BOOKIE CHALLENGE SPECIAL EDITION

TRIBUTE ARTICLE IN MEMORY OF DAVID MICHAEL UHL

INTRODUCTION: A SPECIAL SHOUT-OUT TO XINA MARIE UHL (David Uhl's wife)

I could have never written the proceeding article concerning the life and death of David Uhl if not for Xina Uhl's help. I emailed Xina at the end of this past May, just shortly after her husband David Uhl had passed away. In my email to Xina, I had requested a brief biography of David's life so that I could write a tribute article about David and what he meant to the Bookie Challenge competition. To my surprise, Xina expeditiously emailed me back with the information that I had requested. For starters, as a courtesy to Xina, I had waited for a little time to first pass after David's death before contacting her, as I knew she was going through the most difficult time of her life. Consequently, upon receiving her email, I quickly read it and was somewhat taken aback--but in a good way. To her credit, I knew right off the bat, that is, I knew right after reading her entire email, that Xina is exceptionally smart and that she is a fantastic writer, and one who has a prolific command of the English language. The more I thought about her email, the more I understood why David fell in love with her, and that's because Xina's email was so intelligently written that I, as a person who loves to write, was tremendously impressed by what she wrote. It should be needless to say that David had to have known that Xina was a very smart individual before he took that leap of faith and married her. In fact, Xina would go on to become a history professor, which was so fitting in that she would marry an equally intelligent person in David. They were not only two well-read human beings but they were also two people very much in love with each other. In essence, one could have easily said back then that their marriage was one that was made in Heaven. What's more, when it came time for me to fully get an idea of David's personal history so that I could pen a tribute piece in his honor, who better than Xina to provide it? After all, nobody knew what made David tick, or knew his inner-most idiosyncrasies more than did his beloved wife of 40 years. With that in mind, in the below tribute that I wrote about David, I incorporated--nearly by verbatim--much of Xina's email because it was so poignantly and compellingly written that no writing on my part could ever replace her words. Again, the following article could not have been written if not for Xina's invaluable input, and with that being said, I trust that everybody reading the below tribute will find it very interesting, but above all, I hope that everybody will come to thoroughly enjoy it.

SAD SHOCKER DEVASTATES THE BOOKIE CHALLENGE!

THE "FRIEND OF GOD" HAS MOVED ON, BUT IS NOW AT A BETTER PLACE

This past off-season the Bookie Challenge competition suffered another heavyhearted loss that once again involved the death of one of its members. More specifically, David M. Uhl, who goes by the username of "Theopholis" in the Bookie Challenge competition, unexpectedly passed away on May 15, 2026. Sadly, his untimely death marked the fifth time within the last five off-seasons that the competition has lost either a Bookie Challenge participant or the spouse of a Bookie Challenge participant. This time around, the Bookie Challenge competition lost one of its most revered members when David Uhl, who was an 11-year veteran of the handicapping competition, and who was also one of the most popular competitors of the storied Bookie Challenge contest, suddenly passed away after finally succumbing to a series of health issues that roughly spanned over the course of the last five years of his life. Incredibly, David Uhl was actually the second death that has befallen the Bookie Challenge competition within the last seven months. Explicitly, a one-time member of the competition who was known by his username of "Jintfan", passed away this past November after a bout with cancer, of which the cancer was attributed to his time spent in lower Manhattan after the 9/11 terrorist bombing. However, Jintfan's death was nowhere near as shocking as was David Uhl's death, and mainly because Jintfan had only participated in one regular season of a Bookie Challenge competition, which was back in the Bookie Challenge's second overall season that took place in 2012. What's more, Jintfan quit that season's competition before the start of that season's postseason, and so in sum he only handicapped one regular season of a Bookie Challenge season. In addition, the reason "Jintfan" quit the competition before his first postseason was because of a homophobic incident that transpired on the old ESPN message board. To be exact, Jintfan egregiously quit the Bookie Challenge competition because of a couple of gay slurs that had been posted by two members of the now defunct Yankees message board, or the old Yankees board that used to be located back then on one of ESPN's websites. In contrast to Jintfan's inauspicious one-time season in the Bookie Challenge, "Theopholis" participated in 11 overall competitions and was one of the more popular Bookie Challenge members, and one who was known for his eccentricity and his wry sense of humor. Above all, "Theo" was a highly personable poster who, unlike Jintfan, never had a beef with anyone who frequented the old ESPN message boards nor did he ever have any disputes with anyone on the Bookie Challenge's present message board. Simply put, David Uhl (aka Theopholis) was a one-of-a-kind poster who never knocked heads with anybody on the message boards. To his credit, David always treated everybody on the boards, or everybody on social media for that matter, with the utmost respect.

