What do we do now?

Here they are, folks.  Your first ever Fantasy Olympics League medalists.

The Gold Medal goes to President Alice Barrette of Barrettania, while President Amber Riddle takes Silver, and President Lance Huffman of Conway Twitty rounds out the podium with the Bronze.  They will forever grace the pages of our history books and hold a place in our hearts.

This is the Final Leaderboard of the First Biennial Olympics Fantasy Game.  I\’m kind of choking back a few tears here.  We had our ups and downs during the long and arduous season, but I think we all learned some important lessons about sports, Olympics, and maybe especially ourselves.

Remember the early days when Mabeltopia was on top?  Then there was the rise and fall of Barrettstan before President B. Barrette eventually got beat by his own sister.  President Cunningham finished a shocking thirteenth after his time at the bottom (heh).  Season-long fence-sitters Presidents Fohl, Cutshall, and Crandall, finished in about the same positions they held all month, so I guess that\’s not much of a surprise.  President M. Fletcher kept warning us not to count him out, and he finished a respectable 8th place, just behind President Keith Starnes in seventh, a shocking coup for a guy who didn\’t even bother to submit his Part Two picks.    President Irwin just edged out a three-way tie for last by correctly selecting Russia to win the overall medal count, and God-King Grogan was unsurprisingly a disappointment in twentieth.  My own father came in twenty-third, but will never know because the leaderboard print is too small for him to read without his glasses.  President Root ice danced her way to very brief glory, while President K. Fletcher just didn\’t have the right spreadsheets to dominate this time.

Everyone, regroup.  Start your research now.  Rio is right around the corner.

THIS GAME.  I for one found that it made me care a lot more about the Olympics than I even anticipated, which is shocking given my already high level of love for the Olympics.  How about you?  Did you find yourself shouting at the television for skiers you never heard of to ski faster, but also it sort of made sense because you really needed the 5 points?  Were you personally despondent over the fates of Shani Davis and Shaun White?

Because we essentially created this from scratch, I\’ve tried to touch base with a lot of you over the course of the two weeks to see how the game is working.  I\’d like to fine tune it and have a new and improved version ready in time for the Summer Olympics.  Together we can be the next Dan Okrent (inventor of fantasy baseball… why do I know that?).  So if you wouldn\’t mind taking a second to take a poll by filling out this form, that would be awesome.

This guy won a gold medal.  You might remember Sage Kotsenburg from living in the basement apartment of everyone\’s first apartment building, and when you ran into him at the mailbox, he said something like, \”have a totally radical day man\” before hopping on his skateboard and taking off towards campus for his 6th senior year.

This article.  It\’s got some fascinating facts about the medal count.  Two athletes broke and tied records for most Olympic medals, one athlete won as many medals as her country had combined in the last 5 Olympics, and one country earned 1.7 medals per athlete.

Some fun facts from our medal count: Only two people correctly selected Russia to win the overall medal count.  Hats off to President Brian Barrette and President Kerry Irwin!  The all-USA strategy did not pay off, as you will see from President Bowles\’ position on the final standings table.  No one achieved a perfect score of 34 points in that round, but also everyone who submitted picks got at least one right.

I can\’t wait until I get sued for using random photos I found. Then this blog will truly have arrived!  I\’ll be the Matt Jones of the Olympics.

Sometimes people won things by simply being the first person to slide uncontrollably across the finish line after everyone fell.  I\’ve never skied and I doubt I\’d be very good at it, though obviously I will eat my words when four intense years of training earns me a 2018 gold medal in Korea. Watch for it.

But I can definitely definitely fall down and slide out of control across snow and ice.  Just the other day in my office parking lot, I should have earned at least a bronze.

Russians saying funny things. Even though it\’s engaging in a terrible American-held Boris/Natasha stereotype about very intense fur-wearing moderately villainous swarthy men with a poor command of the English language, here it is.

After losing to Finland, Russia\’s hockey coach gave this interview: