Jacob Sommer (@jasommer) of Washington, D.C., a.k.a. “The Commodore” a.k.a. “Irish DC,” won the 3rd annual Living Room Times College Football Pick ’em Contest, finishing with a 298-87 prediction record (.774) and defeating Christopher Enger (@fuegote) of Harriman, UT, who went 296-89 (.769).
Enger missed just two games this past weekend, the Conference USA and ACC title games. If he had predicted the mild upsets by Southern Miss and Clemson, he would have won the pool on a tiebreaker, with a perfect final week. Instead, he finishes two points behind Sommer (who also missed the ACC and C-USA games, plus Texas-Baylor).
Jeff Freeze (@bigfreezer) of Burns Harbor, Indiana finished in a third-place tie with “FIGHT ON! CREW” (real identity unknown), with 294 points. Freeze was actually the last person mathematically alive to defeat Sommer in the contest: if Michigan State and Oklahoma had won their prime-time games on Saturday night, Freeze would have tied Sommer on points and beaten him in a tiebreaker. But of course, that didn’t even come close to happening. Although MSU was just barely edged by Wisconsin, OU was utterly demolished by Oklahoma State. The Cowboys’ Bedlam blowout didn’t quite earn them a trip to the BCS title game, but it did clinch the pool victory for Sommer.
That said, Freeze may have squandered his realistic chance to win last week, when he inadvertently failed to make picks for the first five Friday games (“#toomuchturkey,” he tweeted yesterday), thus got all five games “wrong.” That knocked him out of what had been a first-place tie with Sommer. Had he gotten at least 4 of those 5 unpicked games right, he would have won the pool. The favored team won 4 of the 5 games.
This was the second straight Living Room Times college football contest that ended with Freeze losing at the wire. He would have won last year’s Bowl Pick ’em Contest if Oregon had beaten Auburn; instead, Randy Styles won.
Speaking of Bowl Pick ’em, it’s that time of year — the 7th annual Living Room Times Bowl Pick ‘em Contest will soon be underway! I’m just waiting for OfficeFootballPool.com to post the matchups. Stay tuned!
Anyway, after the jump are the final standings of the weekly regular season Pick ’em contest…
Of the 34 contestants who entered the contest, 20 managed to make picks for all or the majority of the games every week. Below I’ve listed the top 23 contestants, though that includes a few contestants who missed a week (KilroyFSU, Sandyunderpants) or who missed most of the games one week (David K.). Everyone from #24 on down missed multiple weeks, so I’m not including them in the final standings. (That includes me. D’oh!)
Maximum possible number of points is 385.
1. The Commodore (Jacob Summer) 298
2. fuegote (Christopher Enger) 296
3. FIGHT ON! CREW 294
4. Jeff Freeze 294
5. chrispalm’s choices 291
6. TrojanMikeG 290
7. rosslancaster 289
8. SCANDAL SCANDAL BO BANDAL (Marty West) 289
9. Rhappopotamus 288
10. Goldwatering (Brian Griffiths) 288
11. I don’t watch college football (Andy Glockner) 287
12. The Major’s Girl (Lisa Velte) 286
13. Seawolves (Mark Gardner) 286
14. devyanks90 (Mike Greiner) 283
15. Nathan’s Silly Picks (Nathan Wurtzel) 281
16. B. Minich 279
17. Flipse 279
18. Have Notebook Will Travel (Paul Freelend) 277
19. maineiac13 (Ken Stern) 275
20. KilroyFSU 273
21. AMLTrojan 270
22. David K – Bow Down! 268
23. Sandyunderpants 259