Coming from a family of die-hard University of Washington football fans, I was ready to jump right into the world of Big Ten football my freshman year.

Three years of mediocre Northwestern football later, I’m still waiting for the Cats and their conference foes to live up to my expectations.

Something tells me that’s not going to happen this year. Not after two non-conference losses for NU and the continued reign of USC at the top of the polls.

I’ve never written about sports before — I prefer to participate rather than sitting on the sidelines or in those cushy press box seats. But I must know a thing or two to have defeated a panel of sports regulars in our preseason predictions.

Now it’s your chance to join in the fun.

Just send an e-mail to forecasters

@dailynorthwestern.com by midnight each Friday with your picks for the 12 matchups listed on this page.

No need to pick scores. The person with the greatest number of correct picks will appear in the next week’s Forecasters alongside our panel of wannabe sports visionaries.

There’s my partner in crime, Daily managing editor Jerome C. (What a pretentious bastard) Pandell, an aspiring lawyer from San Francisco who won’t shut up about Berkeley. Let’s not even talk about his athletic abilities — he can hardly catch those mini footballs we throw around the newsroom.

Then there’s sports editor David Sterrett, another California native, who is so overworked and underpaid this quarter that he’ll either quit or go crazy by the end of the football season. He already has issues with humping random objects. The rest of us are just counting the days ’til he snaps.

And finally there’s the tag team of ex-walk-on varsity soccer player Paul Tenorio and the mysterious Tim Woerner. The two bribed their way onto the sports editing staff and insist on working together on just about everything. Let’s see if they even can agree on picks.

Not too intimidating, right? I’d say your chances are pretty good, at least against these guys. Let the game begin.