Do you feel lucky, punk?  Everyone did on Sunday, except poor Nickster

Members of the Sunday Football Picks didn't need a sneering Dirty Harry pointing a .44 Magnum at their faces and repeating his famous movie line in order to realize they were extremely lucky to get out of Week 12 with great records.  After all, 11 of the 15 games went down to the final minute and were decided by a touchdown or less, including three overtime games.  Talk about a Sudden Impact!

Almost all of those nail-biters went QT's way, and the Pepsi freak tied the season's highest victory total with an impressive 12-3 record.  One step behind her were Girlie Time and Little Bird at 11-4, and two steps back were Blaine and Mark at 10-5.

And then there was unlucky Lil Girl, who was threatening to go 14-1 and set a new Picks record until her good fortune turned to total disaster in a heartbeat, or should we say gunshot.  Three of her teams lost in overtime, a fourth team blew a 21-0 lead, a fifth team gave away a 14-3 fourth-quarter advantage, and two other teams were foiled in the final minutes while driving for tying or winning touchdowns.  Seven possible wins changed into seven definite defeats, and that was a metamorphosis even Hilary Duff wasn't singing about.  Nickster's 7-8 record meant the NFL had rudely reneged on her birthday present just four days after she turned 11.

But the NFL did follow through with their birthday gift to the other twin songbird, Alicia, who unwrapped her best record of the year.  The 11-4 performance, which included another triumph by the first-place Bengals, has Ali only two games behind second-place D.J. (101-62) and eight games behind first-place Mark (107-56) with five weeks left in the season.  QT's dominance and Nicki's disappointment on Sunday locked mother and daughter in a fourth-place tie with 94-69 records.  Blaine is pulling up the rear at 90-73.

Nicki hopes her bad luck was simply a bizarre occurrence in a wacky week.  But just to be safe, Lil Girl reportedly is considering a breakfast switch from Pop Tarts to Lucky Charms, even though the colored marshmallows are the only good thing about that overrated cereal from General Mills.  The rest of the bowl is far from being magically delicious, despite what Lucky the Leprechaun says.  You certainly have to make the most of those pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, green clovers, blue diamonds, red balloons and purple horseshoes.