Fourth and Dumb

We’re alive and kicking, and back for another season, ladies and gents.

Real quick, let’s recap how last season turned out.

In our annual Bowl Challenge, we’ve been beaten by one of our readers for the second straight year. Brice Russ, linguistics Ph.D. student at The Ohio State University, claims to know nothing about football. He started out 0-3 in bowl season this past year, came back to go 9-1 on the New Year’s Eve/Day bowls and picked 24 of 4 games correctly to win the “title.” He was the only person to pick more than 21 bowl games correctly, and for that he has both my commendation and admiration.

Here’s the final standings among your four illustrious writers and the combined guest record.

DanGo 90-56
Chris 85-61
Fred 81-65
Guest 80-64
DanGr 76-60

I don’t like to gloat – but holy crap, I won?! Bet that doesn’t happen again.

I want thank everyone who picked as a guest last year. Special congratulations go to Evan Nagler, Chad Sinness, Ricky Compton, and Mike Cheyne, who each went 6-2 in their week to tie as the best of the guests. And we’re doing it again this year! If you want to get in on the guest picking action, post an email address here and I’ll get in touch with you.

For week one this year, our guest is Matthew Worner. Matthew Worner is a 2008 Master of Public Administration graduate from Virginia Tech’s Center for Public Adminsitration and Policy. He is an information technology auditor with one of the national security agencies (not disclosed… if it was, well…) in Washington, DC. Matthew is also probably one of the few Hokies that you know from North Dakota (maybe the only person you know from North Dakota). In his spare time, Matthew is an avid follower of the Hokies, is also enrolled in an Executive Master of Policy Management graduate program at Georgetown University. You can find him on Twitter at @HokieGuru.

We’ve got a decent slate of games for week one this year. Let’s go!

Read on for commentary and analysis.

Continue reading ‘Pick ‘Em – Week 1’ »

The end is in sight for the 2009-10 Pick ‘Em, and barring a meltdown, DanGo is set to sail into the winner’s circle for the season.  After a hot start to bowl season, Chris went 0.500 in Part 2 to fall to only one game ahead of DanGr (15-10), who went 9-5 to win the second trimester.  Chris (16-9), Fred (14-11), and the Magic 8-Ball (14-11) went 7-7, while DanGr again brought up the rear at 5-9 for a bowl season record of 9-16.

For the third trimester, I have chosen to eschew the traditional “Magic 8 Ball” in lieu of the Mystical Smoking Head of Bob.

Read on for commentary and analysis. Continue reading ‘Pick ‘Em – “Bowl Week” Part 3’ »

The first trimester of bowl week is in the books, with a few surprises.

What’s not a surprise is that Chris is yet again leading the pack, going 9-2 through the first week. Fred and the magic 8 ball are two games behind at 7-4, your illustrious pick ‘em leader (me) is 6-5, and DanGr is bringing up the rear at 4-7.

Among our guest competitors, we have a three-way tie atop the leaderboard, with Chris Chiego, Ricky Compton and Aaron Layton all tied at 7-4. Mike Dame, Ahmad Ragab and Chad Sinness all sit tied for fourth at 6-5. Well done, guys!

On to the second trimester, where vigorous activity is less encouraged.

Read on for commentary and analysis.

Continue reading ‘Pick ‘Em – “Bowl Week” Part 2’ »

The regular season has ended; all that’s left is the insanity that is Bowl “Week.” It’s not too late to get in on our yearly Bowl Extravaganza – just make sure to get your picks in before kickoff!

I’d like to publicly thank all of our guests for participating this year: Eric Douglas, Ahmad Ragab, Craig Barker, James Quintong, Mike Dame, Evan Nagler, Chad Sinness, Brice Russ, Ricky Compton, Mike Cheyne, David Bykowski and Andy Vann. Thank you all for participating this year; I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to say that this year was our best ever.

Also, a big thanks to DanGr for taking over the pick ‘em halfway through the year when it became evident that real life would prevent me from doing much at all with it.

I’m breaking out the magic 8 ball again to pick as the “guest” for bowl season. Here we go!

Read on for commentary and analysis.

Continue reading ‘Pick ‘Em – Bowl “Week,” Part 1’ »

Remember, the start of bowl season kicks off this Friday evening, and we want YOU to participate in the annual Fourth and Dumb Bowl Extravaganza.

1) Go here for the list of games.

2) Get your picks in before kickoff of each game by sending them to bowlgames@fourthanddumb.com.

3) Profit! (Not really.)

