Persistence pays off as Myers wins $250
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But luck wasn’t with him this year. Despite entering the Standard’s Football Forecaster contest every week, Myers never emerged as the winner.
His luck, however, took a turn for the better when Football Forecaster came to an end. That’s when every entry submitted during the season was placed in a box and a grand prize winner was drawn at random.
Myers had one of his entries drawn to win the $250 grand prize.
“I played every week and this is the first year I didn’t win anything,” said Myers. “The Titans hurt me this year and some college teams did too. Usually college is the easiest to pick, but there have been so many upsets.”
The winning entry was one Myers submitted for games the weekend of Oct. 29-31. Even though he didn’t do too well picking games that week, simply submitting an entry increased his odds of winning the jackpot.
“The money will come in handy,” said Myers.
As for the final weekly winner, Tim Burnett won by correctly picking 10 out of 11 games. The only game Burnett missed was the high school game between Cookeville and Riverdale. Had he got that game right, he would have been the only person this year to pick a perfect 11 out of 11.
“That was one I thought about long and hard when I went over my picks,” said Burnett. “But I thought there might be an upset.”
Burnett is the only two-time winner this year. He won the first week of the contest, and the last.
As for the contest in general, the Standard is just happy to give away money. Last year, the newspaper offered $25,000 as the grand prize, but went through a Las Vegas insurance company in the process. The company established such long odds, it made winning the jackpot virtually impossible.
“This year we wanted to make sure somebody won money,” said Standard publisher Patricia Zechman. “It wasn’t $25,000 but at least somebody came away with something, and $250 isn’t bad.”
Based on its popularity, the Standard has plans to offer the Football Forecaster contest again next year.