Auburn's football team is well on its way to winning a championship ring, but Auburn's best couple, Hunter Rogers and Leah Kay, are on their way to winning a ring with considerably more sparkle.
The competition is Michael Hill's Search for the World's Best Couple, and the couple is Team Bartowski--Rogers, junior in chemical engineering, and Kay, junior in landscape design.
Rogers and Kay derived their team name from the TV show "Chuck."
"That's how we would get to know each other," Kay said. "Every week we would get together, and we would watch 'Chuck.' So since that's what brought us together, we decided to pay a little tribute."
Couples must complete three challenges per week, and the final week consists of a single challenge--a video of a public display of affection. The specifics of the challenge won't be known until it is presented to the couples.
Teams with the most votes move up in the standings, and after the final week of challenges, the top six teams will go to a panel of judges, which ultimately decides the winner of the competition.
The winning couple will receive a 22.25-carat diamond engagement ring that has been appraised at a value of $322,000 at a reception in Chicago.
Team Bartowski currently sits at No. 12 out of more than 5,000 competing couples, a drop of two spots from last week's standings.
"It's just a really fun story, you know," Kay said. "I mean as of right now we can tell our friends, 'Hey, at one point at least, we were voted the 10th-best couple in the world.'"
Trying to win an engagement ring got mixed responses from the parents of Team Bartowski, especially since they're not engaged.
Leah said her mother responded with, "Well, I guess Hunter really does believe in Santa Claus." Her sister said Hunter was the only person she knew that would enter a national-level competition with no doubts about his ability to win.
Voters choose the best of the week's entries, or challenge responses, and must have an active Twitter or Facebook account to verify their vote.
Michael Hill is an entrepreneur from New Zealand who opened his first jewelry shop in 1979 and today has more than 250 stores in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States.
Hunter and Leah's relationship began the spring semester of their freshman year, a few months after meeting at a friend's house.
The beginning of their relationship was anything but typical, with Hunter on a mission trip in Timbuktu and Leah studying abroad in England.
Keeping in touch through e-mail and Skype, Team Bartowski handled the distance without a hitch.
"For the first six months of dating, we had been in two different countries longer than we'd been in the same spot," Kay said.
Kay first heard of the competition after an episode of "Keeping up with the Kardashians." While watching "E! News," a commercial for the competition came on featuring Kim Kardashian.
A few days later, she told Hunter, and they decided to have a go at the enormous ring.
"After the first couple of days, we broke top 100," Rogers said. "Then less than a week later, we are in the top 10, so I mean it's kind of like we're not in it to win it, but we might as well try and win while we're in it."
The voting ends on Dec. 1, and the ring is presented to the winner on Dec. 15, giving the judges only a few days to choose the winner from the top six finalists.
Just making the top six is grounds for reward, though, with numbers one through six receiving an engagement ring, hand-selected by Michael Hill from one of his personal collections.
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