How To Drive The Good Ol' Boys Totally Insane

Read an entertaining blog post recently about how a blogger I like makes some of her less-critical voting choices.  For some reason, this made me think about a football pool I participated in way back in the distant mists of time.

I went to graduate school in Texas, home of some of the craziest, most pumped-up football fans in the country.  One of the guys in my lab dragged me into a football pool that was being run by one of his college buddies.  I think there were eight of us, all guys but me, and I smoked their butts, week after week.

Now, I was and am not a general football fan.  I follow a few teams, and that's it.  But, because I was not about to let the XX team down in this endeavor to the ridicule of all those XYs, I spent a positively ridiculous amount of time deciding on my picks each week.  I checked all the expert predictions, the Vegas lines, you name it.  But, of course, there was no way I was admitting that to the guys either.  So, when I made my picks, I told them that I was choosing on the basis of which team had the less heinous uniform.  Or the handsomer coach.  Or the more stylish helmets.  Or the quarterback with the butt that looked better in those tight football pants.  Whatever I could think of that would make a bunch of good 'ol Texan boys absolutely bonkers as a criterion for choosing one team over another!  And since I had done all that homework before picking, the team I chose generally won, which REALLY made them nuts.

I never did explain--it was too much fun to watch them get mad.  But that pool got me through a tough period of grad school with a smile on my face, and is still making me smile now as I think back!