Pick'em Overall Champion Trophy Presentation

[Chechem]

READY, all?   



I wish to thank members of the forum, mods, family, friends, my entourage, ladies and gentlemen (Brosky especially), for the privilege of speaking to you as you honor me for accomplishing this great feat.  I am honored and grateful. Thank you.

...

with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are awards like this one, there are cessations, and you’ll be in no condition to enjoy the Natty tomorrow no matter how delightful the afternoon leading up to it.
My friends and forumites, I thank you.  "Hear, hear!"

    Thanks a bunch. 

[2Stater]

I'm sorry, could you repeat that, Chech?

[Old Tider]

I'm sorry, could you repeat that, Chech?

No need, the book will be published soon by Disney.

[2Stater]

I'm sorry, could you repeat that, Chech?

No need, the book will be published soon by Disney.

 

[Jamos]

READY, all?   



I wish to thank members of the forum, mods, family, friends, my entourage, ladies and gentlemen (Brosky especially), for the privilege of speaking to you as you honor me for accomplishing this great feat.  I am honored and grateful. Thank you.

So here we are… at season's end… life’s great forward-looking moment.  Before I begin, let's review.  And don’t say, “What about The Big 10 or Pac 12?” They had their chances.  Other than conceding to a list of unreasonable demands, the championship game is just that. No stately, hey-everybody-look-at-me procession. No 2nd-pacle trophies. No identity-changing pronouncement. And can you imagine a television show dedicated to watching guys who lost their final game? Their mothers and fathers sitting there misty-eyed with disbelief, their brothers lurking in the corner muttering after losing bets to Vegas. Left to women, NCGs would be boring, and certainly after limits-testing procrastination, spontaneous, almost inadvertent… during halftime… on the way to the refrigerator. And then there’s the frequency of failure: statistics tell us half of the NCG teams will lose, fail, finish second and last. A winning percentage like that’ll get you last place in the Big 12. 

But this ceremony… award ceremony… a fine accomplishment of chance, whereby an entourage made every carefully taken winner, from this day forward… truly… in sickness and in health, through financial fiascos, through midlife crises and passably attractive sales reps at trade shows in Tuscaloosa, through diminishing tolerance for annoyingness, through every difference, irreconcilable and otherwise, you will stay forever at the lower end of my totem pole, you and your forum friends as one, ‘til death does the forum fail. 

No, pick-'em award is life’s great ceremonial beginning, with its own attendant and highly appropriate symbolism. Fitting, for example, for this auspicious rite of passage, is where we find ourselves this day, the venue. Normally, I avoid clichés like the plague, wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, but here we are on a literal level playing field. That matters. That says something. And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all, electronic selves you forumites. Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same. And your computers at the ready… but for your name, exactly the same.

All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special, and neither am I. You are not special. You are not exceptional. You didn't choose the winning picks. Neither did I; the entourage won, and the entourage rules!

Contrary to what your toilet trophy suggests, your glowing final scores, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice 2Stater and your competitive CP, no matter how often your paternal-caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.

Yes, you’ve been left behind in this competition (AGAIN), cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have helped you, kissed you, prayed for your success (Preacher), fed you, wiped your mouth and bottom (Brosky), trained you, taught you, tutored you (Jamos), coached you as CNS might, listened to you (ad infinitum), counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been nudged by SuperCoach, cajoled by pmull, wheedled and implored by MD. You’ve been feted and fawned over (XBAMA), and called sweetie pie by Terrie. Yes, you have. And, certainly, we’ve watched our every game, all plays (hscoach), and seated every failure. You've heard of Coach Williams' failures (too often) and his revival, but none has apologized for failing to adequately predict his success. Absolutely, after every correct pick smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with jealousy at your every post on CRS. Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the leaders column! And now you’ve conquered the final list, despite being behind the winner… and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for me, the pride and joy of this fine forum, the first to emerge from that magnificent new contest of picks…

But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not. You lost.
The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even a genius can’t ignore. Every game…40 final bowls, that has to be thousands of yards gained and kicks made, fumbles lost, passes dropped, refs screwed up, give or take, and that’s just the neighborhood. Across the country no fewer than 3.2 thousand players participated from more than 300 schools. That’s 37,000 parents, girlfriends, and aunts… 7,000 coaches… 92,000 administrators and their secretaries… 340,000 swaggering jocks who lost and got immediately drunk… 2,185,967 sweaty jockstraps per season. And consider for a moment the bigger picture: your planet, I’ll remind you, is not the center of its solar system, your solar system is not the center of its galaxy, your galaxy is not the center of the universe. In fact, astrophysicists assure us the universe has no center; therefore, you cannot be it. Neither can Urban Meyer… which someone should tell him… although that ego is quite a phenomenon.

