The enormous popularity of this web site, and the fundamental question it askes, asked on many message boards including this one:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=309273&page=1&pp=50
…leads me to conclude that I could make a lot of money on this.
I have therefore commenced the production of a new live sporting event, How Many Five Year Olds Could you Take In a Fight, and you are invited to either be a participant of a spectator. There are three questions you have to answer, which I’ll pose now before explaining the rules… and the payoff.
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Would you be a contestant on “How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take In a Fight”?
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If so, what is your bid?
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Irrespective of your answers to #1 and #2, how much would you pay to see this live?
The rules are as such:
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The event will be carried live on prime time television and will last about two to three hours; each event will consist of twelve ordinary people taking on their bid number of bloodthirsty five-year-olds. The inaugural event, How Many Five Year Olds Can You Take In a Fight I, shall be held Saturday, July 19, 2008, at Madison Square Garden, New York, New York. So, you have some time to train. I’m planning to hold How Many Five Year Olds Can You Take In A Fight II at the Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada in January 2009, so if you want more time to train you can sign up for that one. How Many Five Year Olds Can You Take In A Fight III will be at the Staples Center in LA sometimes in summer 2009.
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To compete, you must bid on the number of five-year-olds you think you can take. Three contestants will be chosen randomly, and will, Jeopardy!-style, secretly write their bids. The lowest bid is eliminated. The top two bids will, in random order, enter the Arena of Death and take on their bid number of kids. (the two-out-of-three system eliminates people just putting in lowball bids to get a few easy bucks, without setting up a mano-y-mano bid war where everyone would big too high and always lose.)
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Your bid of kids is the number of kids who will be released into the arena to do battle with you. To win your money, you must defeat every single one of them. There is no consolation prize for defeating most of them; you win, or you lose. You will be judged to have won when, in the estimation of the judges, all the kids have been killed, rendered unconscious, or otherwise incapacitated to the point that they cannot resist. You will be judged to have lost when you are killed, rendered unconscious, or signal to the referees that you wish to surrender.
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The rules of combat are as per the standard scenario: You and the kids will start off at opposite ends of an enclosed space about the size of an NBA basketball court. You have no weapons, no protective gear except an athletic cup, and are wearing nothing but runner’s shirt, pants and running shoes. The children are similarly dressed and unarmed. Beyond that, anything goes; you can gouge, bite, punch, kick, slam their little heads into the floor, pick up one kid and swing him like a hammer. The children have somehow been brainwashed or trained to attack you until they are physically incapable of fighting or you are beaten; otherwise they are ordinary, healthy five-year-olds.
Now, here’s the thing; **the more kids you beat the more money you win, and it’s a progressive scale! ** Your minimum bid is 3 kids, and the payscale goes as such:
Children - Marginal Pay - Total Pay
3 - $1000 - $1,000
4- $2000 - $3,000
5 - $3000 - $6,000
6 - $4000 - $10,000
7 - $6000 - $16,000
8 - $8000 - $24,000
9 - $10000 - $34,000
10 - $12000 - $46,000
11 - $14000 - $60,000
12 - $16000 - $76,000
13 - $18000 - $94,000
14 - $20000 - $114,000
15 - $22000 - $136,000
16 - $25000 - $161,000
17 - $28000 - $189,000
18 - $31000 - $220,000
19 - $34000 - $254,000
20 - $38000 - $290,000
21 - $43000 - $333,000
22 - $49000 - $392,000
23 - $56000 - $448,000
24 - $64000 - $512,000
25 - $73000 - $585,000
26 - $83000 - $668,000
27 - $94000 - $762,000
28 - $105,000 - $867,000
29 - $133,000 - $1,000,000
For Kid #30 and above, add $150,000 per kid. You may not bid higher than 100, or we’ll run out of kids. Remember: You must defeat the entire total of kids you bid on or you win nothing. If you bid 14 kids, you fight 14 kids. Beat them all and you get $114,000; beat just 13, you get nothing.
RickJay Productions will assume emergency care and surgery costs to repair your injuries and will pay for up to one week’s recuperative stay in the hospital. RickJay Productions will also pay for your travel to New York City, or future sites of competitions, and hotel stay, providing you don’t weasel out.
So I ask again:
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Would you play?
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WHAT IS YOUR BID? Would you adjust your bidding strategy based on the two people you’re bidding against? If so, how?
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And what would you pay for good seats at MSG to watch this magnificent sporting event?
Disclaimers
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Although RickJay Productions has arranged for legal immunity from criminal charges for all participants, RickJay Productions cannot make any guarantee of freedom from your own conscience or the judgment of a supreme being.
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Notwithstanding #1 above, RickJay Productions does not condone, support, suggest or advocate beating up children or any other sort of illegal behaviour in any other context.
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You forever waive, decline, and concede to RickJay Productions all rights and claims to revenues stemming from broadcast, reproduction and merchandising of the event, and agree that prize money, if earned in accordance with the rules of the competition, is the only monetary gain you will receive, aside from travel, room and board to the place of the competition, and emergency medical expenses as needed.
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Of course I’m not fucking serious, so please don’t tell me I’m a bastard. If it makes you feel better, pretend that RickJay Productions has invented an android that looks, sounds, feels and smells exactly like a five-year-old, has identical levels of strength, dexterity, speed and innate sense of tactics and aggression, is identical in weaknesses and the manner in which it can be injured to a real kid, but has no feelings and is just a robot.
