BOOKIE CHALLENGE AWARDS PAGE
(Thru 12th Annual competition)

The Challenge's Rudy Award is the second highest award a Bookie Challenge participant can be bestowed with, ranking only behind the competition's MVP award for its meritorious stature. Any real football fan, regardless if he's a pundit of college football or pro football, knows the story of Rudy Ruettiger. Standing at only 5'6" tall, Rudy had an inexplicable and impatient desire to play varsity football for the Fightin' Irish of Notre Dame. But hell, if the truth be told, Quasimodo--aka the Hunchback of Notre Dame--had a better chance than Rudy to meander past Touchdown Jesus on a Saturday afternoon, set foot on the gridiron field of Notre Dame Stadium, and play in a collegiate game for the Fightin' Irish. Yet, on November 8, 1975, in Notre Dame's last game of the season against Georgia Tech, which was also Rudy's last chance to see his dream come to fruition, Rudy did the improbable and played in the final three plays of the game. In a small coincidence, on the last play of the game Rudy sacked Rudy, to mean Georgia Tech's quarterback at the time, Rudy Allen. To be sure, Rudy being carted off the field on the shoulders of his teammates as he was being showered by the chants of "Rudy! Rudy! Rudy!" was the stuff of legend. It was only the second time in Notre Dame history that a player was carried off the field in such a manner.

But to get to that final game in 1975, Rudy had to overcome a seemingly insuperable series of disappointments and failures. He was initially declined entry into Notre Dame because of his poor grades, so he had no other option but to enroll at Holy Cross instead, where sadly he came to find out he was dyslexic. Nevertheless, Rudy refused to give up on his dream, and after three rejections by Notre Dame, after studying as hard as humanly possible, he was finally accepted into the prestigious university on his fourth attempt to become part of the college's student body. He then joined the Fightin' Irish football team as a walk-on, but was quickly relegated to the scout team, which in essence meant he was a "tackling dummy" for the varsity team during its practices. The rest of Rudy's story is history, and it has already been touched upon. As it pertains to the Bookie Challenge, however, to be awarded the Rudy Award is to mean a participant left it all out there, never quit, never let the vicissitudes of a handicapping season dispirit him. No, a Rudy Award winner will have none of it. To win the Rudy Award means a Challenge handicapper overcame some handicapping failures, stayed the course, and at the end of a handicapping season he had either seriously challenged to win an overall Bookie Challenge championship or had persevered to win one.

Leave it to the Bookie Challenge to incorporate the terminology of Star Trek into its competition's vernacular, specifically the words Gold Pressed Latinum. To break it down for those non-Trekkies out there, Gold Pressed Latinum is the most valuable form of currency used in Star Trek's fictional universe. In of itself, Latinum is a very rare and liquid-like substance, silver in color, and it is extremely valuable and highly prized because it is one of the few materials in the Star Trek universe that cannot be replicated. After it is mined, Latinum is then suspended within a gold container. The element gold is used as the container to encase the liquid Latinum only because of its non-reactive nature, for gold in the Star Trek universe is worthless due to the reason that it can be replicated. The final product after the manufacturing process runs its course is called Gold Pressed Latinum--the stuff that the Ferengi race adores! The Ferengi are a fictional extraterrestrial species from the Star Trek universe. They're ugly little fuckers whose smallish physical stature is overshadowed by huge ears. They're also a greedy, unscrupulous, and conniving lot who live and die for Gold Pressed Latinum.

The Ferengi follow a set of 286 greed-based guidelines called the Rules of Acquisition, and adhere to its dogmas as if it were a bible. Indeed, the Ferengi's sole purpose in life is to swindle their way to a fortune, then spend it on a lavishly indulgent lifestyle, and subsequently die rich none the worse for wear. Contrarily, the Ferengi's worst fear is to die broke and spend a condemned afterlife in their so-called hell, the "Vault of Eternal Destitution." Of course, we "hu-mons" in the Bookie Challenge are in no way as unethically motivated to separate our fellow man from his hard-earned Latinum as are the Ferengi. Nevertheless, every Challenge participant who puts up 40 bars of Gold Pressed Latinum on the line every Challenge season, like the Ferengi, do have a little lust for acquisition, namely to pocket the annual Latinum jackpot, or at the very least, to get a share of the coveted jackpot. Although the members of the Challenge field don't subscribe to the 286 Rules of Acquisition, there are two rules from the Ferengi's doctrine that a Challenge participant must fully grasp if he intends to snare a share of the Latinum jackpot: Rule #9, "opportunity plus instinct equals profit"; and rule #191, "let others keep their reputation. You keep their money." That's it, that's all there is to it. When it comes down to winning shares of the Gold Pressed Latinum jackpot, a Bookie Challenge handicapper must never forget he has a dog in the fight and he must always--ALWAYS!--keep his eyes on the prize if he's going to cash in at the end of a Bookie Challenge competition. As the Ferengi saying goes, "there's no prettier sight in all the universe than a pile of Gold Pressed Latinum."

The Swami Award is one of two automatic awards that are dished out annually by the Bookie Challenge competition, with the other being the Ferengi Award. To be bestowed with the Swami Award is special because it means the handicapper who receives the accolade had, statiscally, one hell of a season. For the winner, it's a sweet feeling to know he outperformed his peers, bar none, when it came to amassing the best handicapping numbers for one season. Shoot, it's hard to beat the Vegas Crocodiles on any given Sunday, hard to pick one freaking winner each week, much less a slew of them from week to week. But that's exactly what the Swami Award winner has done, beat the NFL pointspreads on a consistent basis, all year long. Chris Berman, the real-life Swami, would best describe the successful regular-season-long journey of the competition's eventual Swami Award winner as follows:

"He could...go...all...the...way!"

Not for nothing, but as it concerns sporting the league's top best-bet record, that's what the Swami Award winner winds up doing, "going all the way" and producing the best won-loss record for the entire season, to mean both regular season and playoffs combined. Now, whether such a spectacular handicapping campaign led to an overall Bookie Challenge championship, or the pocketing of a Latinum jackpot, that's an entirely different story. Regardless, if for only one season, the Swami Award winner can do some meaningful chest-thumping and revel in the fact that he's one of the league's prominent handicappers. If the truth be told, Swami Award winners from the Bookie Challenge competition, on average, beat the Vegas odds at a 60-percent clip or higher, and that's some serious handicapping, good enough to make the real-life Vegas Crocodiles shed, well, some big-time crocodile tears. One thing is for certain as it pertains to the handicapper who corrals the Swami Award, unlike most of his peers in the competition, he managed to keep his handicapping rumblin', bumblin', and stumblin' to a minimum, as evident by his stellar handicapping repertoire.

Bookie Challenge rookies are always welcomed with open arms by the veterans of the Bookie Challenge competition--ahem. Yes sir, if they're fortunate enough, rookies might even receive a few posts from a few of the veterans wishing them "good luck." Hell, some of the veterans might go as far as to post some silly stuff, for example, how glad they are to see the newcomers join the competition. But behind the welcome-wagon pleasantries is the real reason the veterans of the competition are happy to see some greenhorns enter the world of the Bookie Challenge, and that reason is Gold Pressed Latinum, as in the greenhorns will boost the overall Gold Pressed Latinum jackpot. Otherwise, veterans don't give a shit about any rookies, not really. Veterans, instead of placing a welcome mat at the doorstep of their Bookie Challenge house for some damn rookies, would rather suspend a grand panio above that threshold before them greenhorns come a knockin'. And if it were not for the fact that those damn rookies have brought along 30 bars of Latinum, most veterans would just as well cut that grand piano loose in a heartbeat than warmly greet some handicapper wannabes into their contest by showering them with a bunch of lying-ass hello's. Generally, rookies are nothing but a group of inexperienced schmoes who the veterans of the competition laugh at when the greenhorns screw up their picks. The veterans laugh because they know the rookies have no clue and don't have any idea what they've gotten themselves into. So, just to keep up the appearance that it cares, and in order to keep those rookies' interest, keep them from bailing from the competition after a week or so from the start of the regular season, the Bookie Challenge dangles a carrot stick in front of those handicapping wannabes. That carrot stick is the Rookie of the Year Award. The way the Bookie Challenge figures it, if they can have the rookies compete against one another, there's a good chance that at least one or two of them will get addicted to the Bookie Challenge and eventually keep coming back for future competitions, but more importantly, keep coming back with their Gold Pressed Latinum bars in tow. Now, to be frank, a rookie can automatically gain the veterans' respect right off the bat if the greenhorn knocks down winners, a lot of winners, which is sure to get the attention of the veterans, because the last thing a vet wants to happen is to lose an advantageous playoff spot to a greenhorn son-of-a-bitch who outhandicapped him. And it has happened before. No lie, once in a blue moon, a rookie or two burst on to the Challenge scene with handicapping guns blazing, and although none have a prayer in hell to win an overall championship, at least one of them will win, for what it's worth, the Rookie of the Year Award. Well, if anything, it's a start.

The awardee of the league's Comeback Handicapper of the Year Award will no doubt embrace the award with a bittersweet ambivalence. On the one hand, he'll love being bestowed the award because he knows he had a decent handicapping season, a noteworthy one at the very least. On the other hand, he also knows that claiming the award means that he absolutely sucked in his previous handicapping campaign, a year that he undoubtedly has tried to put in his rear view mirror forever. Either way, he can be rest assured that winning the Comeback Handicapper of the Year Award means he's gotten back on the right path, had a rebound year that enabled him to propitiously handicap in the Challenge league with the best of them. But more importantly, he has something to build upon as he enters the new Bookie Challenge season. Yes, there's something to be said about the character of the recipient who is recognized as the Comeback Handicapper of the Year Award. That handicapper proved he had the intestinal fortitude to get back up after being left for dead in his previous season, dusted himself off in the ensuing off-season, and then reinvented his handicapping game in the following season, enough to join the ranks of the league's contenders. To do as much takes a special magnanimity. For what other presence of mind can describe a temperament that allowed a handicapper to take in stride a previously deplorable handicapping campaign, then in the concurrent season, rise above the previous year's disappointment, emotionally unfazed mind you, and rebound to right the ship? And if that handicapper had the chutzpah to endure all of the aforementioned, essentially regaining lost pride and proving he belongs, then there's no telling what else that handicapper is capable of accomplishing in his next Bookie Challenge competition. Everybody be warned, this year's Comeback Handicapper of the Year has one message for the rest of the league--"hide the women and children because...I'm back, baby!"

