The sport of picking winners is a lot like hamburgers.

Both have European origins. Both can be enjoyed when done simple and quick or with freakish obsession and rigid self-discipline. Both are awesome.

If you want a quick tasty burger, check out Whataburger. If you want a fun football pick’em league, check out Yahoo. Just between the two of us... I nosh on a Yahoo from time to time.

Are you drawn to the exotic? You can find plenty of high stakes “Vic & Anthony’s Burger Friday” type leagues. Those are exquisitely delicious.

Just the mention of hamburgers in the blog title evoked a Pavlovian slobber, didn't it? Pickem-Football.com is that perfect soft and juicy patty with a crunchy exterior. We are the perfect combination of toppings. We are those toppings that you have loved since childhood along with the ones you've added as an aspiring foodie.

A truly great hamburger only needs a few things. Flavor. Texture. Moisture. And the ability to freestyle. We have that.

Rulebooks are great when they are used to keep your city safe or to keep Roger Clemons’ ego in check, but hamburgers don’t need but a few rules.

And why do hamburgers always end? Do you know what is better than a hamburger? How about FOUR delicious and unique hamburgers!

Don’t get me wrong – The recipe for Pickem-Football.com took years to perfect, and it is by no means perfect. However, after a decade in the game, we certainly don’t serve hockey pucks.

RECIPE:
Follow these steps for an incredibly tasty football season

The Meat:

We can debate in the comments, but a great burger must have some kind of meat. Here is our blend.

• 15, College Football Games per week. Picked against the spread. Odds provided for each game.
• 14-16 (all), Professional Football Games per week. Picked straight up (no spread).

Notes on seasoning: On each week’s card for NCAA and NFL games, we will have optional bonus question(s). While these won’t increase your Pick’em score, they are collected and used in the post season games. Bonus points are given to weekly winners, for pay your entry fee early, and for some other random stuff we make up along the way.


The Buns:

With so much emphasis on the meat, the bun seems to have become the forgotten ingredient. Our buns are so good that you could eat them by themselves. Good luck finding delicious buns at ESPN.

• 35 (all), NCAA FBS Bowl Games. Picked confidence pool style, straight up (no spread).
• 11 (all), NFL Playoff Games. Picked week-to-week against the spread, against the spread.

The Accoutrements:

Pickem-Football provides you with the intensely savory flavor and the seasonings, garnish, and condiments are all up to you. This is not your typical stuffy fancy-pants burger or generic corporate burger. We build our masterpiece through a blog, spreadsheets, and email. If you have a last minute submission, then we accept picks by text. We make this stuff up as we go along, folks. Each week will feature bonus opportunities, casual blog posts, smack talk, incomplete sentences. (example from 2011)


How to Order:

If you are ready to take a bite, get your fingers to the Official Registration Form. The cost is $25 for the entire season, which is a bargain considering that you'll be eating the Pick'em burger for five months. That's feeding yourself for something like $0.16 a day! I encourage you to check out the official recruitment blog post over at the league's website: Pickem-Football.com. Or, check out how I predicted that we'd be here together almost six months ago. Destiny.

Heck, if think you might have a hunger pang in the next five months, then I strongly suggest you take a bite of the registration link. Pickem-Football will give meaning to each of your weekends this football season. Fulfillment guaranteed.

I always target the football cookie.

Hello football fanatics, casual sports fans, drinking enthusiasts, and web crawling bots from porn sites! You look good. It's great to be home, and when I say home, I mean football season.

This is beautiful. I am really proud to get to speak with you today. Readers, we are at the dawning of the kickoff of the finest part of the twelvemonth. I understand how you feel. It is always darkest before the dawn, but the future is near, y'all. Today we stand up tall, knowing that, depending on when you are reading this message, football season is more or less a month away. I am proud to be writing this letter to you about our mutual standing.

I speak to you today as a football fan, as a guy that knows his way around a Google Docs spreadsheet, and as a Dad... a Dad who put TVs in all the other rooms in the house so the kids won't have an excuse to watch mine, among other things of course. I am just a casual, everyday fan with four TVs tuned to football programming in my living room every weekend. My parents, aunts, cousins, in-laws , sister, wife -- all dead to me when Northwestern kicks off against Purdue at 11:00 AM on a Saturday.

I recon I'm trying to let you know that I'm dedicated to the cause. At the end of the day, I will promise stuff, and nothing is more binding than a promise. Between you and me, I run the best, most funnest football season companion game you will find anywhere on this awesome, but slowly wilting Earth. I'm not just saying, but I'm literally just saying.