Another ill-fated handicapper of the Bookie Challenge competition was Joe Candora, or better known by his username in the Bookie Challenge competition as "xjoeyx". Unfortunately, "Smokin' Joe" was another actual member of the competition who passed away and whose death preceded those of Theopholis and Jintfan. In the case of Joey, the actual date of his death is not clearly known, but he passed away sometime in September of 2022. Just before the start of that September, the Biased Nihilist had last talked to Joey when he was in the hospital at Raleigh, North Carolina. Back then the Biased Nihilist was attempting to get Joey to rejoin the Bookie Challenge after he had quit participating in the competition two years earlier because of health problems. Interestingly, Joey had been with the Challenge competition ever since the Bookie Challenge's inaugural season in 2011 and he would go on to participate for the first-nine Bookie Challenge competitions until he had to quit after being diagnosed with mouth cancer. The two other deaths surrounding Bookie Challenge members were heartbreakers that saw two long-tenured Bookie Challenge handicappers each lose their longtime spouses. Those handicappers were James Hawkins (BC username "moemonie") and Donald Bucciarelli (BC username "dbucc"). As it pertains to "moemonie" (aka James Hawkins) he lost his wife Brenda after 44 years of marriage in the off-season of 2023, or on May 24th of that year to be exact. However, much to the dismay of the Bookie Challenges competition, moemonie is no longer an active member of the Bookie Challenge after having handicapped 12 seasons of the competition (Challenge years #3 thru #14), Incidentally, moemonie lives in the same neighborhood as does the Biased Nihilist, and presently he lives a couple of blocks from the Nihilist in Greenwood, South Carolina. As it concerns "dbucc" (aka Donald Bucciarelli), he lost his wife Diane of 43 years on April 30, 2021, when she died suddenly at their home in Westfield, New Jersey. Just like "Theopholis", "dbucc" was one of the league's more popular and liked handicappers, and one--who like "Theo"--has a great sense of humor and who loves telling jokes. Thus his Bookie Challenge moniker was coined as "The Joker". At first, when Diane died in the off-season of 2021, it was feared that "The Donald" was not going to participate in that year's Bookie Challenge competition (Challenge year #11). However, he conveyed before the start of year #11's competition that he was going to go insane if he didn't get his mind right, and so he ultimately decided to continue his Bookie Challenge career, of which the competition of Challenge year #11 was going to be dbucc's 7th consecutive competition at the time. And man, oh man, what a competition he had in Challenge year #11!

Amazingly, in Challenge year #11, dbucc would go on to record his best season ever in the Bookie Challenge competition. In fact, after dbucc started pulling away in that year's Red Zone divisional race at the end of that year's regular season, the rest of the league couldn't help but think that his recently and dearly departed wife Diane was looking down on him from Heaven and blessing him with all sorts of good luck. Eventually, the "Joker" would go on in the ensuing postseason of Challenge year #11 to win his first ever Bookie Challenge championship, and he did as much in spectacular fashion. He outlasted Tony Soprano by seven points, 39 pts vs 32 pts, to win the overall title after he compiled an overall and ungodly best-bet record of 33-18-0 for an outstanding .647 winning percentage (regular season and postseason combined). His performance was good enough to be honored with that year's Swami Award (given to participant with the top best-bet record for the regular season and postseason combined). What's more, at the end of the competition of Challenge year #11, an emotional dbucc couldn't help but dedicate his incredible journey to the memory of his beloved wife Diane. Not for nothing, but Donald's remarkable season of Challenge year #11, a season in which he faced the worst time of his life after losing his beloved wife, and a season in which he persevered despite the heartbreaking turmoil he was going through, made for a watershed moment at that specific period of time for the Bookie Challenge competition. Not only did dbucc have a breakout season after his wife passed away, but also his story was such a phenomenal human-interest story that it changed the Bookie Challenge competition forever, meaning the competition became more personal and its overall membership took on the feel of being a "family". To put it differently, the competition's storylines within its weekly reviews would not continue to just be about handicappers and their respective handicapping statistics. On the contrary, the storylines would take on a life of their own and start to also include occasional weekly-review writeups about the everyday lives of its special clique of members. All in all, the Donald's season of Challenge year #11 was one of the most celebrated Bookie Challenge championships to ever grace the competition. Everybody was pulling for him to win it all, everybody! Conversely, this year's incredible human-interest story--that of the off-season death of David Uhl (also known as the "Friend of God")--is a little bit more somber, but it is nevertheless an extraordinary story in its own right, and it's a story that has to be told.

