PANAMA CITY, FLA. — The one they call Naco faces his opponent, fist raised, trying to ignore TV cameras, jeers from spring-break revelers and women in itsy-bitsy bikinis a few yards away.
Standing in the center of a boxing ring on a stage erected on the beach, the diminutive Syracuse University sophomore is tied, one best-of-three set apiece, in the USA Rock Paper Scissors League's inaugural collegiate tournament.
A referee gives the signal. The competitors pound their fists, one, two, three times.
Naco throws a clenched hand -- rock. Stone Thrower, a sunburned University of Oklahoma student in a backward baseball cap, extends two outstretched fingers -- scissors.
Rock beats scissors. Naco is one throw from victory.
The thousands of raucous spectators on the beach below roar and raise plastic cups, a red wave rippling across the crowd of skin.
Winning carries more than bragging rights: The champion will score $20,000 for tuition. Winners of rock-paper-scissors tournaments at nearly two dozen colleges across the country were flown here by the sponsor, PepsiCo's AMP Energy drink, to compete against one another and wild-card players plucked off the beach.
Off to the side of the stage, a tall, bald man in a bright blue shirt and white shorts dotted with lobsters grins and takes a picture. He is Matti Leshem, commissioner of the USA Rock Paper Scissors League. The Los Angeles marketer brought the child's game to casinos, and now he's turning it into a spring break sport.
"Your brains got you into college, but you're going to use your fists to pay for it," he yelled to the crowd before the match.
Leshem is intent on exploring -- and exploiting -- the sexy side of a game usually reserved for schoolyards.
The 46-year-old uses buxom women in bikinis to promote events, brings in beer and energy drink companies as sponsors, and strikes television deals such as the one to broadcast these finals later this month on MTVU, the cable network's college channel.
His latest angle: Pitch rock-paper-scissors as a way to help students pay for school, a scholarship sport that requires brains rather than athletic talent. The game has a low barrier to entry: It requires no equipment, and, he likes to say, it's so simple that even a one-armed person can play. In the game, rock smashes scissors, scissors cut paper, paper smothers rock. When each player throws the same hand, it's a stalemate.
