By Darren Johnson
Campus News
Not a lot of people joined our Football Pick’em Contest this year, but you still can if you’d like. We don’t have enough players for prizes. Just play for pride. Maybe we’ll have prizes for the playoffs (if you are a business and would like to gift us prizes, please do!).
Here is the link:
https://www.runyourpool.com/p/j/ac0d096c8d1a42858555732e77068639
See if you can win week by week.
Here are the year-to-date standings so far:
I’m not sure why I’ve been so mediocre at picking games. I think it’s because I watch a couple of sports talk shows where the pundits seem so sure of their picks; it must subconsciously influence me. But gambling has infiltrated the pick’em world so thoroughly, who knows if these pundits are on the take, giving bad advice on purpose, to trick bettors out of their money?
Jan Baxter, Salem Press editor, is a firm No. 2, but somehow Christopher, who chose not to use his last name, has an expert-level pick’em ability — this is vs. the spread, even.
If he had bet $1000 a game, he’d be up $41,000 minus the vig. Geez.
My Bookie Story
He kind of looked like Vegas Matt.
I was a pretty disciplined bettor back then, maybe like young Christopher mentioned above, and would just bet a set amount on every game with him vs. the spread. No parlays, props or other loser bets. Just straight Seattle +6 or whatever, maybe $25 or $50 each game, a few games a week.
I went on a streak where I hit 14 games in a row, and the bookie couldn’t pay me. But he had an idea. He had a bettor who owed him and couldn’t pay, on the nearby Indian Reservation, and this bettor offered his car. So the bookie would bring me there to the Rez, and I’d drive off of with the car, and we’d all be settled.
This was the style of car, but rusty and obviously not nearly as nice:
OK, fair enough, I thought. I was down a car. Basic transportation. At that age, I was used to having big cars from a couple of decades prior that got me through a season or two.
But this car didn’t last nearly that long. Going through a huge intersection, I stepped on the brakes for a red light — and nothing happened. The car kept going! I narrowly missed being T-boned and had to coast it into a 7-Eleven. But somehow the brakes started working again, and did for a while thereafter, so I figured in my immature mind it was just a blip.
But then I lent it to my then girlfriend (now wife), and she reported a similar near-death experience.
Somehow, we got over near-death experiences pretty easily back then.
Eventually, I bought another car in the next town over from some guy, and parked this bomb on the side of the road near a ditch. It was an older stick-shift Honda Accord that I’d seen advertised in the newspaper. Maybe I swapped the plates from the red bomb to the Accord right there. Not sure what the law was back then. I told the guy I’d be back for the red bomb, but I guess I took too long, as the town had it towed and impounded. Without plates, they probably figured it was abandoned. And, maybe, subconsciously, that was my goal. Of course, I didn’t bother to get it back.
Don, the bookie, stopped coming by the pizza place. I saw him months later working as a deli clerk, seeming a bit deflated. I asked him if he still was taking bets, but he brushed me off. He had sandwiches to make.
The Honda Accord didn’t last long. I was hit by an unlicensed motorcycle driver who took a turn too wide. It wrecked his bike and probably his leg, and my car, too. By then, I was working at a small newspaper and no longer doing pizza deliveries, but had to bike to work for a couple of months until I could save up for perhaps the worst car I’d ever had. A manual tan VW Rabbit that barely made it up small hills. It was pretty much just a small metal box on wheels.
You can’t say I wasn’t a gamer. Now I get way over-concerned if one of my wheels feels a tiny bit wobbly on the Northway.
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