To begin with, unlike dbucc, "Theopholis" never had that special breakout season that resulted in an overall Bookie Challenge championship. Oh no, by all accounts "Theo" was just a slightly below average handicapper. As a matter of record, he ended his 11-year Bookie Challenge career with an all-time best-bet record of 216-225-10 for a subpar winning percentage of .490, of which the best-bet winning percentage ranked as the third worst all-time among all handicappers who qualified for the Bookie Challenge's all-time records. What was more disappointing for Theopholis was that the "Friend of God" had only one sensational season in his Bookie Challenge career, and he had it in Challenge year #5, when he handicapped his sophomore season of the competition. In retrospect, one could have pegged Theo's sophomore season (Challenge year #5) as his only "breakout season", so to speak. However, all things considered, apart from Theo's banner year of Challenge year #5, he was a study in handicapping mediocrity, finishing six out of his 11 years in the competition with best-bet records below .500 winning percentages. And although he only had four seasons in which he posted best-bet records slightly above .500 winning percentages, Theopholis did manage to finish one year with a highly respectable best-bet winning percentage of .609, of which accordingly he pulled off the feat in Challenge year #5. But for some reason, Theopholis could never get it totally together when it came to fully participating in his yearly Bookie Challenge competitions, of which his proclivity for missing critical outings throughout 11 overall seasons doomed his chances of ever winning an overall Bookie Challenge competition. For example, the closest Theo ever came to winning an overall Bookie Challenge championship in a postseason occurred back in Challenge year #12, when he finished in 4th place out of 10 handicappers who had participated in that season's postseason.

Theo's wife Xina Uhl, who knew Theopholis better than anybody on the planet, said it best in her earlier email to the Biased Nihilist as it concerned Theo's habitual procrastinations: "I recall him...always trying to sign up for the various challenges which he never could win because he had such trouble with organization and submitting things on time."

Oh, and when Xina mentioned that Theo had trouble "submitting things on time", she wasn't joking. Yes sir, she hit the nail on its head with that particular statement. To be sure, no handicapper in the history of the Bookie Challenge competition missed more scoring opportunities, failed to post more of his weekly picks, or had more disqualified entries than did Theopholis--and it wasn't even close! Indeed, in the 11 seasons that Theo handicapped the Bookie Challenge competition, he screwed up his weekly picks an astounding 39 overall times. To this day, those 39 times serve as the all-time record for botched weekly selections by a handicapper in the history of the Bookie Challenge. For the record, Theopholis never had a season in which he participated fully in a competition, including his so-called "breakout" season of Challenge year #5, of which he only missed week #2 of that year's regular season. But apart from the one miss in Challenge year #5 (Theo's sophomore season of the competition), the big-time Pittsburgh Steelers fan, meaning Theo, averaged slightly over three screw-ups per year for the other 10 years he had handicapped the Bookie Challenge competition. On the whole, Theo's posting transgressions throughout his Bookie Challenge career caused him to leave a lot of possible points on the table, and there's no telling what Theo could have accomplished in the Bookie Challenge competition if not for his bevy of missed selections of weekly picks. As an example, Theopholis missed posting entire selections for two Bookie Challenge postseasons (Challenge years' #6 and #15) and he also missed posting two playoff rounds in the postseason of Challenge year #9. Another costly mistake that Theo made was that he bungled his preseason Super Bowl selections a record-setting four times. For starters, preseason Super Bowl selections can only be posted in the first week of a Bookie Challenge competition, and at the end of the last two rounds of a Challenge postseason, a handicapper can win 15 possible points if he correctly selects the two teams that will play each other in a Super Bowl and which of those two teams will win the Super Bowl. With the aforementioned kept in mind, in Challenge years #7 and #15, Theo had his Super Bowl selections disqualified for failure to post his selections on time. Worse yet, Theo failed to post any Super Bowl selections altogether for Challenge years' #10 and #13.

But to be fair to Theo, and because not too many handicappers subsequently win bonus points off preseason Super Bowl selections anyway, the possible points Theopholis could have won for his muffed Super Bowl selections paled in comparison to the slew of points he could have won by posting his selections for a handful of Thanksgiving-day outings. More to the point, the stakes are a lot higher if a handicapper misses posting his Thanksgiving day picks. If there's one outing in the regular season that a handicapper must absolutely make, it's that of the special Thanksgiving-day outing. On the Bookie Challenge's Thanksgiving holiday weekend, all handicappers are required to post two full sets of weekly selections for the week, one on Thanksgiving day and the other on the Sunday of the Thanksgiving weekend. However, the extra points available to win on a Thanksgiving-day outing is by far the most points a handicapper can win in a single outing of the competition's regular season, and unlike preseason Super Bowl selections, the points that can be won on Thanksgiving day are credited to a handicapper immediately. Unfortunately for Theo, he missed posting his selections for Thanksgiving-day outings a recording-setting and all-time high of five times--FIVE TIMES! But if there's one handicapper who could take all the egregious mishaps in stride, it was Theopholis--the "Friend of God". Theo was a character. He loved the Pittsburgh Steelers, and by extension, he loved the Bookie Challenge competition, but he never took things too seriously. To him the Bookie Challenge was fun, it was an escape for him, an entertainment he could indulge in. Regardless, just to illustrate what a "character" Theo was, he turned the Bookie Challenge competition on its head when he proffered his excuse for missing a crucial outing in one early season within his Bookie Challenge career. He just threw it out there. The funny thing was that nobody had asked him for an excuse. But just the same, he told everybody in the competition that he missed posting his weekly selections because he had to attend a gay Scott-Irish wedding.

