Even in Pigskin Picks, it can be a game of inches.

In this case, 36 inches.

Mililani's Gordon Ozawa, 73, won the Pigskin Picks contest by correctly picking the winners of all 14 games — a tie was discounted in all ballots. He then beat more than 30 other perfect ballots by winning the tiebreaker, coming within three yards of estimating the combined total offensive yards in the Georgia-Auburn game.

His total of 651 yards (654 actual) was one yard closer than the Big Island's Nathan Saiki, who estimated 650.

Ozawa wins a trip for two to Las Vegas and $500. Saiki wins a $100 certificate from Zippy's.

Although Ozawa said winning was "pure luck," his tiebreaker estimate wasn't.

"I thought about who was playing," he said.

"I thought Georgia would run like a son of a gun and rack up the yardage. And Auburn wasn't too great offensively, so they're not going to get yardage."

So Ozawa put down 401 yards for Georgia and 250 for Auburn.

Ozawa, a retiree who worked for the Department of Education, said while he's been filling out ballots, he only started turning them in a few years ago when he discovered he could drop them off at Zippy's.

In past years, Ozawa said his daughter-in-law would see his ballots laying on the kitchen table and say, "Why don't you turn them in?"

So when KSSK announced he was the winner Monday morning, Ozawa said, "My daughter-in-law called me and said, 'This isn't a joke now, you gotta check your answering machine.' Sure enough, it was on the answering machine."

Ozawa said he goes to Las Vegas every couple of years and this victory might come at a perfect time.

"I have my high school reunion there next year," said Ozawa, a 1953 graduate from Waipahu.

He said he will take his late wife's twin sister. "We're classmates," he said.