HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
Admit it. You thought
I was gone, didn’t you? You probably
assumed that after a humiliating, soul-crushing defeat, the Chode Picks were
going to fade away like the Bears’ Super Bowl dreams or my own hopes of
finishing with a decent GPA in second year of med school. WRONG.
I’m back, and ready to rock you with a kick-ass final 2013-2014 version
of your favorite irrelevant sports blog.
It’s currently January 8th in Madison, and that means I’ve
spent nearly three glorious weeks neglecting my duties as writer, editor and
publisher of the Chode Picks. So it’s
only fair that I try in vain to make up for it by writing six or seven pages of
bullshit to send you all into the football offseason. But before we get to sports, time to update
you all on what kept me away for so long.
More specifically, winter break.
You see, after spending the first week of the holiday licking my wounds
from the harshest ass-beating I’ve ever received from UW, I spent the end of
December and the beginning of January on an amazing adventure that took me to
almost every corner of North America. I
traveled from the greatest city in the world to the most depressing part of the
third world and back again. So here’s
where I’ve been spending my time for the past month:
Madison, Wisconsin
Menomonie, Wisconsin
Waukesha, Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Atlanta, Georgia
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Miami, Florida
Cozumel, Mexico
Belize City, Belize
Isla Roatan, Honduras
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
Miami, Florida
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Appleton, Wisconsin
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Appleton, Wisconsin
And finally, back to the center of the known universe,
Madison, Wisconsin.
Somewhere along my travels, I realized two things. First was how lucky I am to grow up in a
rich, civilized country, no matter how damn cold it is here. Second was how even more lucky I am to have a
small audience to share my experience with.
So allow me a moment here to let you know what the best part of my
cross-continental adventure was…
GREEN BAY PACKERS (7-7-1) at CHICAGO BEARS (8-7-0)
HAAAA!!!!! HAHAHAHA!!!
Stupid Chicago bastards. Did you
really think you had a chance at beating the AARON RODGERS-led Green Bay
Packers in a fair, balanced game of football??
Well THINK AGAIN, DICKHEADS!! NOT
IF ROCKET-ARM AARON AND RANDALL COBB HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT! But hey, maybe if you catch the next flight
to Africa you can steal a “Chicago Bears NFC North Champions” t-shirt from some
homeless Kenyan kid to make yourself feel better. And by the way, I’d like to congratulate Jay
Cutler on signing a seven-year deal with Green Bay this week. Of course, this new contract requires him to
wear a Bears jersey and throw interceptions in December. Keep it up Jay and you might just end up
getting your jersey retired at Lambeau Field.
Also, congratulations to the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions on
firing their head coaches after failing to finish above .500 and conceding the
division title to the Green and Gold for the third season in a row. As long as Cutler is in charge in Chicago,
Rick Spielman is in charge in Minnesota and the Ford family is in charge in
Detroit, our stranglehold over the NFL’s most storied division remains intact.
GREEN BAY by 5
Unfortunately, a week after that glorious victory…
SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (12-4) at GREEN BAY PACKERS (8-7-1)
I won’t torture you by recollecting the game that knocked
our beloved Packers out of the playoffs a few days ago. We all saw what happened, and honestly as
soon as the 49ers got the ball with the game tied and more than two minutes
left in the game, I knew we were fucked.
The truth is our defense wasn’t good enough to win a Super Bowl this
season anyways, so it’s probably better to lose in the wildcard than to win a
couple games and get our hearts ripped out by Seattle in the NFC Championship. But damn, it would have been awesome to knock
Jim Harbaugh and his army of douchebags out of the playoffs. Next year.
By the way, I was at the game.
And yes, it was every bit as cold as it looked on TV. I wore two pairs of gloves and my fingers were
still freezing. And considering I was in
the Cayman Islands three days earlier, it was a pretty brutal experience. Tailgating before the game, I quickly learned
that if it took me more than 3 minutes to finish a beer, the bottom would
freeze and become impossible to drink.
