I’m not ashamed to admit that I was a little embarrassed come late Sunday evening.  To my dismay, and the dismay of all of my friends at work, a fish was leading our office NFL pool.  Plankton Manning, a creature with no prior knowledge of football (or anything of the world outside of his tank), had correctly called all four wildcard games (and by called I mean seeing what side of the tank he swam to after I pasted the competing team’s logos on either end).

Now, to understand how significant of a blow this is to my ego you have to understand that I am a huge football fan.  I read the reports, I watch the highlights, I check the spread, I monitor the injury report; I even keep track of individual players’ win/loss ratio by stadium and weather conditions.  Yet despite all of my years of knowledge and fandom, I only managed to predict two out of the four  games. 

After a great deal of soul searching, I’ve come to the realization that I shouldn’t feel bad for losing so handedly to a fish.  After all, he had at least three advantages heading into the wildcard weekend.

He doesn’t care about football

Plankton doesn’t care that Andrew Luck has thrown for more passing yards in a single season than any other rookie in the history of the NFL or that Luck has lead the league in game winning drives and fourth quarter comebacks.  Plankton doesn’t know what a fourth quarter comeback is.  Plankton doesn’t even know his name. 

My point is that Plankton Manning is without knowledge of any of the pageantry or drama of professional football.  He couldn’t give a flying food pellet about any of the over romanticized nonsense that made me believe Andrew Luck just might be the Cinderella story I had built him up to be.  Plankton is above all that.  He’s like Steve McQueen, completely detached and a dynamo with the ladies. 

Plankton picked the Ravens over the Colts because he liked the colour of the Ravens Logo (maybe, I have no idea what he’s thinking or if he can even see colour), which is a heck of a lot more rational than sentimentality. 

He doesn’t have any friends

Plankton is a Betta Fish, commonly known as a Japanese Fighting Fish.  Plankton Manning’s breed is notoriously territorial and thus cannot coexist with other fish.  Plankton has no friends and that’s how he likes it.

More importantly, when it comes to picking football, Plankton doesn’t have a group of friends talking trash and filling his tiny brain with useless statistics.  Plankton wasn’t burdened with talks of, “The Texans have been in a tailspin since week 13” or “The Bengals have been hot.”  Plankton also didn’t have a bunch of macho peers saying less than flattering things about his favourite players. 

In short, Plankton literally lives in a fish bowl.  He is cut off from all of the normal forms of BS that plague your average football fan.  He couldn’t buy into the hype of the Bengals or feel indignant towards Matt Schaub because Plankton is a lone wolf.  Or a shark.  Whatever.  Plankton relies on pure rational thought.  That, or…

He has absolutely no idea what football is

Plankton is a fish.  Have I mentioned that?  In fact, Plankton’s breed is infamous for having a particularly poor memory.  So, by the time that I had finished telling Plankton about the over under for the weekend he had most likely forgotten what teams were playing, what football is, who I am and that he is a fish. 

Plankton’s biggest advantage in life and calling football is that he is totally unfettered by any of the petty nonsense that I worry about.  Plankton just goes with his gut.  So far Plankton’s guts have proven to be way smarter than me. 

Needless to say this week I will be doing whatever Plankton tells me to do.  Expect more of Plankton’s picks on Thursday, January 10th.