Some of you missed our plea last year, and this communication is to convince you to sign up and play with me. Truth be told, that is what I'm trying to do here. I assure you that joining the Pickem-Football 2011 family doesn't hurt in any way. Hey folks, it may even save your life! Unfortunately, not everyone understands the long term benefits of joining us at Pickem-Football. Some people don't even believe it will save their lives. No, some people choose to continue down their path of unenlightenment. Some of those people may even try to prove to me they are enlightened without Pickem-Football. Merriam-Webster.com defines enlightenment as "the act or means of enlightening." Need I say more?

I want to use another word. Solidarity. I looked it up and it means a unity based on common interests. Pickem-Football is like Solidarity+™. We are good people with varied interests that get together around a common game and make the World a better place. Pickem-Football is like a movement. A movement of genuine Solidarity+™.

I write this letter to you because I know in my heart that the Internet is where real integrity can be found. And courage. Football season is quite long, and it requires sacrifice and moral incorruptibility. Pledging yourself to Pickem-Football will protect you from other forces that may seek to leach away your free time, like YouTube related videos or the dishes. We will protect you from destruction, unless destruction is necessary for us to achieve our goals as a league, wherein you may be tasked with carrying out a significant portion of the destruction. This communication will be done discretely and not through your corporate email.

Make no mistake, readers. You are winning. You are a beautiful (I'm talking on the inside, nothing creepy), veracious, and courageous individual. Sure, we are chock full of yous here at Pickem-Football, but I firmly believe that you can't have too much of a good thing. (Except pancakes. Seriously, has anyone ever made it through a full stack?)
Now, I know exactly what you are asking yourself.

You: "I'm intimately familiar with myself, but I want to know more about this game."

Me: "First of all, that isn't a question. But second, I thought you would never ask."

Every week of the regular football season I will email and post on Pickem-Football.com a Google Docs form containing:

• 15 NCAA football games and odds (you pick against the spread)
  
• Every NFL football game (usu. 14-16 games, you pick straight up)
  
• For NCAA and NFL games, there will be some optional bonus questions. While these won't increase your Pick'em score, they are collected and used in the post season games. I dole out bonus points for weekly winners, people you pay their entry fee early, and some other random stuff I make up along the way.

We also continue on after the season with an NCAA Bowl Challenge Contest and an NFL Playoff Contest. Folks, that is over five months of football picking. Do you know what our government will waste in those five months? Trillions. Maybe. I really don't know. I do know that Pickem-Football will cost you a measly $25 (payable anytime throughout the season). My friends, nothing is more fiscally responsible than signing up for five months of meaningful life for around $0.16/day. (Meaningful life is not available at any price during the baseball season.)

You: "Wait -- what?"

Me: "I'll recap."

The Games:

1. NCAA Pick'em
   
   1. 15 games picked per week, my selections
      
   2. Players score one point per correct pick
      
   3. Games are picked against the spread (I provide the odds and they are fixed when the card is posted)
      
   4. Example card
      
   5. The player with the most points when the season is over wins
      
   6. Payout: 1^st Place 25% pot, 2^nd Place 10% of pot (Total = 35% pot)
      
2. NFL Pick'em
   1. Every NFL game is on the card, usually 14-16 games per week
      
   2. Players score one point per correct pick
      
   3. Games are picked straight up (no spread)
      
   4. Example card
      
   5. The player with the most points when the season is over wins
      
   6. Payout: 1^st Place 25% pot, 2^nd Place 10% of pot (Total = 35% pot)
      
3. NCAA Bowl Pick'em Challenge
   1. A confidence pool style game that includes every bowl game and incorporates your accumulated bonus points from the NCAA Pick'em contest
      
   2. The Bowl Pick'em Challenge card is emailed as a spreadsheet
      
   3. All picks are due before the bowl games begin
      
   4. The player with the most points wins
      
   5. Example (blog post)
      
   6. Payout: 1^st Place 15% pot
      
4. NFL Playoff Pick'em
   1. A Vegas style wagering format that includes all playoff games
      
   2. The NFL Playoff Pick'em cards are emailed in spreadsheet format weekly during the playoffs
      
   3. Points are "wagered"
      
   4. Picks are against the spread
      
   5. Example (blog post)
      
   6. Payout: 1^st Place 15% pot
      

100% of what comes in goes out to the people. What do you think of that, Teabaggers?

To wrap up. Courage. Solidarity. Destruction. Pancakes. America.

Joining starts here! Joining starts now! I guarantee the only thing you will regret is that you didn't just skip all the way to the bottom of this letter and CLICK THIS REGISTRATION LINK.

God bless you all, and God bless Football!

