With all 17 regular season weeks in the books, it's time to review the results of our BTB writers Pick 'em. What makes this post a little awkward is that the runaway winner of this year's contest is none other than yours truly.
So instead of celebrating the winner with a virtual ticker tape parade (that he so richly deserves) I'll look at some other aspects of our pick 'em: How Karma demanded payback from three of our panelists, how we compare against some national sportswriters and how each writer had different tendencies in his picks.
But first, here are the results of the 2011 season.
Keep in mind though that we were all slightly handicapped by picking the Cowboys to win in almost every game. I say 'almost' because there were three of us who didn't pick the Cowboys in every game, and all three of them got what they deserved:
KD picked the Jets and Brandon picked the Patriots early on in an attempt to get a leg up on the competition. Karma's payback was swift and decisive, KD finished last and Brandon came in second to the last. Ol' rabble picked the Eagles to win in week 16, which gave him a one-win lead over Keg and Tom for second place heading into week 17. But Karma struck again as rabble made like the Cowboys when a big game starts to get away from them, and started throwing desperate passes only to end up throwing picks, thus getting even deeper into a hole and losing that second spot.
The best result was 177 correct picks, the BTB consensus came in with 172 wins, and Keg and Tom both finished with 170 wins. Those are pretty impressive numbers.
Here's an overview of how those results compare to a selected panel of other sportswriters and -broadcasters:
| Site | No. of Panelists | 170+ correct | Details |
| Peter King on SI | 1 | 0 | 164-92 record for the coffee drinker |
| ESPN | 8 | 0 | Schlereth & Wickerham tops (167), Mortensen flops (155-101) |
| ESPN Sunday Countdown | 4 | 3 | Carter (174), Jackson (171), Ditka (170) |
| PFT | 2 | 0 | Rosenthal 169, Florio 162 |
| Cbssports | 5 | 1 | Clark Judge hits 170 |
| USAToday | 8 | 3 | Pedulla & Davis (171) and Corbett (170) pass the mark |
| Yahoosports | 3 | 2 | Mike Silver (176) and Les carpenter (170) did well |
| PFF | 8 | 3 | Ben (173), Neil and Rick (171) take the honors |
| Foxsports | 4 | 0 | Joel Beall falls short at 169 |
| BGN | 4 | 1 | JasonB (171) leads our friends at Bleeding Green Nation |
| Total | 47 | 13 |
In total, 13 of of the 47 panelists in this table had 170 or more correct picks. Only three of the 43 panelists matched or exceed our BTB consensus pick total of 172 correct picks, nobody matched the winning total.
You know how there are teams that you could just bet that they'll win the next game, and then they don't? And then the same thing happens next week again? Everybody has those teams that are simply stronger in your own head than they are on the field. And each of our writers has one or more of those teams as well.
OCC: Believe it or not, but I picked the Eagles to win 13 times this season. Go figure.
Rabblerousr doesn't just live in Philly, he also seems to do a lot of driving on I-95, the East Coast highway that connects Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. Nobody on our panel picked the Redskins, Ravens, Eagles, Giants and Jets more often than rabble, who picked those five teams 48 times, where the rest of the panel picked those teams only 39 times on average.
Tom: We have unmasked the Tebowmaniac in our virtual BTB offices! We identified him by noticing that one of his shoes looked more worn than the other - from the constant genuflecting. Yes, kids, look that word up. It wasn't always called tebowing.
Where the other panelists picked the Broncos an average of five times, Tom picked the Broncos 10 times over the course of the season. But it doesn't end there for Tom. He also has a picked the Texans an astounding 15 times, where the others averaged only 10 picks.
Brandon has a thing for rookie quarterbacks. He picked the Bengals 12 times (others averaged: 8.3) and Carolina 10 times (others: 6.3)
Dave's Achilles heel turned out to be Buffalo. Not only did he pick them 10 times where everybody else picked them between four and six times, but only four of those picks turned out to be right. Dave also really, really, liked the home team, picking the home team 176 times. The home teams won 145 out of 256 games this season.
KD had a terrible start to our pick'em and after week two was already trailing the leader by 11 wins. In order to make up ground, he decided to be quite the contrarian and made one risky pick after another, which, in balance, didn't pay off. For example, KD picked Tampa Bay seven times, and only got the pick right once. All others combined were 14-for-36 picking for Tampa. KD also picked the home team only 127 times. Outside of Dave and KD, the rest of us picked the home team an average of 147 times.
Kegbearer was much more about teams he didn't like, and both of those teams are in New York: He picked the Jets only seven times (all others: 10.5) and the Giants only 4 times (all others: 6.5).