“But, Chech,” you cry, “Walt Whitman tells me I’m my own version of perfection! Epictetus tells me I have the spark of Zeus!” And I don’t disagree. So that makes 6.8 billion examples of perfection, 6.8 billion sparks of Zeus. You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another–which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it… Now it’s “So what does this get me?” As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans. It’s an epidemic — and in its way, not even dear old Bama is immune… where good is no longer good enough, where a second pacle is failure. And I hope you caught me when I said “one of the best.” I said “one of the best” so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition. But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can be only one best. You’re it or you’re not.  YOU'RE NOT! 

So, in conclusion, you’ve learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness. (Second is ice cream, eaten while fishing, on a Belizean beach… just an fyi) I also hope you’ve learned enough to recognize how little you know… how little you know now… at the moment… for today is just the beginning. It’s where you go from here that matters.  For I could win again ... and you could be left holding the totem (Ricky).

As we conclude this season, then, and before you scatter to the winds of forum-esque, I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance. Don’t bother with work or sports you don’t believe in any more than you would a spouse you’re not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on the wrong side of an Aub comparison. Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction and off-seasonality. Be worthy of your advantages. And recruiting (Jamos)... recruiting all the time… recruit as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect, as a fanatic, ... as the REC. Recruiting is as a nourishing staple of life. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are awards like this one, there are cessations, and you’ll be in no condition to enjoy the Natty tomorrow no matter how delightful the afternoon leading up to it.
My friends and forumites, I thank you.  "Hear, hear!"

Chech, only you could have written that speech.  

[cbbama99]

READY, all?   



I wish to thank members of the forum, mods, family, friends, my entourage, ladies and gentlemen (Brosky especially), for the privilege of speaking to you as you honor me for accomplishing this great feat.  I am honored and grateful. Thank you.

So here we are… at season's end… life’s great forward-looking moment.  Before I begin, let's review.  And don’t say, “What about The Big 10 or Pac 12?” They had their chances.  Other than conceding to a list of unreasonable demands, the championship game is just that. No stately, hey-everybody-look-at-me procession. No 2nd-pacle trophies. No identity-changing pronouncement. And can you imagine a television show dedicated to watching guys who lost their final game? Their mothers and fathers sitting there misty-eyed with disbelief, their brothers lurking in the corner muttering after losing bets to Vegas. Left to women, NCGs would be boring, and certainly after limits-testing procrastination, spontaneous, almost inadvertent… during halftime… on the way to the refrigerator. And then there’s the frequency of failure: statistics tell us half of the NCG teams will lose, fail, finish second and last. A winning percentage like that’ll get you last place in the Big 12. 

But this ceremony… award ceremony… a fine accomplishment of chance, whereby an entourage made every carefully taken winner, from this day forward… truly… in sickness and in health, through financial fiascos, through midlife crises and passably attractive sales reps at trade shows in Tuscaloosa, through diminishing tolerance for annoyingness, through every difference, irreconcilable and otherwise, you will stay forever at the lower end of my totem pole, you and your forum friends as one, ‘til death does the forum fail. 

No, pick-'em award is life’s great ceremonial beginning, with its own attendant and highly appropriate symbolism. Fitting, for example, for this auspicious rite of passage, is where we find ourselves this day, the venue. Normally, I avoid clichés like the plague, wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, but here we are on a literal level playing field. That matters. That says something. And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all, electronic selves you forumites. Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same. And your computers at the ready… but for your name, exactly the same.

All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special, and neither am I. You are not special. You are not exceptional. You didn't choose the winning picks. Neither did I; the entourage won, and the entourage rules!

Contrary to what your toilet trophy suggests, your glowing final scores, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice 2Stater and your competitive CP, no matter how often your paternal-caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.