To those that have wondered about my absence from this blog and Twitter over the past week... Dudes, it has been a heck of a week... you don't even know, but you are about to.

This story begins last Saturday, October 30th, with me headed to Austin for the Texas Longhorn game against our heated rivals, the Baylor Bears of Waco, Texas. I had literally done everything a fan could possibly do to prepare for this epic battle and help my team emerge victorious. I took a shower. I put on clean boxers (not the lucky ones, because I threw those away after losing last year's BCS Championship game... true story). I prepped several pounds of chicken wings to be grilled at the tailgate. I packed the cooler with a fine selection of outdoor friendly craft beers, bottled waters, and orange Gatorade. I even stopped halfway between Houston and Austin to eat two kolaches from Hruskas (klobasneks for anyone that is Czech or pedantic). I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that the weather was absolutely perfect for this occasion.

As I arrived in Austin and began set up our tailgate, nearly 6 hours before kickoff, the scene was eerie. Seriously y'all, it was dead. I cursed our fair-weather fans, then made a joke about using the term fair-weather when the weather was in fact really awesome. I'm telling you, it must have been in the mid 60s with a breeze from the South. I kicked off the tailgate by quenching my game day thirst with a couple of fermented beverages. Being the responsible adult that I am, I chased the 2nd beer with a bottled water. I'm not saying I may have a drinking problem, but it's now 5.5 hours until game time. There is only one bad thing about having a drinking problem, and I think you all know what I'm getting at...... you gotta pee more than the average I-drink-only-when-I'm-thirsty guy. I head to the portable head, which is on the backside of the State parking garage where I tailgate. Seriously people, no one was tailgating at all.

Somehow, both porta potties were occupied. I should have used the roof of the garage, but now I've already committed to the bottom floor. It turns out this was a serendipitous one man bathroom line wait, because Bevo's trailer drove by with BEVO INSIDE!!! What a treat. Hook'em Horns! When I turn back around, both portas are now empty. I pick the one on the left, because the left side is the best side yo. But as I open the door, there is a chochy Baylor fan in there. I'm thinking, "Did that dude cut in front of me while I was taking camera phone shots of Bevo's truck? Jack hole." Get this… dude BROUGHT HIS COLD BEER INTO THE PISSER WITH HIM! Ever heard of condensation, fool!?

Friends, this is where the story gets weird. Sure, I told that Baylor fan that he and a hundred other people peed in his beer, but instead of saying, "You know, you are right. Thanks man"... the dude bit me! Seriously Bear fan, preschool called, they want their “violent” outbursts back. I quickly shut and locked the door, made my water, and wandered back toward the tailgate. However, I couldn't for the life of me remember where I parked my car. Did I mention that it was blazing hot outside? Seriously, it must have been like 150F outside with winds coming directly from hell. I felt terrible. Freaking portas, man. I'm just glad I didn't drink that funk like that Baylor tool.

I'm burning up and I must have really looked like death, because the few people I came across ran in fear. I should have been easily identified as a friendly, you know with my burnt orange on and everything. What gives? I'm going to be honest though... this is the part of the story where my memory has quite a few holes. First of all, I'm pretty sure I missed the game. It was hot. I remember that. Like, so hot everything looked gray and fuzzy. You know how things look when you are looking through the exhaust of an airplane engine? Like that. And gray. Even my skin seemed kind of gray. I also really wanted to bite someone. Wondering what to do next, I remember seeing this pedicab dude. I didn't even have to summon him. It was like he knew I needed a ride without me saying anything. This hippy pedicab dude really stank...... but he tasted DELICIOUS!

Now I've always heard that you are supposed to feed a cold and starve a fever, but it was really crazy how hungry this heat was making me. I borrowed the pedicab and used it make my way back to Houston. Whenever I felt especially weak, I stopped for a local snack. I basically ate my way through a reverse MS150, if you will. I know food blogs are all the rage, and while I'm no Aimless Chef, I did jot down some tasting notes along the way. Bastrop folks... pretty bland. La Grange... really gamey. Columbus... forgettable. Sealy... too salty. I know you guys aren't going to believe this, but eating all those folks left me with a terrible sweet tooth. No kidding. By the time I made it to Katy (weird aftertaste), it was a few days after Halloween. Aww yeah. It was candy time.

I hit up one of those 4000+ sqft suburban homes. You know the ones 40 miles outside of the city? Huge yard. Palatable dog. I knew this would be the kind of house that would have the good candy. You know, the stuff on the top of the candy hierarchy. I attacked their stash with military-like focus. The Snickers, Twix, and Reese's were all gone before I knew it. But my craving had not diminished. I moved on to the lower tier, but tasty stuff, like Smarties and Runts.

