RoxAnn Rodney-Isbrecht grabs Week 5 Armchair QB win, now 2nd overall
The fifth week of action in the Tri-City Record’s Armchair Quarterback Contest has been contested. As always, we continued the tradition of challenging our ‘superfans’ in some daunting gridiron matchups, as our knowledgeable fanatics looked to pick the winners of three high school, five collegiate, and two professional football games that appeared on our week five calendar. If you are a diehard football fan, you’re enjoying the action, but is it going too quickly?
Looking back at last week’s final records, most of the pupils in our classroom were able to leave the proceedings with a smile. Five of our six accomplished scholars passed their weekly test of pigskin intellect, making every game pick critical to their success or failure this go-round.
Recapping week five games, each of our favorite local teams took the field, putting fans in the stands or in front of their television screens throughout the weekend and into early this week. It wasn’t the best stretch to be a fan of a local squad, but there were some bright spots, especially if you cheer on the Bears, Fighting Irish, and the Lions, as they came away unscathed from the ‘bloodbath.’ However, this week is a new opportunity to cheer and be happy or upset again.
When the final seconds counted down and the scores were deemed official, two of our combatants came away with matching 9-1 records, sending us into the dreaded tiebreaker scenario to determine our weekly winner and runner-up. Rodney Lynch and RoxAnn Rodney-Isbrecht are the only two former overall champions on our panel, and after a pair of so-so starts to the year, are starting to make some noise as they try to battle out of the small holes they dug.
Because there was a tie in the weekly standings, we needed to rely on the total points from our tiebreaker game to break the deadlock. Our featured matchup, Boise State versus Western Michigan, concluded with 39 points (32-7). Based on their highly educated guesses, both came within ten points of that figure, but RoxAnn’s projection of 35 points earned her the top step of the podium, while Rodney (who projected 49 points) will be disappointed as our runner-up.
No additional ties needed breaking, but someone still had to round out the weekly podium. Coming home in third place was Bill Whitney, who finished with a record of 8-2 during this recent ten-game stretch. He entered the week as the leader in the overall classification, and this finish did nothing to change that fact, although some new challengers are nipping at his heels. The only losses on his resume were Michigan’s one-point loss and a poor effort by Philadelphia.
The rest of the finishing order saw Greg Krell take home fourth place (with a 7-3 record), followed by Mike Banic in fifth place (with a 6-4 record), and Karla Smothers in sixth place (with a 4-6 record). As our panelists have proven recently, this is a highly volatile contest, and any one of our six gurus can be hot or cold with their picks at any given time.
In case you are new to the newspaper, or need a refresher on how this contest works, let’s take a moment and bring you up to speed. Each fall, the Tri-City Record enlists the assistance of six local football fanatics, or ‘superfans’ as we call them. Each week, our six-person panel receives a list of pre-selected games from the high school, collegiate, and professional scenes and has the daunting task of selecting who they believe will win every game.
