2014 NFL Wins Pool!

I don’t know about you, but I love football.  I also love gambling.  However, I hate gambling on football.  It’s the WORST.  Vegas knows too much and the lines are damn near perfect.  You might as well throw darts to make your picks.  Better yet, you should just throw those darts as yourself – the emergency room bill plus pain med subscription will end up being cheaper than the money you were gonna lose betting bad picks all day.

Now, betting the lines might be a pain in the ass, but prognosticating win totals?  That seems a little more reasonable, yes? 

The Rules

• ·         Participants select eight teams at the start of the season.  Participants earn points based on their teams winning.  Not surprisingly, all wins are not created equal.  Neither are the points here.  Scoring system is below: 
• Regular season win: 1 point
• Wildcard playoff win: 2 points 
• Divisional playoff win: 3 points 
• Conference Championship win: 4 points
• Super Bowl win: 5 points
• Participants cannot select just any eight teams.  First, everyone must select one team from each of the eight divisions.  Easy enough.  Now the (slightly) tricky part.  Based on last year’s regular season results, you may only select one team who won their division in the AFC & one team who won their division in the NFC.  After that, you may only select one team who finished second in their division in the AFC & one team who finished second in their division in the NFC.  And so on.  Get it?  No?  Well let me help you out.  First, here’s the results of the 2013 NFL regular season:

Now, let’s do a quick test to see if you get the rule.  Which of the following sets of teams are valid? Just answer to yourself (or out loud if you’re a weirdo) yes or no to each of these options:

a.       New England and Cincinnati

b.      Philadelphia and New England

c.       Carolina, Dallas, and Miami

d.      Carolina, Dallas, and Chicago

e.      New England, Pittsburgh, and Tennessee

If you answered No, Yes, Yes, No, No, then there is hope for you.  If not, check your work.  FYI, there are 576 valid combinations of entries.  Even if you don’t understand this, you have a decent chance of stumbling onto a valid entry.

•  Results for the week will be posted every Tuesday on this website.

     Entry Fees & Payouts

• Buy-in price is $25 – if that seems high, remember this basically six months of entertainment, so it’s like $4.25 a month.
• Multiple entries are allowed 
•  Pool will be paid out 100%.  The only way the moderators make money is if we are smart enough to beat you fools down.  Which we aren’t.  Seriously, we’ve never won money in any of our pools.  I have no idea why we do this.
• The number of places to be paid out and the allocation of the prize pool in those paid out places will be determined by the moderators once numbers are final and published before the end of the first week of the contest.
• If you refer one or more friends/co-workers/hobos on the corner to the game, you will be entered in a side “referral” pot which is winner take all.  The total in this pot will be equal to 25% of all the “referred” entry fee.
• Hey guys, if I buy two or more entries for myself, it’ll be like I “referred myself”!  Does that get me in the referral pool too?  Ugh, I guess you crazy bastard.  But there’s a catch.  If you have multiple entries, you must designate one entry as your “referral pool entry” for its scoring.  Sorry, you don’t get to overwhelm the referral pool and buy yourself a better shot at it too. 
•  The 8-for-8 Bonus: At the end of the regular season, everyone who has an 8-for-8 week will be entered in a drawing.  If their name is drawn out, they win 10% of the total prize pool (excluding referral pool).  Multiple 8-for-8 weeks will result in multiple entries.  Might be worth keeping this in mind when structuring your picks. 
•  In the event of a tie, the tie will be broken using the following method:

1.       Entry with the fewest losses (likely will be the same, but this will give anyone who has a team get an actual tie a bonus)

2.       Total Regular Season Scoring Differential for each entry

3.       Total Regular Season Turnover Differential for each entry

4.       Cockfight (not really – if none of this nonsense breaks the tie, participants will just have to split)

Deadlines

• Entries must be submitted before kick-off of the first regular season game, which is Thursday, September 4^th, 2014 @ 8:00 PM EDT. 
•  All entries should be emailed to tourneypools@gmail.com 
•  $$$ can be sent in one of two ways
• You hand it to a moderator in cash or check form
• Send it via paypal to my account at steelcard30@gmail.com – this is by far the easiest method for all involved.  If you don’t have a paypal account, sign up for one.  I set up an experiment where I asked a dimwitted chimpanzee to sign up for a paypal account, and it took the chimp 2 minutes and 28 seconds.  I bet you can easily finish under 3 minutes.  Or are you dumber than a dimwitted chimpanzee?  I don’t know, I guess it’s possible. 
•  No IOU’s will be accepted.  This isn’t a charity.  Maybe when UNICEF gets into the NFL win pool business, you can go there and give them your IOU.  Until then, we’re the guys to talk to.