A Farewell to Jimmy

As Kenny Rogers said, you gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away and know when to run. I took this information to heart the past weekend and rode my recent string of good luck into Sin City with my brother Jordan and my buddy Shithouse. (Don't look at me. He chose the nickname himself, but that's a story for another day. Let's just say that Kelly Slater had something to do with it.) None of us are big gamblers (read: none of us gamble at all), but because I had done so well in the first half of the Jimmy, I managed to talk them into putting down some money on the NCAA tournament. The way I saw it, whether we won or lost, it would be worth the money to watch the Sweet 16 in Vegas on huge monitors, sitting in comfy leather chairs with hundreds of other fans. So, I flew out to visit my brother in LA and we hopped in his truck, slipped on our sunglasses and headed east on Route 66.

Next stop, Caesars Palace.

On the way to Vegas we discussed the first games of the day: Texas vs. Stanford and Davidson vs. Wisconsin. I had a good feeling about Texas since they were playing in Houston, but I didn't know what to make of the other game. I picked Wisconsin to make it to the Elite Eight in the Jimmy, so my initial inclination was to go with the Badgers, but Jordan, who isn't the world's biggest sports fan, surprised me with his strong opinion. He said, "we HAVE to bet on Davidson." Apparently, on his way out the door, he randomly bumped into his buddy Harris. When Harris heard where we were going he gave Jordan three words of advice: "Bet. On. Davidson." No matter what I said, I couldn't convince Jordan that Davidson would lose. It wasn't happening. So, I decided to let it ride and go with the underdog. Viva Las Vegas.

Since we got a little bit of a late start (I assure you, our hangovers had NOTHING to do with it...) and were arriving after the start of the first games, I phoned Shithouse (it never gets old, does it?), who had arrived in Vegas a day earlier and had him put money on Texas and Davidson to win outright for us. He told us he'd try to get to Caesars early and grab some seats. With nothing left to do, Jordan and I turned on the radio, popped open the bag of beef jerky -- because really, what's a road trip without beef jerky? -- and began the home stretch. Vegas was so close we could taste it (and I must say, Vegas tastes suspiciously like beef jerky...)

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not a big gambler. It's never been my thing. I somewhat enjoy winning money, but I absolutely can't stand losing money. I could win $100 playing blackjack and kick myself the rest of the night for playing one last hand and losing $5. It's not rational. It's just my thing. I hate losing. Needless to say, listening to the first half of the two games on the radio as we sat in traffic heading to Caesars was one of the most agonizing experiences in my life. Texas clung to a thin lead, while Davidson was doing the impossible and keeping up with the heavily favored Badgers. Jordan and I were literally jumping up and down inside the truck, screaming at the top of our lungs, willing our teams to victory and scaring the people who, through their own misfortune, were stopped next to us in traffic. Mercifully, the traffic abated as we neared the casino and flew down the streets of Las Vegas Boulevard. Leaving tire tracks in my wake, I flew into the Caesars Palace parking garage. Jordan and I hit the ground at a full sprint and entered the casino floor.

There's nothing quite like entering a Vegas casino. The combination of the flashing lights, artificial oxygen, profuse amounts of alcohol and extraordinary mix of seedy locals, gawky tourists and impeccably styled high rollers makes it feel more like walking into the set of a bizarre seventies movie then a hotel lobby. The rhythmic clang of the slot machines and twisting maze of video poker machines lull you into a hypnotic trance. The only thing missing is David Bowie walking on the walls singing a creepy love ballad.

Today, however, the casino had a slightly different feel. There was distinct audible hum that hung in the air above the usual swirl of casino noise. The volume rose and fell in a seemingly random, almost organic pattern. As we slipped through the throngs of gamblers towards the sports book, the noise steadily increase in volume until we identified the cause of the commotion: hundreds of cheering people, crowded shoulder to shoulder with all eyes on two huge monitors playing both NCAA tournament games simultaneously while droves of cocktail waitresses mingled among the crowd dispersing alcoholic concoctions of all shapes and sizes (if you ever wanted to watch an NCAA tournament game, sipping on a 48 ounce margarita, you know where to go.). After a ten minute search, we managed to track down Shithouse and his girlfriend, who thrust Bud Lights into our open hands and proudly displayed the tickets for Texas and Davidson, both of which were leading. After exchanging the requisite chest bumps and awkward man-hugs, we searched for a place to sit but the only one open was behind a roped off section and marked VIP. Bolstered by a false sense of confidence from the current Texas and Davidson leads, two Bud Lights, aviator sunglasses and the post-chest-bump-adrenaline, I held open the velour rope for Jordan, Shithouse and his girlfriend and we grabbed a seat in the leather bound luxury of the VIP section. I'm of the school of thought that if you act like you own the place, people tend to assume that you do, so we kicked back in the high rollers lounge and enjoyed the action from the lap of luxury.

