Parts Unknown (DP--Disassociated Press): The completion of the Bookie Challenge's 15th annual competition came down to a nerve-racking and enthralling ending to its season after this year's Super Bowl round produced one of the competition's most exciting and heart-pounding finishes in recent memory. In fact, for the second time in the history of the competition's Super Bowl rounds, the winner of this year's competition wouldn't come to light until the post-game announcement of the player who was awarded the game's MVP was revealed. In other words, it took an "overtime" period, per se, to determine who would corral this year's overall Bookie Challenge championship and who would be the eventual winner of the 2nd-place prize from this year's Latinum jackpot. And after a wild 4th quarter of the Super Bowl game, of which saw the overall Bookie Challenge championship switch hands from one riveting play after another, it was 7mick7 who would ultimately seize the overall Bookie Challenge by a flat-out tiebreaker over Blitzkrieg. Incredibly, this year's Super Bowl round would have to wait for its climactic finish after this year's Super Bowl game ended without a clear-cut Bookie Challenge champion being officially determined. As such, the lack of an overall winner of this year's Bookie Challenge championship after the end of regulation in this year's big game necessitated the announcement of this year's Super Bowl MVP to ultimately ascertain who the official winner of this year's competition would be between 7mick7 and Blitzkrieg. Amazingly, after the official announcement of this year's Super Bowl MVP, a tie in total points was forced between 7mick7 and Blitzkrieg, both of whom had tallied 34 points apiece for this year's postseason after the Super Bowl's MVP had finally been announced. As a result, and for the first time in the history of the Bookie Challenge's Super Bowl rounds, it would take a tiebreaker to determine the winner of this year's overall Bookie Challenge championship, with the tiebreaker going to the participant with the highest amount of total points from this year's regular season. As it turned out, 7mick7 would win the tiebreaker over Blitzkrieg on the strength of having the higher point total over Blitzkrieg in this year's regular season (7mick7's 35 regular-season pts vs Blitzkrieg's 25 regular-season pts). But before 7mick7 could even begin to think about winning this year's overall Bookie Challenge championship, he had to first have an extraordinary Super Bowl round in order to negate the huge deficits that both Kr@tos and Blitzkrieg had held over him as the competition headed into this year's final playoff round.

To begin with, the "Irish Hustler" would face an uphill battle if he were to persevere and win the overall Bookie Challenge championship. Indeed, even before this year's postseason got underway, 7mick7 had both of his preseason Super Bowl selections eliminated from contention, of which the lack of any pending bonus points for his preseason Super Bowl selections initially didn't bode well for him. However, as fate would have it, everybody's preseason Super Bowl selections would all got eliminated after the conclusion of the third round of this year's postseason, and that was a godsend for the Mick because his path to the overall Bookie Challenge championship was made a little bit easier. Regardless, after the third round of this year's postseason ran its course, the Mick found himself entering this postseason's final round in 8th place of the playoff point standing, and worse yet, he trailed the overall leader, Kr@tos, by a whopping 13 points (Kr@tos 26 pts vs 7mick7 13 pts). In other words, 7mick7 had his work cut out for him as he headed into this year's final Super Bowl round. He not only had to desperately win the final round, but he also had to "kill it" because he had to climb over seven total handicappers in the playoff point standings. What's more, the aforementioned handicapping task was made that much more difficult for the Irish Hustler when considering that every participant in front of him in the playoff point standing also stood to win respective points in this year's grand finale. To put it differently, this year's winner of the overall Bookie Challenge championship needed everything to go his way in this year's final round in order to rise above the top contenders in the postseason and walk away with the overall Bookie Challenge championship in hand. That lucky handicapper would turn out to be 7mick7, of whom would blind side the rest of the Challenge field in a similar manner as did Driveline when he won the overall championship in the final round of the postseason of Challenge year #9. As it has been documented over and over in the recent weekly reviews of this year's postseason, Driveline had set a new all-time scoring record of 27 points to shock rookie carldaddy by just four points (38 pts vs 34 pts) to win that's year's overall championship. Interestingly, and if only for the sake of comparison, Driveline entered the Super Bowl round of Challenge year #9 in nearly identical circumstances as did 7mick7 when he entered this year's final round, meaning Driveline was tied for 6th place overall when he had entered the final Super Bowl round of Challenge year #9, while 7mick7 was in 8th place before this year's final round, and Driveline had faced an 11-point deficit to the overall leader (TCU) before he entered the final round of Challenge #9's postseason, while the Mick's deficit to Kr@tos before this year's final round was slightly higher at 13 points.