Oh boy.

Theo never lived it down, as the Nihilist was all over him. In fact, back then (in week #6 of Challenge year #6) the Nihilist facetiously derided Theo for his gay-Scott-Irish-wedding excuse, and so much so that the Nihilist's sarcastic disparagement of Theo became an on-going joke for many years of the competition. Back then, the Nihilist used an opening line from a song entitled "Ride Captain Ride" (sung by the band named Blue Images) to chide Theopholis, as in the Nihilist posted the following excerpt to Theo:

Seventy-three men sailed up
From the San Francisco Bay
Rolled off of their ship, and here's what they had to say
"We're callin' everyone to ride along to another shore
We can laugh our lives away and be free once more"

Comically, the joke was that the Nihilist insinuated that "Seventy-three GAY men sailed up from the San Francisco Bay". But if anybody could take the Nihilist's ribbing, it was Theo. Without question, he had a magnanimity that was incomparable. Put simply, he was the most even-keeled individual that the Nihilist ever crossed in his many years on social media. What's more is that Theopholis had a unique personality, and one that made him popular on not only the various message boards he had frequented but also on Facebook. He was smart, witty, and affable. And yet, there was a dark side to David M. Uhl that only his wife Xina Marie Uhl deeply knew about. Sorrowfully, there was a painful hurt that inwardly festered behind David's external facade. If one scrolls up to the top of this article, David's obituary tells about a fascinating life, that he earned his Bachelor of Science degree at the university of Arizona State, that later on in his life he worked as a rocket scientist for Boeing, and so forth and so on. But when juxtaposing the written highlights from his obituary next to his picture in this article's headlines, of which David is shown in a bar raising a glass of beer, as if he were giving everybody he knew a special toast of friendship, one can only guess what's really the story behind the picture. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and in the above picture of David that's shown in the headlines, there truly are a thousand words that speak to the picture. And although We just can't hear them all, the words are nonetheless there and spoken.

To begin with, the picture was taken on January 18, 2015, and in the picture David had worked his way to the bar in the wake of having knee surgery just 36 hours earlier. What's even more interesting is the choice of beer that David is about to drink. As a homebrewer, David could fully appreciate his choice. It's called "Allagash Curieux" (pronounced "AL-uh-gash" "CURE-ee-oh"--rhymes with curio). The beer is a Belgian Tripel that's aged in Bourbon barrels, and the beer is one of the highest rated in Belgium. Overall, the picture of David at the bar and his choice of beer illustrates the unique character that David was known to have. But if one looks really close at the picture (blown-up face of picture now shown on right), if one penetrates what's behind David's seemingly sad eyes, one will come to find a sobering truth that can only be conveyed by David's wife Xina:

"Dave was a very private person who suffered challenges in life and ultimately destroyed his body through alcoholism. This does not diminish the good about him, but as the person closest to him, it is hard to know that he suffered so much and did not feel able to take the journey to recovery. We met when I was 15 years old, and we married 40 years ago in 1986, when I was 19 and he was 22...His brilliance and intelligence in addition to his strange sense of humor attracted me." But in her email to the Biased Nihilist, Xina would come to reveal a brutally honest back story as to why David drank so much. "Dave's father was an alcoholic who sobered up after a year long recovery process, then promptly contracted cancer and died when Dave was 15. His turbulent childhood and his alcoholic father predisposed him to substance abuse before I ever met him. He also inherited ADHD, which is correlated with substance abuse. We did not know about his diagnosis until about 20 years ago, and it definitely explained a lot to me. He was close to his two siblings, Jeannie and Matt. Unfortunately, both siblings died in separate car accidents (one 30 years ago and the other 15 years ago). He could not speak about them even years later, and that was one reason he drank: to dull the pain of their loss. He was not interested in therapy because in his mind it only brought up pain for no good reason."

In Xina's off-season email to the Biased Nihilist, she related to him how the deaths of David's immediate family members had affected him deeply, of which her words were not an overstatement by any means. The pain David held inside after losing his father, his sister, and then his brother was real. And for one to fully understand just how real that pain can manifest itself in one's soul, look no further than to the recent death of Hayden Panettiere, who died this past off-season on August 16th. Hayden was a popular actress that lost her only sibling, her brother Jansen in 2011 (Hayden coincidentally lost her brother about the same time David lost his brother Matt). Just two years ago, Hayden was interviewed by PEOPLE magazine, and she said about her brother's death in that issue's cover story that "He [Jansen] was my only sibling, and it was my job to protect him...When I lost him, I felt like I lost half of my soul." She then added "I will always be heartbroken about it. I will never be able to get over it. No matter how many years go by, I will never get over his loss". So as one can readily see, David losing both siblings, Jeannie and Matt, was a double whammy when compared to Hayden Panettiere losing her only sibling Jansen. What's even more thought-provoking is how both Hayden and David had dabbled in substance abuse to deal with their emotional hurt, albeit that Hayden's substance abuse led directly to her death (Opioid/Fentanyl overdose). However, in the case of David, and according to his wife Xina, his heavy drinking spawned several health problems, and unfortunately--those health problems played a big part in David's physical decline.

