Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Pick'em Update

As we've previously mentioned, this year we're opening up our pick'em to the general public.  (There's a separate contest for members of TotalFark.) But before we get into the details of the game, we're going to tell you exactly how many points we're going to get for the season. The first game of the pick'em is still three days away, but we're going to tell you how many points we will each have by the night of December 3, 2011.

Are you ready?

Eddie (RBA): 665
Justin (TFG): 656

So if you read the rules below and think you can score more points that than, you'll win. Easy, right?

Current Players

Tonight I'll be resetting all scores back to zero and we'll begin the contest for real. But just so the current players don't get think we're trying to hide anything, here are the standings after the first two weeks:

Rank Player W - L Pts
1 Eddie (RBA) 15 - 5 94
2 nobiology 15 - 5 91
3 Justin (TFG) 14 - 6 90
4 georgehr3 14 - 6 89
5 Foreigner 9 - 11 54
6 LucklessWonder 9 - 11 52
7 Deadpool 7 - 13 48
8 tommyallenn 8 - 12 47
Note: Players added after the start of week 2 were not included since they did not have a chance to submit any picks.

With that aside, here are the contest details.

TL;DR Version

Over the course of 12 weeks, earn points by picking the winners of college football games.

The Long Version

We run The Tempo-Free Gridiron, where we discuss our computerized systems for predicting the winners of college football games. In an effort to pit our computers against the masses, we are hosting the 1st Annual TFG College Football Pick’em.

Who

Everyone is eligible for this contest. There’s no entry fee, and it’s all for your college football know-how honor. Think you can beat a computer that thought TCU was the #1 team in college football last year?

Where

We are hosting the contest at FunOfficePools.com.
Pool name: TFG Pick’em
Pool link: http://www.funofficepools.com/joinpool.php?Passed_Pool_Key=c1a20e2e4df

We understand the website isn’t the best in the world, but it gives us more flexibility over the scoring, which games we choose, and every aspect of managing the program. If you don’t like it, yell at Yahoo! to get off their butts and let pick’em pool owners choose which games to include each week and how to score it.

What

Each week there will be either 10 or 15 games for which you must pick the winners AND then sort the picks from least to most confident. If you get your least-confident pick correct, you get 1 point; if you get your second-least-confident pick correct, you get 2 points; etc, etc.

This means that in a week with 10 games to pick, you can score a maximum of 55 points (1+2+3+...+9+10); in a week with 15 games to pick, you can score a maximum of 120 points.

PICKS ARE DUE AT NOON, EAST COAST TIME EACH SATURDAY. THE WEBSITE WILL LOCK YOU OUT IF YOU DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR PICKS BY THIS DEADLINE.
IF YOU DO NOT GET YOUR PICKS IN BY NOON, EMAIL ME (justin@tempo-free-gridiron.com) YOUR PICKS ASAP. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PICK ANY GAMES THAT HAVE ALREADY STARTED.

(Ahem. Shouting is now officially over.)

The college football regular season has 14 weeks. It will be broken into a pre-season (now over, in which picks don’t count towards the final points total) and the “regular season”.  Here is the schedule, with the date next to each week being the Saturday.

Preseason (NOW OVER)
Week 1 (Sept 3) - 10 games
Week 2 (Sept 10) - 10 games


Regular Season
Week 3 (Sept 17) - 10 games
Week 4 (Sept 24) - 10 games
Week 5 (Oct 1) - 10 games
Week 6 (Oct 8) - 15 games
Week 7 (Oct 15) - 10 games
Week 8 (Oct 22) - 10 games
Week 9 (Oct 29) - 10 games
Week 10 (Nov 5) - 15 games
Week 11 (Nov 12) - 10 games
Week 12 (Nov 19) - 10 games
Week 13 (Nov 26) - 10 games
Week 14 (Dec 3) - 15 games

You’ll see that every fourth week is worth significantly more than the other 3 weeks that precede it. That reason for that has to do with the TotalFark pick'em, some prizes we're handing out in that pick'em, and the need to simplify things for us. It make look weird, but there's a reason for it. Trust us.

Other

If you have any other questions, please let me know at justin@tempo-free-gridiron.com.

Good luck, and we hope to see you in our pick'em.

Follow us on Twitter @TFGridiron.