You can pick your nose, and you can pick your football teams, but...

Okay, Info Nation readers... I'm looking for suggestions for ways to pick the teams for future football pool weeks.

So far this season I have used the Thin Is In and Magic 8-Ball methods. From the 2004 season I shared my patented WWSD? and Rock, Paper, Scissors methods.

Also used last season with varying degrees of success (but never mentioned here) were

• Alphabetical -- Chose team who came first alphabetically


• Longest Name -- Chose the team with the longest name


• Scrabble method -- Chose the team whose name had the higher Scrabble score


• D&D method --using an online diceroll generator to pick, with even results going to home team and odd results going to away team


• Poker method -- Each team was dealt five cards. The one with the better poker hand was picked.


• Dreidel method -- for Chanukkah, I spun a dreidel for each game using an online dreidel. If it landed on Shin or Hey, I chose the favorite. Nun or Gimel resulted in choosing the underdog.

This year I am asking for your help in selecting teams. What interesting/funny/bizarre ways can you think of to help someone who knows zip about football pick the correct teams?

I posted this question over at the Usenet group alt.fan.cecil-adams (Cecil Adams is the guy behind The Straight Dope column). Some of the more creative methods suggested over there:

• ...Use other geographic or statistical data. Highest elevation: They drop rocks on the other team. Lowest elevation: Higher team falls down. Average rainfall, per capita GDP, all kinds of stuff from the Census Bureau...


• Pick the city with the higher area (or ZIP) code


• Home team colors, pick the longest or shortest wavelength.

The one I think I'm gonna use for Week 3 is another one from alt.fan.cecil-adams, and that's this one: Google on the team name/mascot/team home town and pick whichever one has more hits.

Anyone else have some good ideas? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?