To hear it from Xina, David just couldn't get it together because of his heavy drinking. In her email to the Nihilist, Xina recounted some of the early warning signs that David refused to take seriously: "When Covid required him to stay home from work for about a year (during which he was paid), it was hard on his mental health. Most of his friends moved away from California during this time. Then, due to family issues, my much-needed career change, and the opportunity to buy a mini ranch in our home state of Arizona, we moved back to Globe, where we had met all those years ago. He worked in California for about 6 months before joining me here. He briefly tried some other jobs, but due to several factors, he ultimately retired and applied himself to drinking. Throughout the years, whenever we discussed retirement, he always said he wanted to work until he died. In June 2024 he was diagnosed with cirrhosis and told to stop drinking or die. He managed to stop drinking for a while, but without a commitment to recovery, he inevitably relapsed and died at home on Friday, May 15th." Intriguingly, when David was diagnosed in June of 2024 with cirrhosis, later that summer, around mid-August, the Nihilist had called David on the phone. But in their telephone conversation David never indicated to the Nihilist that he had been diagnosed with cirrhosis. The reason the Nihilist had called David in the first place was because the 14th annual Bookie Challenge competition was fixing to get underway, but the Nihilist at the time had yet to receive a commitment from David to participate in that year's upcoming Bookie Challenge competition, of which the competition would have been David's 11th consecutive Bookie Challenge contest. Today, however, when the Nihilist looks back at their conversation before the start of the 14th annual Bookie Challenge competition, he has come to intensely regret the aforementioned phone call with David.

As already mentioned, David was an easy-going poster on social media. To say the least, because of his unique and somewhat mystifying personality, David attracted many followers on Social media, especially on the old ESPN message boards. David was a die-hard Yankee fan who regularly frequented the Yankees' message board on ESPN's website, and it was on that specific message board that David (username Theopholis) had a long-running thread that he had created and entitled "Random Thoughts". The Random Thoughts thread was wildly popular, and to get a general idea of what the thread was about, just think of the TV series Seinfeld, and how within the series Jerry Seinfeld and George Constanza comically convinced a group of TV producers that they had an idea to create a "TV show about nothing". Likewise, Theo's Random Thoughts thread was essentially a "thread about nothing", and his brainchild generally contained random but highly interesting ideas about mundane stuff, but stuff that Theopholis knew people would find engaging. One person who not only found the Random Thoughts thread fascinating but also entertaining was the Biased Nihilist. In fact, the Nihilist found Theo's thread so captivating that he began posting in the thread and eventually the Nihilist and Theo got acquainted with each other. What's more, once Theo and the Nihilist really got to know each other a little bit better, it wasn't long before the two found out that they each harbored a tremendous love for World War II history and also early Soviet history. Additionally, they also discovered that they shared a mutual affinity for reading, one that was so strong that they promptly recommended to each other books to read.

Equally important to note was that during the course of their initial nine-year rapport, the pair became genuine "cyber-friends", to a point that they had numerous conversations by telephone, sometimes talking for hours on end. Then came the point in time when ESPN's message boards came to an end, but because the Nihilist was running his Bookie Challenge message board at the time ESPN discontinued its message boards, the Nihilist had invited most of the regulars from the ESPN's Yankee board to come over to his Bookie Challenge message board. Eventually, a good number of regular posters made the transition to the Bookie Challenge's message board. It was soon thereafter that Theopholis tagged along, started posting on the Bookie Challenge's message board, then decided to join the Bookie Challenge competition. Joining the competition wasn't a tough decision for Theopholis, mainly because he was a big-time Pittsburgh Steelers fan and he also knew most everybody who was already in the Bookie Challenge competition, so the transition from the old Yankees message board on ESPN to the Bookie Challenge message board and eventually to the Bookie Challenge competition was a fairly smooth one for Theopholis. Again, as already mentioned, Theopholis would go on to participate in 11 overall Bookie Challenge competitions. However, he had joined the Challenge competition in Challenge year #4 and he would participate for 10 straight handicapping contests that traversed all the way through Challenge year #13. It was the off-season in between Challenge year #13 and Challenge year #14 that the Nihilist didn't hear from Theo before the start of the 14th annual competition, so it was then that the Nihilist made the aforementioned phone call to Theopholis that, to this very day, he regrets immensely.

