With exactly 11 months to go, I have no leads on any nominations to any 30 under 30 list, and I’m running out of time. These awards are handed out for just about everything, and I track my various failures daily. Despite having no experience in the field, not seeing Erik Buchinger in last week’s Coldwell Banker 30 Under 30 Real Estate Professionals hurt to a degree you will never fully understand.
The Forbes 30 Under 30 list might be the first of its kind and if it’s not, it’s certainly the most popular. I’m fairly confident I’ll be snubbed once again, but that’s okay because I’m far more interested in a blog I’ve never heard of ranking a list of people and tagging them all on social media with the expectation of retweets and shares.
Make no mistake about it – if I am included in your 30 under 30 list, not only will I retweet it to my 1,339 followers (one left yesterday due to ill-advised MLB betting advice), but I may put it in my social media bio and if it doesn’t come with a physical award, I will create a plaque for myself to be on display for all to see.
Below are three 30 under 30 lists I’m confident I would be considered for or at least nominated for over the next 11 months.
Distinguished Men a Decade into Growing Gray Hair of Excellence
While it’s a niche category without a ton of nominations, I’m still not all that confident I’ll be a part of this one. I noticed I was going gray for the first time while getting ready in the mirror for a high school basketball game I knew I wouldn’t be playing in, but end-of-the-bench eye candy played a big role in the team’s success that night.
Regardless, since I realized the salt-and-pepper situation at 18 years old, I was actually eligible for nomination last year, so I’m skeptical this will be any different, but I’m hopeful. At a bachelor party last month, I was told I look exactly like the guy who played the Incredible Hulk. This is the second time a stranger told me I look like Mark Ruffalo within the last year, and he is 54 years old.
Going from puberty to looking 50+ in such a short time has to count for something. Fingers crossed.
Greenville Elementary School/Greenville Middle School/Hortonville High School/University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Prestigious Alumni in Sports Betting
I am fairly confident I can crack the top 30 in this category. However, I am nowhere close to No. 1 because unfortunately I went through all four levels of school with sports betting superstar Greg Peterson. He was a grade ahead of me and after some quick Facebook research, I was disappointed to learn he has yet to reach 30 years old.
If you want to truly appreciate how well Greenville Elementary School prepared us for life in the sports betting industry, I was on his Baseball Betting Show podcast earlier this year.
It was actually in middle school when I recognized a passion for the betting world. We had various “jobs” to do around the classroom to somewhat prepare us for the real world of making money and paying bills. When I received my fake paycheck, I would go to a friends’ house after school where we’d use that money to play poker and bet on who would win in pool.
Of course I’d lose and return to class without a great explanation for why I couldn’t pay the electric bill with money I made the previous week from my labor of bringing the garbage out to the dumpster. It was the closest I’ve come to any sort of gambling intervention.
Multi-Sports Blog Owner of Honor
A common stereotype of the sports blogger is he often struggles with women, but that’s only because so many girls throw themselves at us that it’s hard to choose with so many options. If you thought they were attracted to me being an editor of the school newspaper in college, just think about how out of hand things get when I open with the fact that I now run two sports blogs.
I’ve spent less time on Deceptive Speed recently to focus on my new website and newsletter The Gunslinger Buzz, which covers college football quarterbacks. It is completely free, but subscriptions matter a ton, so please subscribe and tell anyone who might be interested in it. I might jinx this, but our first Q&A with a college football QB is set to publish next week. Learn more about The Gunslinger Buzz here.
This is the first of what will be a weekly Deceptive Speed article coming out on Thursdays that will hopefully keep you entertained as you pretend to be working. And if there is a ceremony for the 30 Under 30 Multi-Sports Blog Owner of Excellence award, it better be held in a parents’ basement.
I expect readers to nominate me for any website taking requests on 30 under 30 candidates, and I will do my best to not let anybody down. If this ends up being a failed attempt, I will continue to tell people I am this guy who made Forbes 30 Under 30 for Finance in 2021 and looks just like me.
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