Stump the Stiffs: Elias Cup, ICC World Twenty20, STP 500 and more

We’ve reached the grand finale of our season long pick em’ contest that we affectionately titled Stump the Stiffs. Without a doubt, we here at the Stiffs Staff have been thoroughly stumped, there’s no way around that. We’ve carried last place throughout the year while the Stiffs Commenters and the Nuggets Subreddit have been dueling it out for first. It got so bad at one point that we actually got called out on the Stiff List.

Still, despite all of our poor selections, it was up until last week that we had a chance to still at least tie for first place. Sadly, our own Dan Lewis' lack of faith in Gwen Stefani's star power ended up being the nail in our coffin. It's a shame too because I have a feeling we'll do well in the finale. Meanwhile our friends over at Reddit have tumbled down the home stretch and now find themselves eliminated due to too many common picks with the commenters this week. So congrats to our commenters, you guys get bragging rights this year!

As for the finale and determining who is the second best in this competition, I wouldn’t have felt right just doing what we’ve done all season (four basketball games and one special pick), after all this is the finale. So, ultimately I went completely off the rails and decided no basketball picks and it was time to truly test the sports knowledge of our readers. We’ll start easy enough, with the Colorado Rockies on opening day, then it gets a little tougher as we head over to Commerce City and the Colorado Rapids match up with Toronto FC. From there we’ll depart from Colorado teams and make a prediction on the Nascar STP 500 followed by picking which team will win the PBA Elias Cup. Finally, we head international for a game that I’ve never understood (despite the efforts of many of my Kiwi friends) and try to guess the winner of the Cricket ICC World Twenty20.

I tried my best to give the other teams fair warning that this week would take the most knowledgeable of sports fans. The commenters decided to go with the renown It's the LAW SON, a pick that I think was right on point. Meanwhile Reddit chose a guy who seems to have some sort of fascination with Terrance Knighton's physique, /u/PotRoastBoobs. Lastly, as the caretaker of this post all season long, there was no way I was going to let anyone other than myself make the selections for the finale. Pick time!

Zach Mikash (@ZachMikash): Every year the Rockies get my hopes up and every year they let me down. This year I said no more, I will not convince myself that every member of the starting rotation will pan out into a legitimate starting pitcher. Along with that comes the thought process that I will not be fooled by the annual beginning of the year surge because I know it will be met with the annual May-June falling off a cliff. I do expect that opening surge to happen however, and therefore I got the Rockies winning the opener. Toronto FC just isn't a good road team and they depend too much on their scoring ability to be able to get one over on the Rapids in Colorado. I like the hometown team to get a win, probably by a score of 1-0. I actually root for Jimmie Johnson when it comes to Nascar, not that I really know much about it other than he's good and the economics professor I hated back in college wasn't a Johnson fan so that was good enough for me. However, his hot streak is bound to cool off at some point and I say what better point than this weekend so I do not believe he will get top three. I have no clue who will win the Elias cup, Silver Lake seems like the obvious choice which means they probably won't win, so I'll go with Los Angeles. As for cricket, I really wanted to pick New Zealand because I once spent a year living there so I naturally have adopted them as my cricket team, unfortunately they lost in the semis to England and so I have no choice but to go with the Brits to beat the West Indies.

It's the LAW SON: I’m going with the Diamondbacks. The Rockies will be on the road, likely playing against Zach Greinke, and as the worse team, it’s really difficult to see them succeeding. They will have a great offense once again this year even without Tulo, but Jorge De la Rosa is still pitching, and he’s not a guy I have ever put much stock in. The score should be around 9-5 Dbacks. Next, I'm going with Toronto FC. Not going to pretend like I know too much about soccer, but looking at the standings for this season and the competition in the first few games, TFC appears like the better squad on the up and up (if that analysis was so wrong it made people scream, blame Stephen A, he taught me well). Johnson’s led for many laps this season and already won two races. Seems like he’s doing a bang up job. I will go with yes on a top three finish. Elias cup, dang, what a doozey here. I’m going with Silver Lake. They must be the #1 seed for a reason, and due to my abundant knowledge of the PBA circuit, I will vouch for the #1 seed…lol. Finally, I’m going with the safe pick and taking the host team of India in the ICC World Twenty20. They have made it to the Semi Finals so far and seem like a solid selection at this stage.

/u/PotRoastBoobs: I’ll take the Dbacks. Zack Greinke has historically owned the Rockies, and being on the road against him doesn’t usually lead to win. Next give me Toronto FC. A draw is probably the more likely outcome, but as of the moment the Rapids just don’t have their whole team together to pull out the victory. As for Nascar, not only will Johnson finish in the top three, but he will win this race. Going with Silver Lake in the Elias cup as they are the #1 seed and best team in the nation. Lastly, I’ll take India for the ICC World Twenty20. They are a beast at cricket over there.

And there you have it! What an amazing and curious coincidence that both the commenters and Reddit have the exact same picks (I had nothing to do with that) while the Stiffs Staff has all different picks and thus has an excellent opportunity to gain significant ground on both teams (I might have had something to do with that…cheating? Perhaps, but it's my column and we'll do it my way!). As I said though, there is no way anyone can catch the Stiffs commenters at this point so it's somewhat moot. Nuggets Subreddit though…we're coming for ya!

If you're keeping score:

Stiffs Staff: 55-55

Stiffs commenters: 61-49

Nuggets Subreddit: 57-63

One last note, big shout out to our commenter InboundingLobPass for providing us with the Stump the Stiffs logo. Pretty cool stuff if I say so myself.