If there is one thing that the Nihilist absolutely abhors is when a longtime veteran of the Bookie Challenge decides to stop participating in his yearly competitions, especially if those leaving the competition are popular handicappers, as was Theopholis when he decided to forgo his 11th consecutive Bookie Challenge contest. It should go without saying that the Nihilist hates quitters, because to him the old saying speaks a lot of truth, as in "quitters never win, and winners never quit". Keeping the aforementioned in mind, when the Nihilist contacted Theopholis in the latter part of the 2024 off-season, he pressed Theo to change his mind and commit himself to the 14th annual Bookie Challenge competition. But Theo told the Nihilist over the phone that he hadn't been feeling well and that he might "not last through the whole competition". The Nihilist, however, was not going to take "no" for an answer, so he pressed Theo even further: "what do you mean you might not make it through the competition?"

"Because I might die", theo replied raising his voice a notch.

But at the time, the Nihilist couldn't believe Theopholis. After all, earlier in the year, on March 6, 2024, the Nihilist had just survived a life-threatening heart attack, in which he almost died. Worse yet, shortly after his first heart attack, the Nihilist, at the time, was given about a year-and-a-half to two years to live with his present heart condition, unless he qualified for a small pump to be attached to the left ventricle of his heart, called an LVAD (Left Ventricular Assist Device). Subsequently, and luckily, the Nihilist was approved for the LVAD surgery and today he is doing much better and has been given a better life expectancy than the original two years or so that he was given to live without an LVAD. Still, though, when Theo had told the Nihilist in the latter part of the 2024 off-season that he might die, the Nihilist was taken aback because he thought he was the one who should have already died. It was from that viewpoint that the Nihilist couldn't see the forest for the trees when it came to Theo quitting the Bookie Challenge competition. Myopically speaking, all the Nihilist saw at the end of his line of sight was his Bookie Challenge competition, and he foolishly overlooked everything in between, to include Theo's "I might die" statement. Selfishly, but wrongly, the Nihilist had thought back then that Theopholis was exaggerating his health issues just so he didn't have to fork out $50 to participate in another Bookie Challenge competition. As it turned out, Theo won out over the Nihilist and did not participate in the 14th annual competition, of which the Nihilist took Theo's departure as a rude slap in the face and a huge slight to his competition. Regardless, even though the two ended the bitter telephone conversation on amicable terms, afterward there was a disconnect in their "cyber-friendship", meaning they stopped communicating with each other. Be that as it may, throughout the rest of 2024, the Nihilist had seriously thought about contacting Theo on many occasions, if anything just to say hello. The Nihilist , however, just didn't want to be a nuisance and so he left well enough alone. Essentially, the Nihilist had to swallow a bitter pill in which he had to consequently resign himself to having lost Theopholis for good from the Bookie Challenge competition. Then a funny thing happened around mid-August of the 2025 off-season as the Nihilist wa preparing to host the 15th annual Bookie Challenge competition.

Much to the pleasant surprise of the Biased Nihilist, out of the blue and out of nowhere, Theopholis called the Nihilist on a Saturday night in mid-August of the 2025 off-season. The two quickly caught up with what was going on with their respective lives, and it was then that the Nihilist found out just how seriously Theo's overall health had diminished. At the time of Theo's surprise phone call to the Nihilist, Theopholis told the Nihilist that around six years earlier, or around 2019, he had problems with his pancreas, which caused a blood disorder that he couldn't get rid of. As a consequence, the disorder interfered with his internal organs, which led to Theo having to deal with kidney problems for a couple of years. He then subsequently developed liver problems on top of the kidney problems, but the medications he took for the liver ailment, along with a change of diet, miraculously cleared up his kidney issues, or at least to the extent that Theo's liver performance had improved to a 97 percent functionality. In that same phone conversation of August 2025 between Theo and the Nihilist, Theo would also convey to the Nihilist that, even though he soldiered on through the handful of years he had to deal with his physical ailments, Theo added that he had to go to the emergency room several times throughout the previous four years, of which he had to be hospitalized on three separate occasions.

Moreover, and also back in mid-August of 2025, and after Theopholis had revealed to the Nihilist all of his health problems he had been going through, the disappointing news threw the Nihilist for a loop and made him feel agonizingly remorseful for not understanding the seriousness of Theopholis' health problems that the Nihilist had brushed off in the previous off-season of 2024. To be fair to the Nihilist, back in the off-season of 2024, Theopholis at the time never went into any personal details about his health hardships, so the Nihilist had no way of knowing that Theo's health had been slowly going downhill. But because Theo is Theo, and because he was a kindhearted person, and because he was tremendously easy-going, Theo unknowingly turned the Nihilist's regretful mood into a good one after he told the Nihilist that one of the reasons for his surprise call was that he wanted to come back and participate in the 15th annual competition. Of course, the Nihilist gleefully accepted him back with open arms, and just like that, as if by a snap of a finger, everything was all good again between Theopholis and the Nihilist. But inasmuch as Theo grinded out the 15th annual competition, and even though Theo had all intentions of returning for the 16th annual Bookie Challenge competition, life for David M. Uhl--the "Friend of God"--would take a misfortunate left turn for the worst in the off-season of 2026. In early May of 2026, David fell ill and had to be hospitalized again, but this time around--the "Friend of God" would never fully recover. On May the 10th, his wife Xina tried her best to keep everyone abreast of what was going on with David, and she did as much by going on Facebook and posting the following updates:

