Their gas tank empty, The Joey Wright and The Mick Ciallela stood on the side of a Coloradan road. It didn’t matter which one, they all looked the same here. “Tumbleweed West” is what Joey called it. “The death of us” is what Mick called it under his breath. 

“Check the trunk again,” Joey said, shaking his slurpee container and trying to get the last rocks of sugar into his straw. Mick pounded the trunk of the baby blue Buick Skylark, the latch popping and the trunk opening. “Yeah, I told you, it’s gone. Just this manifesto!” Mick picked up the zine, the color of a rainbow without contrast. The lede: STEAL THIS RAZZBOWL. 

“I don’t understand it,” said Mick. “It’s just a printout of the leaderboard with some scribbles.” 

“He scratched out our names!” Joey shouted, looking to the sun setting on the horizon. He could hear a semi coming in the distance. “He took the trophy and scratched us out!” Joey prepared to hail the truck with the universally known offer of hitchhiking: holding out his slurpee as a gesture of friendship. 

The semi slowed and pulled to the side of the road some thousand feet beyond Joey and Mick. “Just throw it away,” Joey shouted, running off to the semi. Mick flipped through the zine. It felt like home. My name’s still in there, he thought. Mick put the zine under his arm and followed Joey. 

“Is that blue raspberry?” a voice called to Joey from inside the semi cab. Joey held his cup aloft, hoping the driver wouldn’t notice it was empty. “Come on in,” the driver said. Joey and Mick went three deep on the bench seat, sharing introductions. “Call me Stevens,” the driver said. “I don’t know if you’re going where I’m going, but I’ll take you with me for now. I like taking people places”

“Stevens, like there’s a bunch of him,” Mick whispered to Joey. “I only see one.” 

Stevens grabbed the slurpee cup and gave it a shake, the skeletal straw inside rattling against the bare bones of the plastic cup. “Seems like we have a misunderstanding,” he started. 

“WE’RE GOING AFTER JERRY!” Joey blurted out. “Jerry Janiga. The wannabe writer. He’s got something precious of ours.” 

-Stevens smiled and handed the cup back. “Seems like we’ve got something in common. See, I know where Jerry is. Got word on the radio that a guy with a trophy pulled off to a Denny’s just outside of Denver about an hour ago.”

Mick slapped the dashboard. “Hot gravy!” he exclaimed. “Let’s get us a Grand Slam!” 

Stevens put the semi into first gear and pulled the CB mic from its holster. “This is your captain speaking. You guys want some dinner?” A faint thumping noise filled the cab. The sound came from elsewhere though, as if trailing thunder. 

“I usually make you guys ride in back,” Stevens chuckled, turning back onto the highway. Mick turned behind him, seeing only the rigid steel of the cab’s rear section. “You mean…” Mick started. 

Stevens pushed a button on his dashboard and Blue by Eiffel 65 started playing. Thumping and groaning filled the cab. “You played that for 6 hours!” came a muffled shout. Stevens grabbed the mic again. “Relax back there. We’re an hour out of Denver, just keep quiet and the troopers won’t notice.” 

Back on the road, Stevens looked at Joey and Mick. He picked up the empty slurpee cup and shook it again. “You’re not the first Razzbowlers I’ve picked up,” he said. He took the straw and started chewing on it as if it was a toothpick. “And we’ve got one more to go!” 

Mick pulled the zine from under his arm. The names counted nearly to 100. He looked in the rearview mirror, seeing the last rays of light illuminating the cargo trailer. “It’s gonna be a long line for the men’s room,” he thought to himself, yet smiled. But I’ll get there first. 

The Cutline

Well folks, we have cut out half of the field from both the main event and the qualifier. If you placed 7-12th in your Razzbowl league, you’re now out of the competition, and I thank you for your consumption of our goods. Please, take time to read some other articles, check out the baseball and basketball parts of the site, and leave your crypto wallet keys behind. I hope you keep coming back to find out the rest of the Razzbowl story!

For the rest of you — you shining stars you! — you’re either in the championships or the wild card bracket. The way things work in the Cutline are kind of confusing, so I’ll let Donkey Teeth sort it out for you. If it’s still too confusing, the takeaway is that you want to score the most points every week, and you’re setting your own lineup from now on. You start each week with the average weekly score that you carried from Weeks 1-9, and you will also start accumulating average weekly playoff points. In short — put out your best head to head lineup. In soccer terms — which is the real fútbol — there’s relegation and promotion happening every week. If you’re in the championship bracket and fail to average a top 30 score by week 12, you’re relegated to the Wild Card bracket. Conversely, if you’re in the Wild Card bracket and earn a combined top 6 score by Week 12, you’re promoted to the Championship bracket. 

Just score well, OK? Or is it score good? Score a lot. Just score. 

As you can probably tell, our top four main event players are Jerry Janiga, Mick Ciallela (Fantrax), Joey Wright, and Matthew Stevens (RotoUnderground/PlayerProfiler). Bobby Kelly fills out fifth place in the Razzbowl main event, which makes it a stunning win for “fan” entries: Jerry, Joey, and Bobby — in addition to being the names most likely seen at a BBQ in Nebraska — are all fans, which gives non-industry players the leg-up in this unique competition. Close behind them at #7 and #10 are Razzball’s own Aaron Pags and Roto Wan, respectively, who are looking to get their names included in next week’s fan fiction write up. 

Thanks for tuning in, and I hope to see everybody checking in as the next phase of the Razzbowl starts!