I was convinced that global warming was going to kill every single one of us before this fever took me out. What I'm saying is that it feels like the world is about to spontaneously combust. These people's A/C must not be working. Like I said, my memory is sketchy, but I remember cleaning out this house of their candy and then walking around and eating all decorative candy, like candy corn, out of dishes in various common areas. All that was left was the dregs of the candy society. The rejects. Licorice and those circus peanut things. Even my insatiable candy craving didn't want to have anything to do with the licorice, so I ate the circus peanuts.

What the! How are these legal to sell as food!? The situation left me with only two clear choices: 1.) Ride down the street to the neighbor’s house and borrow a little flesh to wash this taste out of my mouth or 2.) Die right there in the distant Houston suburb of Katy, TX. Despite not being thirsty in the human sense of the word, I decided to see if a beverage could hold me over for the few minutes it would take me to get to the neighbor's house.

Katy suburbanite fridge inventory time. Milk, ugh, past the expiration date. No thanks. OJ... Minute Maid? Heck no. Diet Coke. I don't think so… that stuff will kill you. And then I saw it. In the back. A sixer of Saint Arnold Divine Reserve 10. Apparently this iteration of DR10 is a Barley Wine, so I searched and found a snifter glass to decant the beer into. The aroma punched me in the face once and then once again. From what I remember, the jab was citrus and the right hook was floral. Kind of La Grange-y if memory serves me right. The beer tasted much like its aroma, jerking the taste buds around a bit before leaving an unfamiliar but nice hop aftertaste. The mouth feel was perfect for this occasion, since I didn't want anything heavy before I visited the neighbors for dinner. This beer has a lot of potential, but it was definitely young. I grabbed the rest of the sixer and placed it in my pedicab. I’m sure we are on the same page here, I too questioned the ability to age this beer properly with the weather being like 200F at the moment. But to my surprise, it felt pretty good outside. A little nippy even. The gray fogginess kind of passed and I felt pretty damned good. In fact, I skipped visiting the neighbors and hoofed it the rest of the way home in my pedicab. I felt human again.

And that's what I remember about the last week. Strange, I know, but I figured I'd leave you this quick note to let you guys know that I'm alright. I'm just glad I put on those clean boxers before I left for Austin.

That is me, fervently pulling levers, turning wheels,
flicking switches, and pushing buttons.

One of the men behind one of the curtains.
Readers, today I am going to let you in on a little secret. I've been leading multiple online lives. Is it misleading? Maybe. Is it a little creepy? Probably. Do I like asking softball questions to myself and then answering them in non-absolutes? Perhaps.

I absolutely believe that you can't have too many Blogger identities and Twitter handles. You probably aren't aware, but I have another thing going on that I want to come clean about today. 

I run a football pick'em league.

Football season is unquestionably the best time of the year. That means that you can't question it. But if I was forced to prove it, I would ask you to accept my invitation to join my pick'em league. This is no creative writing project. This is real. I've been doing this for a decade.

What it is:

1. NCAA Pick'em Contest – 15 games each week, picks are against the spread, ~14 weeks
   
2. NFL Pick'em Contest – All the NFL games each week (typically 14-16), picks are straight up, ~17 weeks
   
3. NCAA Bowl Challenge – Confidence pool style NCAA bowl game
   
4. NFL Playoff Challenge – Vegas style weekly wagers against the spread
   

The first two contests are good for about 18 weeks of game picking enjoyment. After that, you'll get an exciting few months of excitingly different post-season excitement for the low, low price of…

But wait, there is more.
This is not your typical stuffy office league or impersonal big box online league. I make this stuff up as I go along. Each week will feature bonus opportunities, casual blog posts, smack talk, incomplete sentences.

Still on the fence?
I just checked this year's Official Registration Form responses… and a baby is playing this year. That's right, a baby! I might also mention to you that one year the NCAA contest was won by a girl who didn't know she was picking the games against the spread, but that may make us all look like we aren't very good, and Crystal may take offense that I called her a girl and not a chica, or that I used her name… but whatever.

The cost is $25. I'm not a mathematician, and I don't feel like busting out a calculator, but that is probably somewhere around a dollar a week. I'm just saying that you can probably fish a buck a week out of a fountain somewhere or swipe it off of a Buddha at a Thai restaurant if you are really hard up. What I'm trying to tell you is that this Pick'em game is a bargain. 

So here is my promise to you:
I guarantee to deliver the most bestest football picking game kissed with randomness and sometimes on the spot rule changes than you will find anywhere on the internets. This is like the Waffle House of football pick'em games.

