I don’t do sports anymore. Not since I got divorced. Which I realize sounds dramatic but hear me out. When you’re married, you inherit teams. Colors. Mascots. Opinions shouted at televisions. After the divorce, I was released back into the wild with no allegiances and no cares to give. So I’ve never thought about what my own team would be named or the colors they would wear.

If I had to choose, though, my team would absolutely be the Mongooses. Mascot: mongoose. Colors: radioactive green and aggressive magenta. Maybe a little black thrown in for menace. Don’t laugh. Have you ever seen Rikki-Tikki-Tavi? Mongooses are tiny murder machines. They look cute and then casually take down their enemy like it’s nothing . They are in it to win it. Zero hesitation. All teeth.

I may not know everything about sports (see? I admit it freely), but I do know how to annoy men about sports. It’s a skill I honed early.

When I was a middle-schooler and teen, I played football pools with my dad, uncle, and brother. My system was simple and flawless. I picked teams based on whether their mascot could beat the other mascot in real life. Not stats. Not records. Just hypothetical violence. Sort of like the actual game.

Packers vs Bears? Bears. Obviously. A bear does not care about your job in meat processing. In fact, it might even piss the bear off more. So, yeah.

Vikings vs Broncos? Listen. A horse could kick the absolute tar out of a Viking if it felt disrespected. And horses are always a little disrespected.

Chiefs vs Bills? Chiefs. Because fuck Buffalo Bill Cody. He murdered Indigenous peoples and I refuse to let that slide in a football pool.

Saints vs Raiders? You want to say saints. Holy. Protected. Glowing. I mean, right?  But saints have rules. Raiders do not. Raiders fight dirty, show up drunk, and steal your weapons while you’re praying for guidance.

49ers vs Rams? This looks equal. Both mammals. Both stubborn. But rams headbutt for fun and do CrossFit just for survival. 49ers are tired from prospecting and dysentery. Rams for the win.

It’s an unconventional system, sure, but it made sense to my chaotic brain. And more importantly, it made the games fun… and profitable. Because guess who kept winning?

Yep. Me.

Naturally, I continued this system into adulthood with my ex-husband, who very confidently assumed he was going to show me a thing or two. You know. With his knowledge. His stats. His very serious man spreadsheets.

We played for a while. I kept winning. And eventually, he decided he “just didn’t want to play anymore.”

Fast forward to now. My daughter plays Jersey Mike’s pick-’em games where you get points for every team you choose that wins. Her method? She picks based on which team name she likes more and which one appeals to her aesthetically. Colors. Mascot energy.

She’s been winning almost every game every single week. The one week she didn’t sweep the board? She lost one game. One. And it was because she abandoned her instincts at the last minute and went with the “most popular choice.”

Look where that got her.

So when men tell me sports betting is complicated – running numbers, calculating odds, spreadsheets, algorithms – I just nod politely while my inner mongoose sharpens its tiny teeth.

My system is more fun. It makes sense. And statistically speaking? It wins way more than it loses.

Honestly, I should be a bookie.

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