Oscars

March 1, 2004 - Oscar Predictions

The 76^th annual academy awards took place last night. They were live on the TV. Well, almost live, there was a 5 second delay to prevent a repeat of the Super Bowl. You remember the Super Bowl. The football game where the final outcome was not determined until New England kicked a 41-yard field goal with 4 seconds left. It gave the Patriots their second NFL championship in three seasons. If they had had a 5 second delay on the Super Bowl, the game would have been over before viewers saw the snap of the ball … and of course viewers would never have seen the “wardrobe malfunction”.

The dedicated staff of edhat.com, like the rest of the world, watched the Oscars on TV. We had with us the predictions of our subscribers and the betting odds posted on a couple of Internet websites. According to our subscribers and the odds, there was little chance that many of the awards would go down to a last second field goal. In the five award categories in which our contest focused, Lord of the Rings, Charlize Theron, Rene Zelwinger, and Tim Robbins were all heavy favorites of both our subscribers and the odds. A $100 bet on Lord of the Rings would only have made a $5 profit. For most other awards, Lord of the Rings was the favorite.

The ONLY award that would provide any suspense would be the award for Best Actor. Here, our subscribers split evenly on Johnny Depp and Sean Penn. The odds showed a close battle between Penn (5/6) and Bill Murray (3/2).

Well leave it to the odds makers. The Oscars proved as predictable as a Republican’s vote on raising taxes. We watched the show mostly to see Billy Crystal and the fashion show of low cut dresses. Billy Crystal made fun of Oprah, something no one here in Santa Barbara would dare do!

Here are the winners, their odds, and the percentage of edhat.com subscribers who picked them.

Category

Winner

Odds

edhat Subscribers

Best Film

Lord of the Rings

1/20

79%

Actor

Sean Penn

5/6

37%

Actress

Charlize Theron

1/9

82%

Sup. Actor

Tim Robbins

2/7

52%

Sup. Actress

Renee Zellweger

1/7

79%

So, there you go. The academy awards have come and gone. And they went pretty much as expected. The five-second delay was not necessary. In fact, the whole thing could have been done yesterday.

Six edhat.com subscribers came up with all five winners on their scorecard. Their names are RagTop, Elvis Presleyed, IronScotty, LatinaDiva, Mud, and SBChristine. A totally random drawing selected one of them. And, the winner is ..... Lord of the Rings!

Sorry about that. The winner is IronScotty who wins a choice of movie tickets or Peet’s coffee card.

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