My guess is that if you haven't already clicked over to the Official Registration Form, you are racing around your screen with your mouse trying to find that link after reading the words "Waffle House." Let's hope that recruitment tactic is more effective than my explanation of pyramid schemes I sent out last year. 

This promotion is now over, but I encourage you to check out the official recruitment blog post over at the league's website: Pickem-Football.com. If you are ready to give meaning to each of your weekends this football season, summon up the courage to fill out the Official Registration Form. I promise this game will make watching football a whole lot more interesting. Guaranteed or my money back.

UPDATE: Hop right into the game by filling out the making your Week 1 picks and leaving your name and email in the form.

Countdown is a list of news items, videos, or just ruminations that involve imbibing or are just more entertaining with an adult beverage. After all, life is life, but talking about it with a drink makes it more interesting. Feel free to sound off on any of the topics in the comment section.

5) Yiiiiiiii-haaaaaw!!
The Academy of Country Music Awards aired last night. Artists like George Strait, Rascal Flatts, and Trace Adkins probably won awards for recording music that is decades behind musical trends with ridiculously exaggerated accents that was only marginally better than the other nominees. Woo! Congrats.

I saw that American Idol winner Carrie Underwood (who performed at the show in the Jabba the Hutt costume as seen on the right) won Entertainer of the Year and thanked the fans with this treat: "I've had a lot of good moments over the past four years. This one takes the cake. ... I never thought I'd be nominated, and I never thought I'd win. I don't know what to say. I've got nothing!" Really Carrie? You've sold like 10 million albums during that span and you haven't practiced a "thank you" for the "wow, that sounds like pop music" starved country music fans out there? And to the country music nation, Carrie won a TV show and she's your brightest star? Have you heard that Kellie Pickler chick? You have? Ain't she just the best little thing to come out of the Sonic Drive-In since those fried macaroni and cheese balls?

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad there is an "Academy of Country Music" and they hold their own award show. It just gives me hope that there may one day be an "Academy of Drinking Blogs" so we can pad our trophy cases here at The Ferm.

4) Now There is More in that Pour
Oregon is awesome... maybe so awesome that their lawmakers have enough time to draft up a bill to ensure the Oregon beer drinker gets a full 16 ounces when he orders a pint. Upon further review, it turns out the Honest Pint Bill movement is really about transparency in glassware and unfortunately violators won't be fined, jailed, or publicly humiliated.

I wonder if the non-regulation sized glassware exists intentionally in the bars serving them as a money saver or if this just points to the lack of appreciation and craft by the glass making industry. If it's the former, then expect the price for that pint to go up Oregonians. Your bar has been trying to stiff you, but remember to tip your waitstaff!

Personally, I wish I could drink in using the metric system. If my beer servings were in multiples of 10, after a long session I'd have a much easier time counting up my consumption...... or being able to brag about it the next day.

3) Poor at the Park
I just read that a draft beer at Minute Maid Park will now cost $7.50 during Houston Astros games. That is $0.25 more than last year and about $5.00 north of a reasonable price. You will NEVER see me pay $7.50 for a beer! Not a chance... mostly because it's that fizzy potty water being offered at that price point. It looks like I'll be dropping $8.00 for a ball park "premium" draft. All I'm saying is that I better get an honest pour! In related ballpark concession news, a Sheriff Blaylock's nacho now pays for an entire year of Carlos Lee's contract.

2) Why I Don't Work Out Anymore
An Australian study on the effects of drinking beer after training has revealed shocking results... it's not good for you. According to an article (I was too lazy to read the actual study) it could take 60-72 hours to recover after drinking beer. How much beer did they give the athletes during this study and where can I sign up for such a thing? On second thought, a three day hangover in a clinic is probably not an ideal situation. I hear this team of scientists is now looking into the effects of athletes throwing a shrimp on the barbie. Stay tuned, mates.

1) March Madness < January Sadness
Tonight is the NCAA Div 1 Basketball Championship, which marks the end of March/April Madness. The tourney is great for TV, great for radio, great for newspapers, and great for drinking. But as great as the 2-4 action packed days of excitement that March Madness hands us, are any of these tournament days as good as a single regular season Saturday in college football? Just the fact that there is a legitimate argument here makes a big statement about the power of college football. I pose the following question: Would a college football playoff (and stop right there all you playoff haters, I'm not taking about a 64 team playoff) ruin any of the regular season days? I can't see how it'll ruin it for the fans, and given the huge moneymaker the weaker product that is college basketball provides, why isn't "The Man" all over a playoff?

Say what you want about President Obama, but the man wants a playoff. Last time I checked, the White House > NCAA. Let's get this done. Now that is change I need.