"Dear friends and family, Dave is in the hospital in Phoenix, quite ill. I know that God is surrounding him and holding him up. Your prayers and kind wishes are also greatly appreciated."

1st update: "Thank you so much for your prayers and kind support. Although Dave is weak and tired and still has a difficult road ahead, I am feeling more hopeful now."

2nd update: "Wow, you are all so amazing! I'm feeling the love. Dave should be heading to Haven in Globe today sometime where he can hopefully gain strength to come home."FINAL UPDATE: "Things have changed again. David Uhl will be coming home on hospice, hopefully tomorrow or Monday. He's looking forward to being home after so much time in the hospital. We so appreciate everyone's support and love."

Subsequently, David did make it home but shortly thereafter, on May 15, 2026, David peacefully passed away. He died in a tranquil manner that the great poet William Cullen Bryant BEST described and wrote in the last stanza of his lengthy but epic poem called Thanatopsis:

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

On May 14, 2026, with all of the inner strength that Xina Marie could muster, she once again posted on David's Facebook page and posted the following and deeply emotional post:

"As David Uhl rests in his hospice bed in our home, I'm reminded of the many adventures he and I have taken over the past 40 years of our marriage. From watching babies in an eagles nest over an Alaskan bay to climbing the Acropolis in Athens to hearing the call to prayer in Istanbul. But those are the highlights when most of our days have been sunrises and sunsets, work and rest. Even when we were at odds, I've always known the truth of his love for me, and that makes me blessed. What is death but another adventure to undertake? He is taking this journey without me, and there's nothing I can do but accept this turn in the road of our lives."

What's obvious about the heart-rendering statement above, is that both David and Xina profoundly and genuinely loved each, and more importantly, they stayed true to their wedding vows until the end. What's also clear is that both of them stuck it out through thick and thin, for better or worse, and they did so by doing the one thing that only half of today's married couples sincerely undertake, of which is to put in the work--the really hard work--that's needed to keep a marriage from being torn apart. David was 62 years old when he left this world, but should have lived longer if not for the alcohol. Still, he was very fortunate to have found his true love in life, Xina Marie, of which not everybody could be so lucky as to find true love in a lifetime. David had a good life. He had a great job as a rocket scientist working for Boeing, and seriously, how many people can say they know a real-life rocket scientist? Not many, that's for sure. And what about David's good fortune of having worked hard in life and found fantastic paying jobs? Heck, when also factoring in Xina's substantial income, David and Xina had a plentiful life, one that allowed them to vacation to many exotic destinations, allowed them to significantly provide for their daughter, allowed them to enjoy life with family and friends, and best of all, allowed them to lovingly splurge on their grandchildren.

To have known David, whether in real life or on social media, was something special. The Nihilist got to know David on the old ESPN message board and then on his Bookie Challenge message board, of which when adding up the years, the Nihilist had come to know David for roughly 17 to 18 years on social media. Eventually, the Biased Nihilist was proud to have called David a friend, for they shared a lot of common interests. One of those interests was the Bookie Challenge competition. Sure, even Xina knew that David was a mediocre handicapper who never won an overall Bookie Challenge championship, but she may not have been privy to what David had accomplished very early on in his first couple of years of handicapping the Bookie Challenge contest.