Yes, you’ve been left behind in this competition (AGAIN), cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped. Yes, capable adults with other things to do have helped you, kissed you, prayed for your success (Preacher), fed you, wiped your mouth and bottom (Brosky), trained you, taught you, tutored you (Jamos), coached you as CNS might, listened to you (ad infinitum), counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again. You’ve been nudged by SuperCoach, cajoled by pmull, wheedled and implored by MD. You’ve been feted and fawned over (XBAMA), and called sweetie pie by Terrie. Yes, you have. And, certainly, we’ve watched our every game, all plays (hscoach), and seated every failure. You've heard of Coach Williams' failures (too often) and his revival, but none has apologized for failing to adequately predict his success. Absolutely, after every correct pick smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with jealousy at your every post on CRS. Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the leaders column! And now you’ve conquered the final list, despite being behind the winner… and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for me, the pride and joy of this fine forum, the first to emerge from that magnificent new contest of picks…

But do not get the idea you’re anything special. Because you’re not. You lost.
The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even a genius can’t ignore. Every game…40 final bowls, that has to be thousands of yards gained and kicks made, fumbles lost, passes dropped, refs screwed up, give or take, and that’s just the neighborhood. Across the country no fewer than 3.2 thousand players participated from more than 300 schools. That’s 37,000 parents, girlfriends, and aunts… 7,000 coaches… 92,000 administrators and their secretaries… 340,000 swaggering jocks who lost and got immediately drunk… 2,185,967 sweaty jockstraps per season. And consider for a moment the bigger picture: your planet, I’ll remind you, is not the center of its solar system, your solar system is not the center of its galaxy, your galaxy is not the center of the universe. In fact, astrophysicists assure us the universe has no center; therefore, you cannot be it. Neither can Urban Meyer… which someone should tell him… although that ego is quite a phenomenon.

“But, Chech,” you cry, “Walt Whitman tells me I’m my own version of perfection! Epictetus tells me I have the spark of Zeus!” And I don’t disagree. So that makes 6.8 billion examples of perfection, 6.8 billion sparks of Zeus. You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless. In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another–which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it… Now it’s “So what does this get me?” As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans. It’s an epidemic — and in its way, not even dear old Bama is immune… where good is no longer good enough, where a second pacle is failure. And I hope you caught me when I said “one of the best.” I said “one of the best” so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition. But the phrase defies logic. By definition there can be only one best. You’re it or you’re not.  YOU'RE NOT! 

So, in conclusion, you’ve learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness. (Second is ice cream, eaten while fishing, on a Belizean beach… just an fyi) I also hope you’ve learned enough to recognize how little you know… how little you know now… at the moment… for today is just the beginning. It’s where you go from here that matters.  For I could win again ... and you could be left holding the totem (Ricky).

As we conclude this season, then, and before you scatter to the winds of forum-esque, I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance. Don’t bother with work or sports you don’t believe in any more than you would a spouse you’re not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on the wrong side of an Aub comparison. Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction and off-seasonality. Be worthy of your advantages. And recruiting (Jamos)... recruiting all the time… recruit as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect, as a fanatic, ... as the REC. Recruiting is as a nourishing staple of life. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are awards like this one, there are cessations, and you’ll be in no condition to enjoy the Natty tomorrow no matter how delightful the afternoon leading up to it.
My friends and forumites, I thank you.  "Hear, hear!"

 

[ricky023]

Man I cam out 6th overal and 6th in the bowl games pickem. lol, RTR!

[2Stater]

Man I cam out 6th overal and 6th in the bowl games pickem. lol, RTR!

Hey, you're right, Preacher. I'm down here at the bottom of the totem poll, looking up. I see you! 

[ricky023]

Man I cam out 6th overal and 6th in the bowl games pickem. lol, RTR!

Hey, you're right, Preacher. I'm down here at the bottom of the totem poll, looking up. I see you! 

 , Hey 2 there is one thing since I've met you that I know for sure. My brother you would/will never have to look up at anybody. You are at the top of all the lists I could think of. God Bless my friend.  , RTR!

[Chechem]

e-cred for that speech and GOOD LORD I tried to give 3 e-crds but it kept saying ain't no way you can give that many at one time.  , RTR!

Thanks, Preacher.  It's one more than I deserve.
One back to you for support!

 

[Bandit]

Congrats Cheech

[Chechem]

Congrats Cheech

That's about how I feel.   

[XBAMA]

SOLID GOLD JERRY ! SOLID GOLD 

HERE ! HERE TO THE CHAMP ! 

[Chechem]

SOLID GOLD JERRY ! SOLID GOLD 

HERE ! HERE TO THE CHAMP ! 

 

[cbbama99]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yciX2meIkXI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yciX2meIkXI</a>

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