Cheaters Never Prosper: ESPN recently ran a competition to see what sports uniforms were the best looking. They picked 64 unis from various sports and ran an NCAA like elimination tournament based on reader voting. Here are the brackets and the final four. At the end it was down to the Denver Broncos vs. the Michigan Wolverines (football). According to the final report:

Trailing badly in the final round last Thursday, Denver received 20,000 consecutive overnight votes and 42,500 of the final 50,000 e-ballots cast… [snip] When the polls finally closed, the Broncos had rallied to post 137,257 votes, easily outdistancing Michigan's 88,743. However, ESPN.com has discovered that 71,465 of those votes came from one IP address.

So those clever guys at ESPN sought out an expert to find out what was going on -- specifically a guy named Chris Nandor, who is infamous for fixing on-line baseball all-star balloting. His expert opinion:

"My guess (is) someone from Denver."

Insightful. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to just place a call to Captain Obvious? Anyway, in the end, they threw out the bad votes and we can all safely Hail the Victors. ESPN goes on to wax eloquent about the Denver uniforms:

In retrospect, Denver's mere presence in the championship round should have been a tip-off. First, the Broncos barely made it to the finals, beating the Atlanta Falcons by a mere 0.3 percent in Round 1 and never earning more than 53 percent of the vote in a single contest.

Second, the club's monochromatic unis give them the look of human popsicles. Or perhaps Regis Philbin, in his blue shirt, blue tie, Van Heusen endorsin' heyday.

"Be careful with the thick burnt-orange accent on the trouble-spot buttocks and thighs," added Victoria, one of Page 2's fashion experts. "You don't want to call attention to an unsightly entity. Spandex is a privilege, not a right."

Chortle. If I ever get back to doing football picks I shall only refer to that team from Denver as the Popsicles.