With the 2009 regular season in the books except for the Army-Navy Game, and the 2009 postseason matchups set except for Temple-(UCLA/Army), lets bring you up to date on the standings for the 2009 Pick ‘Em competition.  DanGo won Week 14 with a record of 5-3, while Fred brought up the rear at 3-5.  With Chris, DanGr (the only person to correctly pick Alabama), and our guest Andy breaking even, we collectively went 0.500 this week.  Everyone do the cabbage patch!

Here are the updated standings:

The Guest line is, of course, the summation of the picks of those of you who served as our guest pickers this autumn.  We are looking at you, Eric, Craig, James, Mike, Evan, Chad, Brice, Ricky, Ahmad, Mike, David, Andy, and last but not least, DanGo’s Magic 8-Ball.  We appreciate your participation and we hope you enjoyed your week in the limelight as much as we did.

The grand finale to the 2009 Pick ‘Em season is our selection of winners for the 34 bowl games. While we do not intend to have guest pickers for our remaining Pick ‘Ems, we encourage you to voice your opinions in our 2009-10 Bowl Game Extravaganza.  Although DanGo holds a six-game lead on his lesser quarters, no lead in the standings is safe.  Just last year, Chris came from behind to win it all.

Andy Vann was born in New Mexico and grew up in Texas.  After graduating from Texas A&M, he got his MA in English at the University of Florida, where he met Chris Borglum while playing on the worst flag football team in history (Chris scored our only touchdown all season).  Andy went on to work on his PhD at West Virginia University.  Finally tiring of arguing with students that the only reason he didn¹t give them an A was because he wasn’t smart enough to understand their ideas, he started a career in photography. Now living in New Jersey, where college football goes to die, he has to live vicariously through Fourth and Dumb.  How sad is that?

Our gang of misfits hit 0.500 overall in Week 13, with Fred and Byko winning the week with an ACCrific record of 5-3.  Going into the final week of the regular season, DanGo holds a five game lead over Chris.  Everyone else is within two games of each other.  Bring on Championship Week!

Read on for commentary and analysis.

Continue reading ‘Pick ‘Em – Week 14’ »

Think you can pick better than us, but didn’t get a chance to pick during the regular season? Want to atone for your horrible performance as a guest picker during the regular season? (I may or may not be looking at you, Ahmad Ragab.) Your chance has arrived – the annual Fourth and Dumb Bowl Pick ‘Em Free For All is back for a second year!

This year’s winner will receive the Chris Borglum Special Edition Fourth and Dumb Commemorative Thong.*

Here’s how it works:

Go here for this season’s bowl schedule. (I’ll fill in the remaining teams as they are selected.)

Send an email to bowlgames@fourthanddumb.com with your picks for each game. You can pick as many or as few games as you want at a time; as long as you get the pick in before kickoff of each game, you’ll get credit.

Got questions? Leave them here!

Good luck!

*Thong slightly used

This week’s guest picker is David Bykowski.  David (better known to most people as Dave or Byko) has always been a champion of the little guy, once eschewing big-time college football on a Saturday afternoon so he could catch the Ivy League Game of the Week (Cornell @ Columbia that week) on SportsChannel America.  He kept that up by getting his B.S. at Division I-FCS Furman before spending a brief two years in grad school at Michigan. Also a South Carolina and Maryland fan, Byko has had a rather miserable football season this year.  More notably, he has been a weekly columnist during the regular season on D2Football.com for the last three years, covering the Independents of Division II and taking trips over time to such booming cities as Ettrick, Virginia (twice); Pembroke, North Carolina; Athens, West Virginia; Painesville, Ohio; Russellville, Arkansas; and Goodwell, Oklahoma.  He has another job that actually pays the bills, but the less said about it, the better.

Congratulations to last week’s guest, Mike Cheyne, who won the week with a record of 6-2.  The Guest spot is now breathing down the neck of Fred.  DanGo still has a six game lead on second place, which is shared by Chris and DanGr this week.

Read on for commentary and analysis.

Continue reading ‘Pick ‘Em – Week 13’ »

This week’s guest picker is Mike Cheyne.  Mike is an American Studies doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota. After getting an undergrad degree at Division II powerhouse Grand Valley State University, he agonized his way through quietly underachieving MAC years at Western Michigan University to get a Master’s. Now, he is at an another underachieving school in a bigger pond. Life’s grand.

Week 11 was an improvement of sorts as everyone did better than average.  Fred won the week with a sweet 7-1 record. The only miss was Stanford-USC, which everyone muffed. Right behind Fred was our guest picker Ricky.  DanGo remains our leader, six games ahead of DanGr.

Read on for commentary and analysis.

Continue reading ‘Pick ‘Em – Week 12’ »