Pick’em Contest: Week 17 results and standings

Our frontrunner’s face was a picture of befuddlement when he found out that his 2012 Water Cooler Sports Pick’em Contest title had been snatched from beneath his nose.

Judgment week

This was possibly the most brutal week yet in the Water Cooler Sports Contest. This is not such a surprise, given that Week 17 featured two of our important NFC North divisional contests. Pitting our participants’ logic against their team loyalties was sure to produce a gauntlet, and it was withering. For the first time all season, the field posted a whopping three doughnuts — including, most shockingly, one by LambeauorWrigley, who had been our contest frontrunner for most of the season.

It was almost inevitable that this week’s winner would have to pick both two-point games correctly, and that is exactly how it turned out. In fact, we had two contestants who managed that feat: Childerz and dalaislama, both of whom stood staunchly by their team, the Minnesota Vikings, against division winner Green Bay Packers.

By virtue of picking the Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the Atlanta Falcons, Childerz scored an impressive five points to take the Week 17 crown. Pass along your congratulations to this Vikings fan, who has always hung around to represent his team, no matter how bleak it looked.

Meanwhile, an embarrassing plurality of participants only scored two points this week. Ah, well, we can’t always be in top form. We’ll have a chance to redeem ourselves in the postseason.

Week 16 results

Mighty have fallen

It has happened at last!

After weeks of mounting suspense, our longtime frontrunner LambeauorWrigley, who had so stubbornly held off all would-be challengers, finally stumbled. He crumbled under pressure, choked in the clutch, went out not with a bang but a whimper.

Someone played a cruel joke on him when they told him that chicks dig math.

Having slowly but steadily narrowed the gap for weeks, dalaislama was able to take advantage of the leader’s glaring zero and seize the day. His strong finish propelled him to the top of our leader board with 69 points, representing an impressive .719 picking percentage (accounting for the fact he missed Week 1), and defeating LambeauorWrigley for the season crown by a narrow two-point margin.

Congratulations to dalaislama for making the move when it counted. He is this season’s Eli Manning, while our runner-up must endure the reputation of being the Tony Romo of the 2012 Water Cooler Sports Pick’em Contest.

Better luck next year, Lambeauor Wrigley. Until your final ignominious collapse, no one was more consistent than you.

Third through 7th places remained stationary from last week, while MiBearFan moved back up into 8th place, followed by a tie for 9th place between automated algorithm nonstopdrivel1 and human pickers Natesweet and Childerz.

Week 17 standings

Postseason kicks off!

And now it’s time for our 2012 Postseason Pick’em Contest to kick off!

We are going to change the format a bit. The contest is open to anyone — regardless of whether or not he competed in the regular-season contest — although the postseason contest will be limited to the first 16 contestants who enter (unless, of course, we receive enough entries to expand the field to 24).

Correct picks will be scored as follows:

• Wild Card Round: one point
• Divisional Round: two points
• Championship Round: four points
• Super Bowl: eight points

The contest will operate on an elimination format. Each contestant will be randomly paired off with another participant. The higher-scoring participant in each pair will advance to the next round, while the loser will be eliminated. Tiebreakers will be settled in the same way as the regular season: by total points scored in a featured game.

Who will rise to the challenge? Who will crumble under pressure? Only time will tell!

Wild Card Round

As a reminder, here are the Wild Card Round match-ups:

• Cincinnati Bengals at Houston Texans
• Indianapolis Colts at Baltimore Ravens
• Seattle Seahawks at Washington Redskins
• Minnesota Vikings at Green Bay Packers
• Tiebreaker: Total points scored in Minnesota at Green Bay game

Submit your picks to nfcncontest@hotmail.com by noon CT Thursday if you want them to be published on the site. Late entries will be accepted up until kickoff of the early Wild Card game, however.

Good luck to everyone. This format promises to be far more withering than our regular-season format, so give it your best shot!