I know what you're thinking. Wow, Justin. What a string of luck. You're winning the Jimmy, you win the first two bets you ever placed and you stroll into VIP seating at the world's most famous sports book. What a day. And you'd be right. Only we weren't done yet.

After the first games wrapped up, we decided to place two more bets on Kansas and Memphis to cover the spread. Over the next three hours, we watched Kansas and Memphis roll to 20 and 30 point half time leads respectively and never looked back. Vegas didn't know what hit 'em.

I strode to the sports book counter, winning tickets in hand, with the swagger of Michael Jordan after he nailed the jumper over Byron Russell to win the NBA title. When I got to the front of the line, I slammed the tickets on the counter like Muhammad Ali towering over Sonny Liston. Then, my face took on the cool, collected sneer of Scarface as I gazed upon the grand total of my gambling opus:

$43.75

That's right. I placed four $10 bets. Technically, I placed the bets together with Jordan, so in truth, I placed four $5 bets. Real Bill Gates action. It may not have been a large chunk of change, but we strolled out of Caesars like millionaires. The best part, is that from then on, anytime we bought a drink, ordered food, or tipped our strippers (just kidding, mom), we said "that was the money from the games!" At the end of the night, we must have turned that forty three dollars into three hundred, but it never felt like we paid a dime.

Vivaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Las Vegas!

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. My string of good fortune ran out when North Carolina knocked off Louisville two nights later and I ended up settling for third in the Jimmy, my title dreams deferred. But don't you worry, JBors, I'll be back next year and I'll ride my wave of good luck all the way to the title.

You see, I may have fallen short in the Jimmy, but I made it out of Vegas right when my luck ran dry. Who's lucky now?

See you next year, everyone!

---

2008 Jimmy Final Awards

The Jesus Award: Shaun (WWTCD)

The Jesus award is presented to the participant who saved the Jimmy

I would like to extend a heartfelt debt of gratitude to Shaun Holaday for singlehandedly rescuing the Jimmy from the disastrous prospects of a victory by "autopick". Without Shaun's gutsy selection of Kansas as the eventual champions, the Jimmy would have likely been won by Juan, who selected two upsets (that's right, two) in his entire bracket. Hopefully, future participants will learn a valuable lesson from Shaun's bracket: It's better to be unfathomably lucky, then any good at picking basketball games.

Way to go, Shaun!

The Four Leaf Clover Award: Shaun (WWTCD)

The Four Leaf Clover award is presented to the participant who had a significant tournament run, despite picking the least amount of games right.

When I said "unfathomably lucky", I meant unfathomably lucky. Aside from the two participants who didn't fill out their brackets and the two participants who did not realize that the number next to the teams indicated their relative strength, Shaun picked less correct games then anyone else in the Jimmy. Yes, you heard that correctly. The eventual champion picked less correct games then every other competitive participant. This certainly brings up the question of whether we need to amend the scoring system to give more weight to picking many games correctly versus just picking the champion, however, that does nothing to take away Shaun's victory (tarnish? sure. take away, sorry guys.)

(For the record this has nothing to do with bitterness over finishing third after picking the most games correctly. Noooooooooooooooooooooooo, nothing at all...)

The Bridesmaid Award: Deanna (DZaster)

The Bridesmaid award is presented to the tournament's runner-up.

I suppose I should call this "The Disciple Award", since Deanna would have ended up winning and saving the tournament if Shaun did not complete his miraculous comeback, but either way, I would like to give a far overdue congratulations to Deanna for her impressive tournament finish. In fact, this is the second year in a row that she submitted a nearly identical bracket to my own and ended up beating me because of one game. Next year I'm going to have to randomly change a few games just to throw Deanna off my tracks.

(Deanna, in case you're wondering, I'm picking all the #1 seeds to lose in the first round next year. Trust me...)

The No-Seriously-I'm-not-Bitter Award: Justin (The Almighty J)

The No-Seriously-I'm-not-Bitter-Award is presented to the person who picked the most games correctly, but ultimately lost the pool.

Stupid weighted scoring system...

The Whatever Helps you Sleep at Night Award: Eric (winterFrostGum)

The Whatever Helps you Sleep at Night Award is presented to the participant who avoided finishing in last place due to two people not filling out their brackets, one person not realizing the numbers by teams names indicated their rankings and one person picking Sienna to win the tournament because "Sienna is the greatest city in Tuscany!".

Due in large part to Georgetown's early exit and Clemson's inability to make it out of their first game, Eric wound up selecting only five of the fifteen games in the Midwest region correctly. For the record, this is only one game more then the two participants who did not understand the correlation between a teams seeding and their ability to play basketball. Similarly, this is only five games more then the participants who did not fill out a bracket. However, before I single Eric out, it is important to note that he had serious competition for the award. He managed to narrowly hold off Mike (pitt is it.) and Trenton (UCLA! Fight! Fight! Fight!) by 1 and 2 points respectively to secure the award.

