When told she was this year's grand prize winner of Deseret News Grid Picks, Sue Allred of Sandy could only say, "Wow, I'm shocked, that's got to be the surprise of the year."
Allred bested thousands of other entries, 14,595 to be exact, to surface as the grand prize winner, which netted her a trip for two to a post-season college bowl game courtesy of the Deseret News. In this case, however, Allred is satisfied with the equivalent cash, $1,000, because neither Utah or BYU is bowl bound.
Allred's husband, Roy, was a lot more excited than she was when told the news. "I knew it, we've played Grid Picks for about seven years and won a T-shirt or two but never the top weekly prize of $100, so to win it outright is just something incredible," said Allred. The Allreds are big Jazz fans but lean toward BYU in their college preferences.
Allred is employed in the accounting department of the Marriott Hotel chain in Salt Lake City. She and her husband have four children, the youngest is 19. "No married children yet," she said, "they're all off doing their own things." Sue Allred is originally from LaPointe, Utah, which is near Roosevelt.
Each week, the top weekly winner, the person with the most correct "picks" out of a possible 12, wins $100 and a Deseret News Grid Picks T-shirt. The next 10 highest picks also win a T-shirt and all 11 are entered in the cumulative game which culminates in the person with the most being declared the grand-prize winner.
This year, Allred ended with 21 points predicting 11 games correctly on Oct. 14, and 10 on Oct. 7. The next closest was Oren Clarke of Henderson, Nevada who ended up with 20. Surprisingly, Clarke and Allred were the only two entries out of 132 cumulative weekly winners (11 winners per week over 12 weeks) to get scores for more than one week.
"We see lots of families play, and there are multiple Ballards, Ericksens, Browns and Quinns but they are different individuals from the same household," said Sharon Johnson, Deseret News marketing assistant.
Deseret News Grid Picks is a fall, family tradition going back 20 or more years and is looked forward to by thousands of individuals.
"Since we began offering an online game, our newspaper entries have really dwindled, but our overall entry level has noticeable increased," said Deseret News marketing director Steve Handy. "Getting the bulk of our entries via the Internet isn't all bad, however, since it used to take several of us the better part of each Monday to find our winners. This has really speeded things up and enabled it to become a game that's played by expatriate Utahns all over the country."
Managing the Deseret News Grid Picks takes a concerted effort each week, with the added participation of Connie Smith and Linda Woodward in addition to Johnson and Handy.