Friends, I'll admit that one of the casualties of the COVID epidemic has been my natural excitement for sports. And I thought long and hard about whether I had enough motivation or interest in bringing the Resident Genius contest back for it's ~18th(?) season, and 14th under my tutelage.
So we plug forward, trodding onto what is truly
terra incognita, unknown territory.
For those of you just tuning in, the concept behind this game is simple. There are many measurables that are measured over the course of a football game. I'm asking you to guess one of them. Closest wins each week, and the lowest point score over the course of the season will be given the title Resident Genius. Scoring rules are as follows:
-Each guesser will get the same number of points as their rank on the guess list. The winner of each week will get a score of -5.
-Ties: all involved in a tie will get the score of the lowest rank in the tie (if there is a 3-way tie for 5th, each person gets 5 points, and the next person gets 8 points)
-If there is a tie for the win, each person involved in the tie will get 1 point. Someone must win the week outright in order to get the -5 score.
-I am the sole arbiter of any disputes that arise during this game, and my decisions are final.
What will be different this year is that due to COVID, I will ask you TWO (2) questions from separate Big Ten games. In the event the game involving the first question is not played on the weekend scheduled, I will use the second question. If both games are postponed/cancelled, there will be no game that week.
Anyhow, on to the proceedings.
The 98th Little Brown Jug will be contested in a near-empty New Brickhouse, assuming that the ball club from Ann Arbor can get here. Mo Ibrahim reminds me a little bit of Leroy Hoard, a fan favorite for the Vikings from the late 90s. Both administer hard, tough punishment-style running between the tackles, and have some afterburners out in the open.
Q: How many scrimmage yards will Mo Ibrahim have for Minnesota v. Michigan?
The second question comes to us from State College:
Q: How many yards from scrimmage will Penn State generate on offense v. Indiana?
Deadline for both questions is Saturday, October 24 at game time. Good luck.
