Lisa Lewis Crowned PixBox Champion

I had been receiving preemptive congratulations for weeks now, but didn’t want to accept them and jinx my luck. It seemed too good to be true; first the lead was just a few games, then four, then five, and finally six. Much to the chagrin of columnist Max Puro, it’s official: Who would have thought that the person who has only truly covered one sport for Spec—the one who interns at a teen magazine and religiously paints her nails once a week—would end up beating out the football beat writers, former sports editors, and the rest of the section’s meatheads to win PixBox?
Certainly not me.

It’s like my own personal Oscars acceptance for beating chance. As [sports editor] Matt [Velazquez] pointed out in his congratulatory e-mail, I went a whopping 30 games in the positive to clinch the title this season. I’d like to attribute it to my creative game-picking strategies—the week that I used the mascot challenge, I went 5-3, and extended my lead over all the other columnists by a game. If that isn’t proof that I earned this with my mad skillz, I don’t know what is.

I’d like to thank Max, who had a chance to three-peat but couldn’t after being forced to pick the USC/Cal game. You didn’t know it then, Max, but the entire section was out to sabotage you. Auggie was the conspiracy theorist. Sorry. By the way, I hold no hard feelings (lest you ever write a winner’s column EVER again).

Thanks go out to my two SpecSports BFFs: sports editor Matthew “X Factor” Velazquez and football beat princess Holly “The Eyes of Texas” MacDonald. Matt graciously chose to handicap himself early on this season, and continued to be one of only two columnists under .500 until Week 9—a hundred gentleman points to you, sir. And Holly—whose allegiance to all things Texas/Dallas was the source of her downfall—knows more about football than almost anyone I know (you know who you are). I appreciate that you two didn’t try to use your talents to your advantage. And my transitory allegiance to my roommate and to Texas (as the mood hit me) worked out to my advantage.

Thanks go to J Shap, whose cute-as-a-button shout-out to his girlfriend about their one-year convinced me that it wouldn’t be inappropriate for me to do one of my own. I apologize that you felt like I misrepresented you in my column last week, but claiming that the football team wasn’t intense enough to win doesn’t exactly fly when I’ve got more than a few friends on the team making sure that those betting lines work out in our favor. My bad.

To the elusive Michael Shannon: I admire your sweet ’stache. It’s a shame it isn’t real. I hope I wasn’t a more attractive man than you were on Halloween.
To Jon Tayler: I admire your ability to find something new and creative to bitch about in your column every (other) week. May I one day have the courage to tell the world exactly how I feel about, well, everything.

Dear Charles Young: please make a concerted effort to revive your nickname of yesteryear—Chuckles. That has to be one of the best nicknames, ever.
To my arch nemesis, Jelani—how you like me now? So much for gloating early. You think we can’t knock the hustle in the office? We just did. If you really had game, we’d see you show up at Spec basketball. Or football. Or at any function that had to do with Spectator at all throughout the year.

Auggie-Doggie—you rock. Keep feeding me notes from Jeffrey Lax’s class, and keep feeding me food that you and your roommate cook, and you’ll never hear me disclose any activities that you may or may not have engaged in with a blowup doll, ever. Your secret is safe with me.

Finally, I wanted to commend my spectacular guest picker: Columbia football head coach Norries Wilson! Er, I mean, Columbia Associate Athletics Director for Sports Information and Media Relations Darlene Camacho! Erm, well actually, Thursday night’s associate editor and my good friend, Sarah Sommer!

I guess that most of us at the newspaper weren’t exactly surprised that Coach let me down. I mean, he did have bigger fish to fry. But it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t embarrassed when half of my friends wanted to know why Norries wasn’t my guest picker. I told all of my friends that I would have the best guest picker of all. I asked Coach nearly a month in advance. Right before PixBowl, I even went in to see Juliette, the director of NCAA compliance, just to be sure Coach was allowed to do it. But, alas, I waited hours for Coach to send me his picks—to no avail.

Last year, former SpecSports columnist Taylor Harwin wrote something that must have upset Coach, but this year Coach made me look foolish—we’ve come full circle. To amend things after Taylor wrote his column, the football beat writers had to suffer through a year in which they were on probation; they weren’t allowed to have their traditional weekly meetings during the season with the coach. To make it up to me, Coach, you can stop punishing Holly and Matt for what Taylor said a year ago and resume the weekly meetings next year. It isn’t their fault. Holly, Matt: you can thank me later.

I believe in jinxes and superstitions as much as the next sports fan, so there will be no more predictions from me. I’ll catch you all during basketball season. Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Lisa Lewis is a Barnard College junior majoring in economics.

Tags: Sports, Lisa Lewis