{"id":3654,"date":"2026-04-04T04:39:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T04:39:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=3654"},"modified":"2026-04-04T04:39:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T04:39:33","slug":"no-expert-panel-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=3654","title":{"rendered":"No expert panel this year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This is normally around the time where I would bring my family members in as experts to pick the games.  However, Charlie is off to James Madison for college, and Katie and Elizabeth typically did it just to humor my need for blog content.  Add into it that I am over $700 imaginary dollars down in my handicapping, and I just figured that all the teams (especially the ones that I might pick) will appreciate it if I simply leave their names out of the blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was going to go and find my old College 2K8 Playstation game, and play the games out on my very old PS3.  But then I started watching the women\u2019s games and they were more interesting than trying to figure out how to get a gaming system I haven\u2019t turned on in years to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So with it being after midnight, I am going to call it quits for the night.  I might still do my own version of the \u201cBall Don\u2019t Lie\u201d to forecast the game.  Or maybe I should simply flip a coin.  But all these choices make me nervous if the mere mention of the Lunatic picking a team will be a jinx, even if it is based on how many free throws I can hit (since with Charlie at college, I am also missing my opponent in the Ball Don\u2019t Lie HORSE matchups).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For now, I am going to go to sleep.  There are no expert picks &#8211; which is probably for the best.  Championships are won on the court and not on paper.  But with as bad as I have picked things this year, I certainly don\u2019t need to hurt some team\u2019s chances by saying I think they can cover the spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is normally around the time where I would bring my family members in as experts to pick the games. However, Charlie is off to James Madison for college, and Katie and Elizabeth typically did it just to humor my need for blog content. Add into it that I am over $700 imaginary dollars down [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2026-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3655,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3654\/revisions\/3655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}