Maybe not every Bookie Challenge participant is familar with the story of Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo, a black athlete and white athlete, respectively, who were both running backs for the Bears in the late 1960s and who were both forced to be roommates, of which at the time was unheard of, a black and white rooming together. Their story, however, was twice told through two movies, with the original Brian's Song having been released in 1970 and its remake of the same title having been released in 2001. Eventually, in 1969, during the 4th quarter of the ninth game of the Bear's season, which was played in Atlanta, Piccolo scored on a one-yard run versus the Falcons and then took himself voluntarily out of the game because he was having an extremely difficult time breathing. After returning to Chicago and being examined by doctors, he was diagnosed with cancer. He died seven months later, on the morning of June 16th. A month earlier, Gale Sayers was at a sports banquet receiving the George A. Halas Award, which was given to the Bears' most courageous player. But Sayers didn't accept it, saying that the wrong person had been selected and that Brian Piccolo was more deserving of the honor. Sayers would then go on to utter several of football's most tear-jerking lines: "I love Brian Piccolo, and I'd like all of you to love him, too. Tonight, when you hit your knees to pray, please ask God to love him, too."

The Bookie Challenge's Brian Piccolo Award is bestowed upon the participant who exhibited the best sportsmanship throughout a season of the competition, meaning he was able to be the most amicable to his peers whenever he posted in the competition's message board. Any participant who decides to become a member of the Bookie Challenge, and stays a member year after year, quickly finds out that he has joined a special group of individuals, all of whom are as different as the stars that litter the universe. Yet, despite those differences, whether ideological, political, racial, etc., there is a unique camaraderie that exists among the participants of the Bookie Challenge competition. It's a clique whose overall esprit de corps becomes stronger and stronger with each passing year. That's not to say that all participants in the Challenge view all the other participants as their "best friends forever", for the Challenge competition has had to cut its ties in the past with a few rogues who let personal animosities get in the way of common-sense courtesies. Nevertheless, the many participants who have stuck it out over the years know very well they are part of a group that share a precious commonality--the love of the NFL and handicapping its games. With that said, sharing the same interest is good enough, so they don't have to be "best friends forever", but just friends in general. Heck, that's all Gale Sayers and Brian Piccolo were, just friends in general. The two movies that honored both Sayers and Piccolo, through exaggeration, spawned the misconception that Sayers and Piccolo were "best friends forever." As a matter of fact, however, Ralph Kurek, the Bears' backup running back, was Brian Piccolo's best friend and not Gale Sayers. No, Piccolo was too happy-go-lucky and told too many jokes for Sayers' liking, while Sayers was more reserved and private, but the two found common ground and ultimately came to respect each other. The Challenge's Brian Piccolo Award winner displayed that same uncanny ability, to respect every member of the Challenge field despite all the smack-talking that inundates a Challenge competition. And for that characteristic alone, I love the Brian Piccolo Award winner, and I'd like for all of you to love him, too.

The Humpty Dumpty Award is the only award meted out by the Bookie Challenge competition that dishonors a participant for having the worst handicapping season in the league. For that reason, no handicapper in the competition, at least not one in his right frame of mind, wants any part of the egregious stigma that is attached to being the recipient of the Humpty Dumpty Award. The Humpty Dumpty Award is the "thanks, but no thanks" award; it's the death knell to one's handicapping reputation. It's to be avoided like the Ebola virus, or like the Black Plaque. It's so bad to be crowned with the Humpty Dumpty Award that one Confederate soldier's action during the American Civil war serves as the best example for what all Challenge participants should do at the mere sound of the Humpty Dumpty Award. During the last throes of the Civil War in 1865, when Ulysses S. Grant's fast-approaching Union Army was administering the final death blows to the Confederate Army near the town of Appomattox, Virginia, exhausted, frightened, and shell-shocked Confederate soldiers ran as fast as they could to get away from the Union army's artillery bombardment. One soldier in particular, name unknown, dropped his rifle and hauled ass from the ground-shaking blasts that were being produced from incoming shells. One of his superiors, alarmed at the sight of the cowardly deserter, yelled out to him: "why are you running?!" The scared-to-death soldier, while in full stride, turned around and yelled back: "Sir, I'm running because I can't fly!" Well, one unfortunate bastard in the Bookie Challenge competition couldn't run fast enough, let alone fly. Wait. Judging from that Humpty Dumpty picture at the top right, maybe the son-of-a-bitch can fly. Whatever, it doesn't matter anyway. That participant has his work cut out for himself if he's ever to shake the ignominious distinction that the Humpty Dumpty Award brings, and until that miraculous shit happens (shakes the stigma), he'll still be the laughing stock of the league. Rightfully so, too, because he has embarrassed not only himself but also the entire league after pitifully manufacturing such a miserable and horrific handicapping season.