2015 Conference Tournament Pick'em

You know, EVERYONE loves the NCAA Tournament.  The pageantry, the “anyone can beat anyone” aspect, the 15 million times The Neon Trees needed to tell us that it did indeed start with a whisper, etc etc etc.  (I know that’s a 2012 joke.  I left it in consciously b/c I still need to know what “it” started with.)  All that means the REAL best week in basketball, Conference Tournament Week or “Championship Week,” gets lost in the shuffle.  Seriously, there’s no better week to go to Las Vegas if you ask me, but I digress. 

Here at Tourney Pools, we have set a precedent of creating better ways to “flex your college basketball acumen” than that lame old bracket pool in the tournament itself.  So we have expanded to the next logical place – Championship Week!  Aren’t you excited?!  No?!  I don’t care, you will be.

First, remind me of all the links and stuff I need.  I’m going to ask about it, so just put it up here.

Good call.  Here’s a quick reference for all the links you should need:

• Buy-in: $20/entry
• Entry Form – Will be available once seeding is finalized on Sunday (of course the stupid Big Ten has Sunday games)
• Website: tourneypools.blogspot.com – the leaderboard and all updates will be posted here.  If you have a question where ANYTHING is, go here before asking, b/c odds are it’s here.
• Email: tourneypools@gmail.com – I’m constantly monitoring this and can get back to you fairly quickly.
• Paypal ID: tourneypools@gmail.com – yep, finally linked ‘em all up.  BRANDING!
• Tournament Bracket Links: A-10, AAC, ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, Pac-12, SEC

Wait wait wait, before you start into your convoluted rules, did you change anything?  I played this stupid game last year, so just give me the changes so I can get on with my day!

But my rules are awesome!  Anyway… If you participated in the NFL Playoff Suicide Pool, you might remember the Google Forms I started using.  It worked so well that I’m bringing it here too.  Here’s how it works: I will create a Google form that will be used by participants to choose their teams for the tourney.  I need a handful of information that I can in no way profit off of (seriously, where does one even sell email addresses?). 

I enjoy running this pool, but it takes up a lot of time if I have to correct entries for people.  I’d prefer to keep doing it this way as opposed to running things through a website that takes 5% off the backend, so with a little help from you all, I can keep running this thing for free.

Finally, do not email, text, call, direct message, or facebook message me picks.  I will ignore them.

The Rules

• Participants each pick one team from each of the 8 conference tournaments specified below.  Who you can pick will be based on seed in the tournament.  Participants can pick only one 1 seed, 1 2 seed, 1 3 seed, 1… you get the idea.  Here’s the conference tourneys we will be choosing from:
• A-10 (which has 14 teams now – how does this conference keep growing?)
• AAC (Or, C-USA + UCONN)
• ACC
• Big Ten (which also has 14 teams – in conference logic, 10=14)
• Big 12 (which has 10 teams; counting is hard)
• Big East
• Pac-12 (The only conference that knows how to count)
• SEC (aka “The Cay-ut Free Square” for this year)
• You may replace a better seeded team w/ a worse seeded team in your 8 team entry if you so choose.  For example, if you do not like any 3 seeds in any conference tournament, you can replace your “3 seed” slot with any other team seeded 4 or higher.  Likewise, this also means that teams higher than an 8 seed are eligible to be used in any slots.  You wanna pick the Fightin’ Frank Martins of South Carolina in the SEC?  Go nuts.  (Can someone introduce Frank Martin to a tailor?  He is constantly wearing giant suit jackets that look like he stole them from his dad’s closet or something.  Anyway…)
• Scoring will be as follows:
• Championship win – 4 points
• Semifinal win – 3 points
• Quarterfinal win – 2 points
• “Quarterquarterfinal”? win – 1 point
• This scoring means that only four games maximum will be counted.  This mainly affects conferences with 13 or more teams (A-10, ACC, Big Ten, SEC – those 11-14 and 12-13 games do NOT count).

Entry Fees & Payouts

• Buy-in price is $20
• 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 day 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 fees.
• 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.
• In the event of a tie, participants will split any winnings evenly.  I know I’m famous for my obtrusive tiebreaker rules – I’m taking the lazy way out until someone complains and I fix it next year.

Referral Pool

As usual, we will be running the referral pool this year.  Anyone who referred another person (or “referred themselves” by buying multiple entries) will have one entry in the referral sidepot.  The total of this sidepot will equal 25% of the referred entries.  For those buying multiple entries, your “1” entry is your referral pool entry.  Please be aware of that when picking.  Only the top 2 will be paid in the referral pool.

Deadlines

• All entries & $$$ must be submitted by Wednesday, March 11^th, 2014 at 6 PM EDT – There are a handful of games before that, but I know some people slack, so just make sure you don’t use any of those games and you’ll be fine.
• $$$ can be sent in one of two ways
• You hand it to a moderator in cash or check form
• Send it via paypal to the account listed above – 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 tournament pool business, you can go there and give them your IOU.  Until then, we’re the guys to talk to.