Thursday, January 22, 2015

Bowl Pool Recap


Today I thought I'd share one of my favorite winter family traditions, our annual Bowl Pool.  We wrapped up the pool last Monday, after the National Championship Game.  Davey won the pool for the THIRD time! We've been doing the pool for years and years so there's a bunch of repeat winners but Davey's the first "three peat." I put hours and more effort than usual into my picks this year and claimed the 7th spot.  Actually all five members of our little family did pretty well this year (Mom was third and Derek/Steve tied for fourth), but no place  really matters other than first.

This is a really fun way to enjoy bowl season which lasts for a little over two weeks + the National Championship game.  We started out with a $5 entry fee but in recent years raised it to $10.  We usually have anywhere between 15-20 family members involved but if you could gather a group of about 10 that should be good enough for a friendly competition!

The creator (in our case, Steve) will send out a "pick sheet" with all the games listed as well as spaces for your choice of a winner for each game as well as your confidence points for each game.  This year there were 39 games so for confidence points you would put each number, 1-39, in for each game.  39 would go to a team you were fairly "confident" in winning and 1 to a team with low confidence and the rest of the points somewhere in between.  It's always fun to try to throw in some upsets.

You can go with a random picking (in years past, I would pick not at all based on football and based by  school color, better weather location, etc.), do some researching and review the "favorites" or if you have good football knowledge just go with your gut!

This year the new playoff system added a fun element for us.  Steve is our coordinator otherwise known as "the commissioner" and created our new layout which was basically the same as before.. you put however many confidence points on each of the two "playoff games" as well as the National Championship.  This was interesting because not knowing who would be in the National Championship this year added a fun twist - some people went big and gambled with their favorite team and some used their #1 confident point for the unknown.
Not only is the competition fun, but if some of your competitors live close to you, it's fun to get together for some "bowl game viewing parties"

Below is a glance as the master "pick sheet."  The coordinator basically sends out this format to each person with the team column of the games and then a column for your picks and next to that for your confidence points.
Once all the picks are in, the coordinator can make a master spreadsheet so each person can follow along with how well everyone else is doing also. (Davey's, Mine and Derek's are below)

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