QT plays her Cards right and joins traffic jam atop Picks standings

Adding to the nasty road congestion in the Chicago area is the gridlock among the leaders of the Sunday Football Picks.  The streets are wide open for no one as the top five competitors are now squashed within one game of each other after the third annual "Pick Like Pa Week," where each person litters their selections with at least five underdogs.

It was QT Pie's Cardinals motoring past everyone else's 49ers on Sunday night in Mexico City, driving her into a second-place tie with Blaine and Mark (33-21), who are just a single game in the rearview mirror of Nicki and Trevor (34-20).  This is the tightest the Picks standings have ever been a few weeks into the season, and traffic engineers are feeling the heat because of it.

You see, the Sunday Football Picks were widened to seven lanes just before the 2005 season with the addition of Trevor.  The young man was supposed to relieve congestion within the group due to his inexperience, but instead of letting people pass him, he is cutting off Picks members who are attempting to drive toward the top.  Picks traffic consequently is jammed something terrible.

"It's worse than rush hour on the Eisenhower, and more constricting than the Hillside Strangler ever was," said a traffic consultant from the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  "Creating that seventh Picks lane was expected to spread things out a bit, but the project has had the opposite effect.  You now have severe gridlock in that league."

To make matters worse, pressure was applied to those top five Picks members in Week 4 by their two rivals behind them.  No one had a better record than D.J. as she went 9-4, and Ali had her best record of the season at 8-5.  The major clog among the leaders might only worsen, and that's a concern for engineers who still are awaiting payment for the preseason expansion project.

"I'm not happy with this bumper-to-bumper situation, so no one's getting any money until my road to the top is opened," said Blaine, who manages the Accounts Payable Department for the Picks Oversight Committee.  "The contract guaranteed me a clear path to first place, but now I'm being squeezed in this ugly mess, and it's giving me a headache!"

According to Ali, a longtime loyal listener of NewsRadio 780, there is no relief in sight for the Picks bottleneck.  "WBBM just warned people to stay away from the area because the traffic in the standings will be jammed for a long time," she said.