00:40 +0000

I’ve sent out the brackets, y’all! If you think you should have received one and didn’t, please please let me know. We need all the trash talking losers we can get, but in this age of contact autofill and whatnot, I can no longer remember phone numbers or email addresses very well.

Ok, as a reminder, as if you need or care for them, here are the rules (credit to Todd):

Pick the winners of all 63 non-play-in games. The scoring will be: 1 pt for each first round game, 2 pts for each second round game, then 3, 4, 6, and finally 8 pts for the championship game.
The tiebreaker will be the total number of points in the championship game. Please please please please remember to include this.
Entries are due by 12 noon EDT/9 am PDT (it’s D right? we’re done with S for a while?)
Winners will receive a miscellaneous prize, maybe. But you’ll be listed in yearly as a previous winner, definitely. All for about five minutes of your time! (I figure that’s the average time people spend on this.)

Free hint:

Don’t pick a 16 seed over a 1 seed. It will probably happen one year, but it hasn’t yet!

I know, I am so arrogant, giving out free hints like that! :)

The Selection Has Happened

mim — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 05:55:17 +0000

Today was the day! Yup it was Selection Sunday! I know most of us are thinking, “Oh wow it’s that time of the year again!” or something like that, which is why we’re perfect for the Know-Nothing-No-Downside-Not-Much-Upside Pool or Contest or Whatever. Ignoramuses with infallible systems involving much guesswork only may apply! I’ll email the brackets when I have it, due by early Thursday morning, like 9am Pacific.

Previous Winners (this yearly congratulatory listing is part of the upside, such as it is)
2011: Seth
2010: K
2009: YB
2008: me!
2007: Yut
2006: Yut
2005: misa

Congratulations to all previous winners! Good luck to everyone, especially me!

Live blogging the Super Bowl (Ads)

mim — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:48:24 +0000

3:43p I just thought of this so we missed some. There were vampires in a car ad (Volkswagon?) Something about their headlights being like the sun? Maybe they’re full spectrum? I guess we could all kill vampires with the right kind of lamps? Also, aren’t we past vampires yet? It’s been done to death. Anyway just ok and confusing. And then kind of a fairy tale styled Pepsi ad with Elton John and Flava Flav — fairy tales are having a cultural moment now it seems. Also just ok, but less confusing. Another car ad erm… Audi vs cheetah? Except a cheetah’s top speed is like 75mph, so I’m not getting it; they thought we needed to know Audis can go faster than 75?

3:50 Giants touchdown, Victor Cruz salsa’d. I’m eating TJ’s Chunky Salsa, quite good.

3:51 Bud Light party, dunno. M&M’s commercial for the tan ones. v. Cute, made me laugh! Best so far. Celebrity Apprentice, dunno.

Short football break then coke! A polar bear has his paws stuck together? Drinks coke through straw… Cute-ish but not making sense. GM truck, disses Ford, by name! Is that like 1/2 point for Ford? Also, is a crossover ad for Twinkies (at the end of the world, only GM trucks and Twinkies I guess).

3:58 More football.

3:59 END OF 1st quarter? Already? Barely any football. Giants 9, Pats 0.
Bridgestone something about performance. Godaddy, annoying. Lexus, shiny. Battleship the movie, lots of robots, thought it was Transformers again.

4:04 Pats score, now more ads.
End of Prohibition, it’s the Clydesdales! Cute! I like it! Doritos, clever dog bribing human! Cute, I like it! Chevy Camaro, not a graduation present, but fun.

4:07 Another few seconds of football reminding us of the score. GE and Bud now having a crossover ad. GE makes the turbines that makes the beer… well ok. John Carter movie. TaxAct, kid has to pee, bathroom full, jumps in the pool ah relief, not bad. Reminder that Madonna is in the halftime show, ok we know.

4:10 hey look, we’re watching football! Travis Beckham hurt? Ad time.
The Lorax! But wait, we don’t need jaw dropping blah blah… The Lorax awesome just the way it is. Cute Beetle ad with a fat dog exercising to get slim, all new Beetle. Something with Star Wars I dunno. Howard Stern joining America’s Got Talent, shrug.

4:15 I don’t get football, they play a teeny bit then show 5 replays of what they just did then there’s a penalty, then much standing around and then a bit more football then standing around, repeat, then ads! And that’s a long segment of football.

4:18 Ads! David Beckham in his own underwear for H&M, nice, I guess. Polar bears for Coke, sliding on the ice trying to save bottle of Coke, cute! Better than Beckham!

4:22 Jason Pierre-Paul’s dad is Jean… That’s a lot of apostles in 1 name.

4:23 Travis Beckham from before torn ACL.