First off, In Theo's rookie season in the competition of Challenge year #4 (2014), he had been honored with one of the most venerable Bookie Challenge awards--the "Brain Piccolo Award", which is a year-end honor awarded to a participant who displays the best sportsmanship while posting on the Bookie Challenge message board throughout a yearly competition. Second off, in the ensuing yearly competition, or the Bookie Challenge's 5th annual competition that took place in 2015, and of which was David's only breakout season of his Challenge career, he absolutely stunned the members of the league. At the time back then when David handicapped his sophomore season in the competition, the rest of the league took notice after Theo produced an incredible season of handicapping, one of which was so sensational that many veteran members of the competition seriously thought at the time that Theopholis was going to become one of the competition's better handicappers and possibly become a future Bookie Challenge champion. The reason the members of the Bookie Challenge field thought that way back then was because early in that season's regular season, Theopholis accomplished a handicapping feat that to this day is still an all-time, single-season Bookie Challenge record. Amazingly, Theopholis nailed his first-ever career 3-team parlay winner on the 4th week of that year's regular season. For those who are oblivious as to what is involved in winning a 3-team parlay competition, it's when a handicapper chooses three NFL picks in one combination that's referred to as a "parlay combination", and for a handicapper to win a 3-team parlay combo, he has to win all three selections within his combination, otherwise he loses the parlay combo. With that in mind, back in Challenge year #5, as just mentioned, Theopholis knocked down a 3-team parlay winner on the 4th weekend of that year's regular season...and then he nailed another parlay hit on the 5th week...and then he drilled another parlay hit on the 6th week! Never before in the history of the Bookie Challenge's competitions, to include this year's 16th annual competition, has a handicapper blasted out three consecutive parlay hits worth six-points apiece in one season of a Bookie Challenge competition except Theopholis! Oh, let's not get it wrong, over the span of the last 11 seasons, an inordinate amount of handicappers each connected on back-to-back 6-point parlay winners, too many to count, but not one of them could register that elusive third-straight 6-point parlay hit. To be realistic, Theo's all-time parlay record is one that will be extremely difficult for anyone to ever tie, much less break the extraordinary handicapping feat.

As a matter of record, Theo's remarkable handicapping campaign of Challenge year# 5 saw him establish career highs for his combined best-bet record of 28-18-1 (.609 winning percentage!), most points tallied (62 pts), and for the most 6-point parlay hits won (4). In addition, Theopholis won the overall number-one top seed in that year's divisional seeding that took place after week #8 of that year's regular season, and lastly, at the end of that year's regular season, Theo registered his first and only divisional championship, the Rogue Scholar divisional championship, of which he won by a landslide over second-place Driveline (45 pts vs 24 pts). Equally impressive, in the last week of the regular season of Challenge year #5, Theopholis garnered his 4th 6-point parlay winner to conclude his regular-season point total at 45 points, and in the process, he tied SmokeyMcPot for the most regular-season points accrued in the league, of which a tiebreaker was needed to determine which of the two handicappers would get credited with that year's regular-season championship. However, and unfortunately for Theo, he lost out to Smokey because of the league's first tiebreaker, which was most best-bets won in the regular season (Smokey 22 wins vs Theo 21 wins). Naturally, no one will ever know how far Theopholis could have gone in the postseason of Challenge year #5 if he had won that year's regular-season championship, especially when considering that he would have gone into that year's playoffs with the league's best scoring advantages. Of course, most readers of this tribute special must have already come to realize that Theopholis just didn't totally and mentally absorb the nuiances of the Bookie Challenge competition strongly enough to ever win an overall Bookie Challenge championship or ever win any prizes from the competition's jackpots. No, on the contray, Theo's Bookie Challenge legacy would be one marked by his unique personality and the levity that he provided on the Bookie Challenge's message board throughout the 11 years he participated in the competition. But even when he left us, David had to match dbucc's beloved wife Diane and so he had to somehow bless the competitiion from high above. Soon after the Nihilist had found out that David died, he worried that David's heartbreaking death was going to lower the amount of overall participants for this year's upcoming competition, and that the competition for the first-time ever was going to start off with less than at least 10 overall members. However, leave it to David to convince God into watching out for the Bookie Challenge competition, and so it came to pass that a small miracle was bestowed on the competition, as in this year's contest started out with an eye-popping 19 overall members. To this day the Nihilist is convinced that David was looking down on the competition from his newfound paradise and was just smiling away.

All in all, it should be needless to say that David M. Uhl was loved by all of his close followers on the internet, including the Biased Nihilist. Shoot, to the Nihilist the bond with David was something to celebrate. Besides, the two cyber-friends even named their beloved dogs with the same name...Lucy. On a comical side note, David's signature trademark that he used to close out all of his posts on the Bookie Challenge message board was as follows: "Theopholis the extemely below Mediocre!" The thing is that Theopholis was everything but mediocre, the Bookie Challenge competition notwithstanding. He was good-hearted, respectful, witty, eccentric, and he had a magnetic charisma. He was David M. Uhl. He was Thepholis. Speaking of which, throughout all the years the Nihilist had been acquainted with David, he never thought to ask David why he chose "Theopholis" as a username on social media, but after working on this tribute article in David's memory, the Nihilist's curiosity was so piqued that he had to look it up. What the Nihilist discovered is something that nobody else probably knows, maybe not even Xina, and with that being kept in mind what follows is the definition on Wikipedia of the word "Theopholis"....

Theophilus is the name or honorific title of the person to whom the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles are addressed (Luke 1:3, Acts 1:1). Theophilus is also written "Theophilos" (commonly misspelled as theopholis), which means "friend of God" or "beloved by God" in Greek.

Hmm, and there it is...so now we definitely know where Theopholis has gone to...and that's to be with his friend named God.

And for sure he is going to be missed...rest in peace, dear friend, rest in peace.