Anatomy of a Genius

17 weeks ago I made my first pick in a suicide pool I entered for the 2007 NFL Season. I remember it like it was yesterday. I took Seattle at home against Tampa Bay. In hindsight, this was the dumbest pick I made all year. I do not remember my logic at the time other than trying to avoid burning any gimme teams. It was not like this was Seattle's easiest game on the schedule but I used them either way.

Since making this decision, I have made 16 other correct ones and now stand at the top. 850 people attempted to do the same and failed, miserably. (There were actually 4 others who went the distance but for the sake of argument we'll assume I was alone.) I have never really won anything like this before, at least not anything with any serious money at stake. Who knows if I will ever reach this point again, so allow me to gloat a while.

The last thing I want to do is make this seem like it was a tougher feat than it really was. I'll be totally honest with you, it was pretty easy. I had no strategy other than trying to avoid road teams. The goal every week was to keep it simple. The people who lost out usually did so by trying to be too sexy with their picks. For me, it was look at the schedule, find the most obvious game and take it. The picks were straight up, there were no spreads involved so there is really no excuse for making dumb picks. Here are some real stupid picks I saw along the way -

• Week 1 - Jacksonville vs Tennessee. Cost 86 people dearly.
• Week 2 - Cleveland at Cincinnati. So many better games on the schedule. It was week 2, not 14. Not a smart pick and another 80 found out the hard way.
• Week 10 - New Orleans vs St Louis. After nine weeks, you're telling me the best you could do was a sporadic Saints teams? Chicago or Buffalo would have been fine choices.
• Week 12 - Arizona vs San Fran. Are you really going to stake your hopes to an NFC West teams? This cost 30 people who were so close to the prize.

Why would anybody make those picks? If you want to make the argument that you were trying to get some questionable teams out of the way early (Jax in week 1 or Cincy in week 2) I can kind of see that but it all goes back to getting too cute. Some advice to you amateurs - never look more than a week down the line. You have to win today to play tomorrow, use some common sense.

Instead of berating the picks of others, I guess I will share a little bit of perfection with you. Below are my picks, all 17 of them. Scan the list, admire its simplicity and as a result, its genius. Oh and please don't tell the IRS.

• Seattle over Tampa Bay
• Denver over Oakland
• Pittsburgh over San Fran
• Dallas over St Louis
• New England over Cleveland
• San Diego over Oakland
• New Orleans over Atlanta
• NY Giants over Miami
• Washington over NY Jets
• Buffalo over Miami
• Philadelphia over Miami
• Indy over Atlanta
• Minnesota over Detroit
• Green Bay over Oakland
• Tampa Bay over Atlanta
• Jacksonville over Oakland
• Cleveland over San Fran