4:29 We Are Young, like the song, Chevy Sonic intro. Star Wars like you’ve never seen it before… In 3D, but we all know every time he gets, George Lucas makes sure it’s Star Wars like you never seen it before. Madonna! In the halftime show!

4:34 Avengers movie. Chick getting ready to go out, Valentines quid pro quo Teleflora. Blech. Dog wearing shoes, I didn’t even catch that it was Skechers. Cars.com, weird.

4:38 Penalty then penalty. Hernandez! He was on my fantasy team (Thanks Al)!

4:41 Annoying kid taunting about having Doritos, clever grandmother wins by slingshot baby. ETrade creepy baby. Summer GI Joe movie…seems whatever, but wait, it’s The Rock!!!

4:46 Pats touchdown now tied. Kick good now NE 10 NY 9. Now Bridgestone Halftime Show feat. Madonna.

4:50 Something about live like a millionaire. Citibank something about eggs and omelets… Didn’t they get bailed out? How do they spend 3.5 mil in 30s? Xfinity fastest house something, Round Table Pizza. More Citibank. Blech.

4:53 I always think Bob Costas looks like a camel. Cute sorta. More analysis. Gob for Hulu Plus.

5:00 The halftime show. Madonna does ~~walk like an Egyptian~~ Vogue. Guessing she’s not singing. Looks nice though. Segued into Music… I think? LMFAO mashup with a bouncing tightrope dude! I thought she said I’m 60 and I know it but Yut says it was sexy. Oops. Now Gimme all your luvin’. Oh a drumline, always fun. Ceelo? Nice effects. OMG Like a Prayer! Maybe she is singing? Love this song. Choir too. “world peace” heavy handed but overall not gonna be cynical that was great. :)

5:14 The voice after the SB. James Gale (random kid) delivered the game ball to a ref.

5:16 More football talk with Tony Dungy and 2 other dudes.

5:19 Chrysler: America is tough feat. Clint Eastwood, good choice.

5:23 Back to football, mostly.

5:28 Td patriots
Smash, you had me at Angelica Huston… Seems like a Glee type show? Local affiliate ad. Xfinity add again with the racing houses. Chase quick pay, hey didn’t these people get a bailout?

5:31 Football, nice run.

5:37 Gasping from the violence. Geez.
NYG 12 NE 17

5:38 Fiat 500 abarth=sexy confusing woman. Someone wins free Pepsi Max for life, Regis jumps in to announce.

5:41 Football.
My bad 1 kick later, back to ads. Toyota something or other. Polar bear is sad then he yells, they hear it all the way in the south pole (hence penguins) gets coke. Eh. Dannon Greek yogurt. John Stamos(?) gets headbutted for yogurt. Injury timeout. Jerry Seinfeld wants an NSX gets beat by Jay Leno. Not bad! GE hires Americans!

5:46 Football, JPP, bad hit, dude kid is only 23, ouch poor kid. Football is nuts.

5:48 Back to ads. Budweiser through the decades, and all the trends therein. I like this one! Bridgestone performance this time with Tim Duncan (previous was Aikman and Sanders I think).

5:50 football! Petting Hellspawn!

5:59 football through the ages? Yeah NFL ad. eBay, kind of mean spirited? Not really but anyway whatever. Toyota. Jack in the Box marrybacon.com ha!

6:02 football OMG interception! Dude who was a teacher last fall intercepts Brady to Gronkowski throw.

6:05 Ferris Bueller grows old, takes day off, drives CR-V. Navy SEALs make a movie. Classic cartoon characters! MetLife. Smash.

6:08 football. Injury! Geez, this game!

6:11 Genesis car. Bud light rescue dog gets beer for everyone. Pretty good.

6:13 football.

6:19 Mr. Sandman wait cars and skimpily clad women and classic rock and bucking rhino Kia Optima. Career builder chimp. NBC comedies. Football

6:24 more injuries!!!
Standing in line is boring. Samsung is trying to bring back styluses to touchscreens? Another The Voice ad.

6:24 football. Dude, is that a cheat sheet on Brady’s wrist? Nice catch by Manningham(?). It’s feeling like it’s getting more exciting. 2 minutes left. NE 17 NYG 15, Giants ball.

6:38 Cadillac ATS built to beat BMW 3 series? Swamp people on History channel. Godaddy again. Awake new show with B.D. Wong and Cherry something … President Taylor from 24.

6:42 football. 6:43 Giants td! But supposedly it’s not even what they should’ve done! The guy was trying to stop himself but fell in to the endzone by momentum. The Patriots just let it happen, maybe. I do not understand this game. I mean they are explaining it and ok it is sort of making sense but still what the heck?! NYG 21 NE 17. At least it’s not boring?

Giants win Super Bowl XLVI!

6:55 game’s over, this is the most attention I’ve paid to a Super Bowl in 20 years! Maybe ever?