To best explain this year's scintillating finish to this year's final Super Bowl round, it is best to list the major turning points that transpired in the 4th quarter of this year's Super Bowl game, for only then can one truly understand and appreciate how the overall Bookie Challenge championship would wildly change hands among Kr@tos, Blitzkrieg, the Biased Nihilist, and 7mick7 throughout the game's final quarter. Entering the 4th quarter of this year's Super Bowl, and with the game seemingly being a cinch to stay under the over/under pointspread total of 45½ points (Seattle entered the 4th qtr leading 12-0), it was quite obvious that the game had been a tight defensive struggle, as Seattle's place-kicker Jason Myers had accounted for all of the game's scoring (4 FGs) when the game meandered its way into the 4th and final quarter. Then all hell broke loose, meaning a flurry of combined points, 30 in all, would go into the books after the 4th quarter ran its course. But when heading into the 4th quarter, most of the game's propositional selections were being won by 7mick7 and the Biased Nihilist, for both had the poinstspread winner pegged right, the coin toss predicted correctly, the game to stay under, picked the team with the most offensive yards, selected the game's first turnover correctly, and the combined points for the game were trending in the direction that would enable both 7mick7 and the Biased Nihilist to score more points. In fact, the only slight difference that was keeping 7mick7 afloat and slightly above the Biased Nihilist's scoring totals was that 7mick7, when the 4th quarter started, was the closest participant to the game's longest field goal, of which the Mick inexplicably had chosen Seattle to kick the longest field of just 36 yards. Amazingly, the Nihilist would have had the overall scoring lead for the final round heading into the 4th quarter if only Jason Meyers had kicked field goals "one-yard" longer. More explicitly, instead of Myers kicking consecutive field goals of 41 yards apiece to end the 3rd quarter, and if he would have instead kicked one of the two field goals for a 42-yard score--7mick7 and the Nihilist would have both tied to being closest to the game's longest field goal. Thus, the Nihilist would have remained in the driver's seat for the duration of the 4th quarter.

Fortunately for the Nihilist, the Patriots would finally score the game's first TD in the early part of the 4th quarter to transform the Super Bowl into a more interesting game, or at least a more interesting game as it pertained to the Bookie Challenge competition. Subsequently, by a pure stroke of fantastic luck, the Biased Nihilist's chances of winning the overall Bookie Challenge championship seemed to have all-of-the-sudden skyrocketed. More specifically, the odds of the Biased Nihilist capturing an unprecedented 4th overall Bookie Challenge championship would increase exponentially after the Pats' QB Drake Maye threw a 35-yard TD pass to Mark Hollins, of which only the Biased Nihilist and TCU both chose the Patriots to score the longest TD of the game (each chose the Patriots to score a 32-yard TD). The TD pass occurred with 12:27 left to play in the 4th quarter, and at that specific point in time, it started to appear that the Nihilist was going to win it all. However, the next turning point in the 4th quarter would come with just 4:47 left to play in the game, and for the Biased Nihilist it was a heartbreaker. Seattle's linebacker, Uchenna Nwosu, would intercept a botched pass from Drake Maye and then he rambled 45 yards for a touchdown, of which the score took away the three points the Nihilist had won earlier in the quarter after the Patriots scored a 35-yard touchdown. Unbelievably, the "pick six" swung the pendulum back to 7mick7's favor after the Nihilist's pick for the longest TD was taken off the board. More intriguing, and to some extent, Blitzkrieg's chances also started to look better after the "pick six", for all he needed was for the game to finally end and the Seahawks QB, Sam Darnold, to win the MVP of the game--and the "Snowman" would have won the overall Bookie Challenge championship, not to mention the Nihilist would have finished in second place of the final playoff point standings. Then came a cruel twist of fate that ultimately ripped the heart out of Kr@tos' chest--Kenneth Walker III would burst through the middle of the line of scrimmage and would gallop to the end zone to complete a 49-yard TD run with just 2:10 left to play in the game. But the touchdown would not stand after a piece of yellow laundry that lay on the football field signified that a penalty had occurred on the play, of which the flag turned out to be against the Seahawks' offensive center, Jalen Sundell, for holding on the play. If the TD would have stood up, the "Handicapping God of War" (aka Kr@tos) would have won the overall Bookie Challenge championship because he would have won six total points for the game going over the over/under total of 45½ points (3 pts) and also for him coming closing to the game's final total (3 pts). Contrarily, if the 49-yard TD had not been nullified, 7mick7, Blitzkrieg, and the Nihilist would have each lost six points apiece because the game would not have stayed under the game's pontspread total and all three handicapper's would have not shared three extra points apiece for coming closest to the game's total of 45½.