All in all though, I’m glad I went.
It’s not every day you get the chance to go to an NFL playoff game,
especially one of the coldest games in playoff history.
But now that the season is over, it’s time to turn to the
next step in our pursuit of a 14th NFL title: the draft. I think it’s fair to say that our defense has
a couple of holes in it, most notably at safety and linebacker. Unfortunately, Ha’Sean Clinton-Dix isn’t falling
past the Bears after all of Chicago watched Randall Cobb run right past Chris
Conte to win the division two weeks ago.
So we’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope Ted Thompson works his
magic and picks out a stud linebacker with the 21st selection. Or maybe a tight end, assuming that
Jermichael Finley wants to avoid eating his meals through a nasogastric tube
for the rest of his life. Regardless,
there’s one thing we can all take solace in as Packer fans: no matter which
quarterback the Vikings take with the eighth pick, it will be the wrong one.
SAN FRANCISCO by… ah, fuck it. Go Seahawks.
Let’s hit one more football game before I call it a season,
shall we?
CAPITAL ONE BOWL: #19 WISCONSIN BADGERS (9-3) vs #9 SOUTH
CAROLINA GAMECOCKS (10-2)
I was wrong. No, not
about the Badgers losing our 4th bowl game in a row. I was wrong to wish that Joel Stave would get
hurt so Curt Phillips could come in to save the season. All season, I’ve been saying that I couldn’t
possibly imagine how the 6th-year senior Phillips could be any less
accurate than Joel. Well ladies and
gentlemen, I stand corrected. Let’s all
cross our fingers and hope that Bart Houston, DJ Gillins, Connor Senger, Thad
Armstrong or Tanner McEvoy will win the starting job next fall. Actually, not Tanner McEvoy. He was surprisingly good at safety this
year. But regardless of who lines up
under center next season, they’ll at least have another kick-ass running game
to fall back on with the three-headed beast of Corey Clement, Melvin Gordon and
Vonte Jackson (Remember that last name.
He hasn’t played a single snap yet, but next September more than a few
sportswriters are going to be losing their shit about how talented he is). And as long as we’re on the Badgers, I’d like
to send off the current bunch of seniors by telling you who’s going to make it
in the NFL.
BADGER PLAYERS WHO WILL BE DRAFTED: Jared Abbrederis, Chris
Borland, James White, Jacob Pedersen, and possibly Dezmen Southward.
BADGER PLAYERS WHO WON’T BE DRAFTED AND WILL BE EXTREMELY
CONFUSED ABOUT WHY NOT: Tyler Dippel,
Jeff Duckworth.
Also, Beau Allen and Ryan Groy will probably get a tryout
somewhere.
Anyways, that’s enough about the depressing end of the
football season. Time to pack it up,
pack it in and root for Russell Wilson to win Super Bowl MVP. Also, thanks to Florida State on denying the
SEC another BCS championship. I don’t
care if Jameis Winston is possibly the dumbest person in an American college,
he saved us from another year of listening to the deep south gloat about how
awesome their “student athletes” are.
Let’s get to basketball.
#4 WISCONSIN BADGERS (16-0) vs REST OF THE NCAA (5348-5378)
Yeah, that’s right. I
took the time to add up the cumulative records of every Division 1 NCAA
basketball team not named “Wisconsin”.
And oddly enough, the rest of the country is fifteen games under .500 at
the halfway point of the regular season.
I wonder why. Remember when I
predicted the Badgers would start 16-0 and you all thought I was a moron? Well, after tonight’s dismantling of #23
Illinois in the Kohl Center, Bo Ryan’s crew hit that mark, making me look like Nostradamus
in the process. Special thanks goes out
to Iowa coach Fran McCaffery for losing his mind, getting ejected and letting
us pull away from the Hawkeyes in Sunday’s game. And since I apparently can’t jinx this team,
I’m gonna go ahead and GUARANTEE that the Badgers will run their record to at
least 21-0 before they suffer their first defeat. Also, I think we’ll win the Big Ten, mainly
because we only play Ohio State and Michigan State once each and both of those
games are at home. Better make some room
in that trophy case, Bo.
