Secret meeting with NASA blasts Lil Girl into Picks stratosphere

Just like the space shuttle that she watched zoom through the Florida sky two months ago, Lil Girl blasted off in the first week of the 2005 Sunday Football Picks with as much power as the league has ever seen.

The 12-year-old NFL mastermind set Picks records by going 12-2 and crushing her six opponents by a combined 36 games.  Holy cannoli!  If that keeps up, Nickster will post an incredible 186-31 record for the season and win the title by a massive 62-game margin.

Reports out of Cape Canaveral indicate that Nicki's early success is linked to a private discussion she had with astrophysicists there in late July.  Apparently a Picks plan was hatched with the NASA experts while Lil Girl vacationed in the area.

"Let's just say there was a meeting of the minds on the day we launched Space Shuttle Discovery," said a NASA official who asked to stay anonymous.  "The little brainiac from Illinois taught us a few things, and we taught her a few things."

The afternoon of July 26 was when Nicki's family visited Cocoa Beach on Florida's east coast, only miles from Cape Canaveral where the nation's first launch in more than two years occurred that morning.  Nicki quietly slipped away while her family boogie-boarded in the ocean, taking a short taxi ride to the Kennedy Space Center.  With the pressure of the big launch behind them, NASA officials were kicked back and playing video games when Lil Girl strolled in.

"She said she would tell us how to design foam insulation that wouldn't break off the shuttle's external fuel tank if we helped her engineer a dominant record in her family's football picks," the NASA official said.  "We jumped at the opportunity because that darn foam is giving us fits."

Nicki walked away from the meeting with a highly volatile plan that was sure to forcefully launch a Picks member into unexplored territory.  It did just that, and twice.  She happened to share the explosive methodology with her twin sister, Ali, who mishandled the potent formula and launched her Picks season in the opposite direction like a wayward rocket.  The Little Bird was 2-12, setting a Picks record on the other end of the spectrum.  Rest assured that Ali will get everything lined up more accurately before stepping onto the launch pad in future weeks.