Week 13: Beat The Football Girl

This week’s featured pro is Melissa Jacobs, managing editor of TheFootballGirl.com and a contributor to espnW. If you can beat Melissa in our free “Beat the Expert” game, you’ll win $5. If you can place in the top 10 overall, you’ll win a share of our $1,000 prize pool. It only takes a couple minutes to enter, so set your lineup now before you forget!
 
Done? Cool. Let’s get to know your competition. Prior to starting TheFootballGirl, Melissa was: The Producer of The Sporting Life and ESPN the Magazine; Talent Producer for SportsCenter, NFL Live, and Rome is Burning; and Project manager for the ESPY Awards, NBA All-Star Game weekend and other ESPN special events.
 
OK, so she’s a talented chick (2 Emmys for her SportsCenter work) and she’s probably been to (or been invited to) more top shelf sporting events than most of us. If you’re jealous, take it out on her by dominating her fantasy team this week. Be forewarned, though, she’s been playing fantasy football for over 15 years (did she start in 5th grade?).
 
Speaking of dominating, so far the Pros have been decidedly better than the Joes in our Beat the Expert contest. Our featured experts have scored in the top 25% in 7 out of 12 weeks. Last week’s pro, Justin Sablich from The New York Times, scored in the top 4.6% (only 68 people managed to beat him out of 1,500 entries). Andy Behrens from Yahoo! Sports and Chris Wesseling from Rotoworld had similar success, scoring in the top 1.2% and 6.7% respectively.
 
The good news is, despite the strong showing from our experts, we’ve been able to hand out over $30,000 of our sponsor’s money so far this season. We’ve also been able to promote some great charities through the contest. Each expert is playing for a charitable cause — the more contestants they beat the more likely their charity will win. Melissa is playing for Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
 
In summary: Win some cash. Help a cause. And try your best not to lose to The Football Girl! Enter Now.
 
Oh, and if you want to see how you compare to all 75 of our experts, take our Start/Sit Challenge too. You just need to answer 10 quick “Who would you start?” questions to see how you stack up (you might even win some cash).