Randy Styles of South Bend, Indiana won the 6th annual Living Room Times Bowl Pick ’em Contest on Monday as Auburn beat Oregon for the BCS national championship.
Styles, a.k.a. “wolfmanbc,” finishes with 45 out of a possible 60 points, and a 25-10 prediction record. Remarkably, when New Year’s Day dawned, Styles was just 12-10, but he was perfect in 2011 with 13 consecutive correct predictions to end the contest, getting all of the BCS and other January bowls right.
John Presper, a.k.a. Joe Mama, finished second with 43 points and a 23-12 record. Jeff Freeze, also 23-12, finished third with 41 points. He would have won the contest if Oregon had won the title game.
Presper — who, like Styles and unlike Freeze, correctly picked Auburn as national champion — also could have won the contest, but his chances came earlier and weren’t so obvious at the time. Any of the following bowl games, had their result been different (and holding everything else constant), would have resulted in Presper winning the pool instead of Styles: New Orleans Bowl (Ohio-Troy); St. Petersburg Bowl (Southern Miss-Louisville); Texas Bowl (Illinois-Baylor); Sun Bowl (Notre Dame-Miami); or Outback Bowl (Florida-Penn State).
Doug Mataconis was fourth with 40 points (22-13). He is the only other contestant, aside from Presper and Freeze, who could have won if a single bowl game had turned out differently — namely the Rose Bowl. If Wisconsin had beaten TCU, and everything else had stayed the same, Mataconis would be the contest champion.
He is followed by David K. in fifth place with 39 points (22-13). Josh Rubin and Michael Rosenkrantz tied for sixth with 38 points on 22-13 records, but Rubin wins the tiebreaker because his predicted number of total points in the title game (38) is closer to the real total (41) than Rosenkrantz’s prediction (100).
Rounding out the top 10 are long-time leader Rachel Dulitz (37 points, 23-12), Brad Warbiany (37 pts, 20-15) and Karen Torgersen (36 pts, 20-15).
Full, final standings are visible to contestants here (along with everyone’s picks), and visible to everyone here. Contestants can play around with “what-if” scenarios — i.e., changing the results of particular games to see how the outcome would have been different — here.
Oregon closes out Pac-10 with a whimper, not a bang.
My money is on Stanford to win the Pac-12 next year.
With Luck and James both coming back, the Pac-12 North should be quite a race next year. Too bad Jacquizz Rodgers didn’t come back too, otherwise it would really have been a WAR!!!!!! But yeah, I’d put my money on Stanford too, especially with the Oregon-Stanford game being in Drunken Tree Country instead of at Autzen.
Now I think I know why you really wanted Washington to have more access to the Southern California schools…..easier games!! 🙂
6th place is a heck of a lot better than I thought I’d do about a week or two in… It ain’t a win, but placing is nice.
Maybe we’ll actually have a champion next year worthy of the title. Not to say that Auburn (or Oregon) were undeserving, but I think we’ve run the whole we-need-a-playoff thing into the ground. But in case you aren’t sure yet… here’s a good article.
I had a lot of fun Brendan!!! Thanks for running the bowl pick-em. Looking forward to the Basketball Pool!! Hope I can win that one too.
Dude, I allready admited I wanted the zipper because the conference slate would have been much easier. UCLA, Cal, and Colorado every year? Yes please.
PLUS if there was a zipper, next year could have pitted Oregon vs. Stanford in the Pac-12 championship game instead of mid way through the regular season.
True, but Oregon-Stanford in the Utah Invitational should be fun 🙂
My money is on Stanford to win the Pac-12 next year.
New coach and rebuilt offensive line? Not gonna happen.