It’s been a great month for Kelly Rigby.
She won her second “I Beat Burt” T-shirt. Oh yeah, and she gave birth to a second child, Malcolm Rigby.
“A pretty good month, huh?” said Kelly, who with her husband, Brendan Rigby, are loyal pro football watchers and competitors in The Eagle-Tribune’s “I Beat Burt” contest.
The couple, which also have a four-year-old daughter, Emerson, are a team when it comes to family, but they go head-to-head when it comes to picking football games.
“It’s a highlight of our Sundays,” said Kelly, who brought her son in The Eagle-Tribune last week to pick up her T-shirt. “We pick the games separately. I do a lot of guessing, picking teams I like. He is serious, looks all factors like spread, home field and whatever.”
Each week they actually laminate their picks and with magnets put them on their refrigerator for each to see and breakdown.
“Yes, we laminate them,” said Kelly. “There’s no changing picks no matter what. We put everything on the fridge, with others weeks and stories too, when we’ve won. It’s a lot of fun.”
Kelly, a special needs teacher at the Nettle School in Haverhill, was born and raised in Bradford and attended Haverhill High, while her husband hails from Burlington. They have live in Bradford now.
“We have the [NFL’s] Sunday Ticket so you can watch four games at a time,” said Kelly. “Our daughter is getting into it a little bit. We know the key games, the ones we picked differently, and we focus on those. We do this every Sunday.”
While this is Kelly’s second career win, husband Brendan has won three times over the five years they’ve been playing.
“I do want to at least tie him, soon,” she said.
Kelly did not miss a week despite being home on maternity leave the first few weeks of Malcolm’s life.
“This is real, the competition we have with each other,” said Kelly. “I got into to spend more time with my husband and now I’m hooked. Sunday is our day.”
Another unpredictable week
Being the home team and being the favorite were rendered useless … again.
Similar to last weekend, the road teams outplayed the home teams, winning 9 of the 15 weekend games. and eight of the 15 games were won by underdogs. Amazing.
With the Patriots not on the board for Week 3 (Thursday Night Football not included), they return in Week 4 traveling to San Francisco. The Pats will be the biggest underdog, currently at 10.5 points next Sunday late afternoon.
It’s a tough sport to figure out right now. I expect (or hope) the “11-4” weeks will be coming on my side.
Both tiebreakers (Chief point total, 22) and total correct selections were used.
All of the winners were within two points of the first tiebreaker and several had nine correct picks.
I had seven winners out of the 15 games. While not a good week, more than 240 entries had seven or fewer correct picks.
Week 3 winners
John Sapienza of Methuen
Brendan Rastello of Methuen
Carol Goss of Derry, N.H.
D.J. Sturtevant of Haverhill
Joshua Rodriguez of Methuen
Charlotte Carter of North Andover
Dave Paquette of Atkinson, N.H.
Allen Rudis of Methuen
Daniel Grayton of Somerville
Lynne Blackington Dulong of Haverhill