The best part is that I tried to find one game that could have gone a different way and changed the outcome, but I couldn't. They all missed so many games (Clemson over Kansas, Stanford over Texas, Tenn over Louis, GTown in Final Four, Georgia over Xavier) that it was impossible to narrow it down to just one. A truly admirable effort by all parties.

The End Justifies the Means Award: Dad (Big3JDaddy)

The End Justifies the Means Award is presented to the participant who's early mistakes didn't end up costing him.

At the beginning of the tournament, Dad inadvertently did not enter his picks for the championship games. Heading in to the Final Four, this looked like a serious dilemma because both of his participants were playing in semi-final games. In a funny twist of fate (well, funny at least to the half of the league that didn't pick a UNC/UCLA final game), both UCLA and North Carolina lost their Final Four match ups and their omission ended up not affecting Dad's bracket at all.

But, I'm sure if you ask Dad now, he'll say he had Kansas over Memphis the whole time.

The Think Outside the Box Award: Anyone without a UNC/UCLA Championship pick

The Think Outside the Box Award is presented to all participants who did not select a championship game of UCLA vs. North Carolina.

Speaking of UNC/UCLA, I would like to issue kudos to all the participants who did NOT pick a final match up of UCLA versus North Carolina, because exactly half of the league participants submitted this championship game that was not to be. Further kudos to Jenn (WINNAH!!!!!) for being the only person to put neither UNC or UCLA in the final game, though I'm not sure Sienna vs. Texas turned out much better.

The At Least I Didn't Pick a UCLA / North Carolina Championship Award: Chris (BOOTLEG)

The A.L.I.D.P.A.UCLA.UNC.C.A Award is presented to the participant who finished in the top half of the bracket without picking UCLA or North Carolina to win the championship.

Congratulations to Chris for managing to finish in the top half of the final standings without picking a UNC/UCLA Championship game or Kansas. A lesser man would have rolled over when their championship pick lost in the second round (may I suggest that no one mention Stephen Curry while Chris is in earshot...), but Chris battled back and can proudly claim a spot at the big kids table. He may not have won, but he certainly lost with pride.

The Get What You Deserve Award: Juan (Juan's Bracket), Sandy (ArtStar) tie

The Get What You Deserve Award is awarded to the participant(s) who picked primarily favorites, yet did not win the tournament

I suppose one could (or in Juan's case, did) make the case that picking all number one seeds to make it to the Final Four took guts, since it had never happened before, so I won't open that Pandora's box. Furthermore, it's tough to mock anyone for picking that way since it...well...turned out to be the correct pick. So, before I get to the real issue at hand, I want to congratulate Juan and Sandy for picking all four teams in the Final Four.

The real issue, is that Sandy and Juan's lack of creativity clearly angered the basketball gods. They may have been able to appease the basketball God's with an all favorites Final Four since it had never happened, however, they

The Don't Even Have Bragging Rights Award: Jason (JD Fly)

The Don't Even Have Bragging Rights Award goes to the participant who did not win the tournament and, to further the sting, lost to his brother.

I'll try to be the bigger man here but… HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

The Division II Award: Tori (TrickyPix)

The Division II Award is awarded to the participant who won the battle of the people who didn't know what the numbers next to the teams meant.

In a race that turned out to be surprisingly close, Tori narrowly edged Jenn for the DII title when Memphis knocked off Texas in the Elite Eight.

You want to know what's really scary? If UCLA had won the championship, Tori would have actually tied someone else. I'm not sure if you can recover from that one. That might be a career ender.

(For the sake of the participant in question, I have left their name out. I will only say that it rhymes with Beric.)

The What-If Award: Ryan (RDUB)

The What-If Award is awarded to the participant who could have won the entire tournament their Final Four pick hadn't been eliminated on the first day of the tournament.

There's nothing quite like watching your championship dreams end on the first day of the tournament. You spend three days pouring over stats, listening to pundits debate about this year's Cinderellas, and figuring out which 12 seed will knock off the 5 seed only to watch your bracket go up in flames two hours after tip-off of the first games. Worse yet, to watch the team you picked to get the championship game, not just lose, but get eviscerated by a lower seed.

But, fear not Ryan. The tournament may have been tough, but I'm sure you would have traded a potential title for the coveted What-If Award, anyway.

The AYSO Trophy Award: Kolsky (thatiswhytheysendmeiamexpert), Hayes (Bruin Blue)

The AYSO Trophy Award goes to the participants who failed to distinguish themselves in any notable way, but still receive an award (along with orange slices, a mini bag of Doritos and a Capri-Sun).

Because, here in the JBorhood, we're all winners.

Aloha everyone and see you next year. Thanks for making this the best Jimmy, yet!