WISCONSIN by 15
One last note on college basketball: last week I sent an
email to Mark Titus at ESPN/Grantland, explaining why he’s a damn fool for not
including Frank Kaminsky in his Wooden Award watch list, hoping to make his
mailbag article. Unfortunately, being a
huge Ohio State homer, he ignored me. So
I’d appreciate it if those of you with Twitter accounts would do one of two
things this week: tweet @clubtrillion a link to my blog
(chodepicks.blogspot.com) or tell him why Frank is the best player in the Big
Ten instead. 20 Chode Points for anyone
who does. Thanks in advance.
MIAMI HEAT (27-8) vs HISTORY (undefeated)
Well, after the Bulls traded away their best remaining
player and cut Andrew Bynum, not much stands in the way of LeBron’s first three-peat
this June. You can try to pretend that
Bynum isn’t going to sign with the Heat in a week or so, but let’s be honest:
this is the kind of deal Pat Riley was born to make. That’ll give Miami the player they need to
neutralize Roy Hibbert and sail past Indiana to another championship. Also, I need to take this moment to announce
that I probably won’t be writing for the NBA playoffs this year. I’m sorry, but the playoffs fall squarely in
the one-month time period I have to study for board exams this summer, and this
one exam determines what kind of doctor I get to be for the next three or four
decades. After six years of neglecting
my academic life for the good of the Chode Picks, I’m gonna cut myself some
slack. But speaking of school, yesterday
I found out I got the first A of my medical school career. WHOOOOO!!! SUCK ON THAT, NERDS!! Good God, I miss undergrad.
MIAMI in six
Chode Points update!
Since this is the last edition of the season, I need to remind you all
that whoever finishes in first gets either a six-pack of nice beer, a case of
shitty beer, or a shot of your choosing two weeks from now. And since six of you correctly told me why
Penn State is still on NCAA probation (hint: it rhymes with “rape”), you all
get five extra points. Unfortunately,
none of you were ballsy enough to slap a Bears fan in the face, so those points
went unclaimed. However, one person was
able to successfully defeat me in Mario Kart and earned himself 40 points this
week (even though it was total bullshit because I got hit with two blue shells
on the last lap). So congratulations,
Anooj Kothari, you’re right in the middle of the race.
CURRENT STANDINGS:
Sam MacDonald: 80 pts
Dan Jensen and Cody Stanton: 50 pts
Nick Miceli, Nate Mocadlo and Zach Niemayer: 45 pts
Anooj Kothari: 40 pts
Ben King: 35 pts
Ryan Bade and Bianca Miceli: 30 pts
Dana Duncan: 20 pts
Megan, Andy, Eric and Dustin: 10 pts
I’ve decided to leave the competition open for exactly two
weeks from the time of the posting of this edition, so for those of you who
aren’t good at math (Minnesota grads), that means if you somehow beat me at
both Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros, you could conceivably come from nowhere
to win with 90 points. Good luck with
that. Also, I’ll offer one final
challenge for 25 points: shotgun or beer-bong an entire Four Loko. Ten extra points if it’s of the original
recipe variety (hint: I have one left in Madison). Post below if you’re man (or woman) enough to
do it. No cheating, please.
By the way, I owe a big thank you to the one person in the
world that’s able to deal with my drunk, obnoxious, arrogant self for two weeks
at a time. You know who you are.
Whew. Time to call it
a season on the Chode Picks. I want to
thank each and every one of you for sticking with me. I hope you enjoyed reading the Picks as much
as I did living them. And I haven’t
decided yet if I’m coming back next fall, so any advice in either direction would
be nice. I sincerely hope this isn’t the
very last edition of the Chode Picks, but if it is, it’s been one hell of a
ride. God bless you all.
- Chode Out.