But the game didn't go over the total, of which the final score of Seattle 29-13 over New England did not unequivocally produce a definitive winner after this year's Super Bowl became a final. Thus, as it came to pass, and as already mentioned in the opening paragraph of this weekly review, the competition would have to go into its so-called "overtime" period of the Bookie Challenge's Super Bowl round, meaning the only way an overall Bookie Challenge champion was going to be determined depended on who would win the game's MVP award. If Sam Darnold wins the MVP, Blitzkrieg wins the overall Bookie Challenge championship and the Nihilist finishes in second place. But the MVP winner was not Sam Darnold, instead the MVP honors would go to a running back, specifically Kenneth Walker III. Now here's when things get really interesting. Before the start of this year's Super Bowl round, only two out of the 10 handicappers who participated in this year's Super Bowl round of the Bookie Challenge competition, chose a Super Bowl MVP who was not a quarterback, and they were TCU, who chose a New England offensive player other than QB Maye, and 7mick7, who technically got credited for selecting a Seattle offensive player other than QB Darnold. The selection of an offensive player (must have winning team) instead of picking one of the starting QBs for the game is worth three points instead of the two points for a QB selection. For starters, at the time the Irish Hustler posted his selection for this year's Super Bowl round, he inadvertently predicted the exact Seattle offensive player who would win this year's Super Bowl MVP when all he had to do was pick the team that would produce the Super Bowl MVP other than its starting QB. But lo and behold, to his immense credit, 7mick7 actually posted that Kenneth Walker III was going to be the Super Bowl's MVP!

The selection by 7mick7 of Kenneth Walker to win this year's Super Bowl MVP award has to be considered as the best selection of this year's competition. After all, the last time a running back won a Super Bowl MVP was 32 years ago, on January 25th, 1998, when Denver's Terrel Davis won the MVP after rushing for 157 yards on 30 carries and scored three touchdowns in a thrilling 31-24 victory over Brett Farve and the Green Bay Packers. The victory was the first time back then that a John-Elway-led Broncos' team won a Super Bowl title. Comparatively speaking, as it concerns Walker winning the MVP in this year's Super Bowl, Walker rushed for just 135 yards on 27 carries but didn't score a touchdown in the game, that is, he didn't score a TD that counted. The question has to be asked, albeit in hindsight, did Walker deserve being coined as this year's Super Bowl MVP? That is to say, rushing for 135 yards isn't what one could call an "extraordinary rushing total", especially not when considering that Timmy Smith (Redskins) hold's the all-time rushing total for a Super Bowl game after he rushed for 201 yards against the Broncos back in Super Bowl XXII. And hell, he didn't even win that Super Bowl's MVP! Redskins' QB Doug Williams won the Super Bowl MVP, and by doing so, he became the first black QB to win a Super Bowl MVP. Regardless, when Walker won this year's MVP it enabled 7mick7 to win three highly critical and pivotal points for his Super Bowl MVP selection. The three points won allowed for the Irish Hustler to tally 34 total points for this year's postseason, more importantly, the three points won also enabled 7mick7 to tie Blitzkrieg at 34 points apiece for the highest total in this year's postseason. The rest is history, meaning 7mick7 eventually won the overall Bookie Challenge by tiebreaker because he accrued more total points in this year's regular season than did Blitzkrieg.

Lastly, it has to be pointed out that the last time a Bookie Challenge competition had to be decided by an "overtime" period of a Super Bowl round occurred back in Challenge year #2, or 13 years ago, when LTFrankDrebben held a one point lead over the league's former treasurer, Bomber7, after the Baltimore Ravens had defeated the San Francisco 49ers by a final of 34-31. The only difference between the "overtime" of the Super Bowl round of Challenge year #2 and this year's "overtime" was that Bomber7 would win two points for his selection of that year's Super Bowl MVP and thus he would go on to win that year's postseason outright over LtFrank by a postseason tally of 25 points versus LtFrank's 24 points. Back then, it was a lot harder to win an MVP selection because any player could be chosen in order to just win TWO points, with the hard part being to name any player, whether it was a QB, or a RB, or a defensive player--no matter--a player had to be exactly named to win the game's MVP selection. Luckily for Bomber7, he chose Joe Flacco as his MVP selection, while LtFrankDrebben had chosen Ray Lewis of the Ravens. By the way, Joe Flacco won that year's Super Bowl MVP. Ahem, and to reiterate...Kenneth Walker III won this year's Super Bowl MVP...just as the Irish Hustler had exactly predicted. And as a result, Mick Balls is now $400 richer after winning this year's overall Bookie Challenge championship.