The holiday season (and an exciting contest) is upon us

One of our favorite holiday traditions are those devices that let you tear away a piece day-by-day until Christmas Eve, upon which the puzzle is complete and one is showered with gifts. Since our family disowned us in 1997, we’ve decided to renew this tradition here on YAYsports!. Here’s the deal:

1) We’ve created 30 customized Christmas cards, each featuring a different athlete in a touching holiday scenario. We’ll be sending out two per day, right up until Christmas Eve, to various blogs.

2) Every Monday-Friday morning, we’ll post a list of 5 possible blogs we may have sent the cards to that day. The 2 cards will go to 2 separate blogs, so 3 of the choices will be deadends.

3) Whichever readers come back to us first with the correct blog and the featured athlete on the card scores a point. When it’s all over whoever has the most points wins the contest.

Now, we imagine some blogs will post the card on their site, making your job easy. Others may not get our particular brand of sophisticated humor, so you may need to email them to ask to see it or get a description.

What does the winner get? The winner will be named The 2005 YAYsports! Best Person of the Year Who is the Person Who We Like This Year the Best. You’ll get control of the blog of your choice for an entire day, plus have your name (and picture if you want) in the sidebar for the first 6 months of 2006, designating you 2005 YAYsports! Best Person…

We’ll also be doing a press release in which you will be praised and complimented to ridiculous measure, as we recount the many ways in which we love you and describing why you’re so deserving.

Each morning, we’ll announce who scored the previous day’s points, and repost the updated countdown board, so that all may see the wonderful, beautiful cards that were sent out (click to see the large version):

The contest starts today – as in, right now, immediately. We’re going to start out simply to get rolling. Today only, we’re skipping the 5 choices and telling you exactly who we sent these to. The first card was sent to Deadspin. The second was sent to the fine folks over at Blogebrity.

First ones to get the answers in gets the points!

NOTE: If you are on the receiving end of a card, you can still participate, but you can’t have your own points. Also, somebody please tell us if this all makes sense – it does in our head, but that doesn’t count for much.