Play in My Pool
I mentioned on Friday that I was preparing for March Madness by creating an NCAAB page on this blog. The purpose of the page is to serve as a portal for a free pool that I am mangaging with software from Leapy Dog Productions. I participated in Rob’s private pool last year and I have to say that the program is pretty slick.
Team selections for the men will be made today at 7:00 PM EST. Sometime later in the evening (after I get the kids bathed and off to bed) brackets will be uploaded and available for the men’s tournament. Since the women’s selection has moved to Monday in 2006, I will not have the women’s tournament brackets ready until the evening of 3/1/06. Please join me in picking teams and following along with the excitement.
Leave a comment on this post if you plan to participate (or use the private contact form). That way I can follow up on your bracket if it does not show up online as the deadline draws to a close.
Below are the participation guidelines (see pool sites for more info).
Pool Eligibility
This pool is open to family, friends, acquaintances and regular readers of my blog. Even lurkers can enter, but no anonymous entries will be accepted. You must use your real name when filling out your bracket. I might even be pursuaded to allow a friend of a friend to participate.No Entry Fee
There is no entry fee for the pool. Participation is free. If you want to make a $1.00 donation via PayPal to help pay for the pool software, it would be appreciated. However, I am frankly not concerned about it. Donations have no bearing on prizes.Number of Entries Per Person
You may enter up to two brackets. Please use the same name for each bracket that you submit (the program will number them for you).Deadline for Submitting Your Selections
The pool deadline is 03/15/06 (games start on 3/16/06). All entries must be received prior to this deadline or it will not be accepted. Please note that online entries must be received by this deadline in order to be accepted. Since there may be a delay between the time of online entry submission and the time it is received by the pool commissioner, it is strongly recommend that all online entries be submitted as early as possible.
[...] I am running men’s and women’s pools over on my personal blog. Entry is free and there are prizes (although you can decline them I suppose). Check out the information here. « Pastaria Is Dead to Me [...]
Hey can we do more than one selection sheet? I normally do one normal and one with lots of cinderellas.
I will allow up to two brackets per person, but when you enter them please just use your name. That is, do not attempt to name each bracket. This is because the software will number the brackets for you (e.g., Mary Fields #1, Mary Fields #2). You’ll have to keep up with which ones are your serious picks and which ones are your Cindarellas.
Oooh, yeah, count me in. I know nothing about the teams, mind you, but us unbiased ones who choose for no reason are often the most dangerous. Plus the Vols are decent for the first time in decades, so I have an interest this year. And the Lady Vols are always in the running
I’m in. BTW, my pool is up and running, complete with brackets and links:
http://kepler.covenant.edu/~uthlaut/ncaa2006/
My picks are in…Duke all the way.
Rob: Sorry, but I picked UNC to lose in the second round to MSU.
I might still do a fan bracket or a random bracket.
Yeah, and you picked Illinois to beat them in the championship last year. So there!
Scott,
Do you care if I don’t use my real name? I have no problem giving it out to you (or anyone else who’s blog I read often, for that matter)… but I don’t like to link to my blog with it, I like my blog to be an anonymous place where I can post my musings (albeit, not too often recently) without concern of anyone at work or any of my clients being bothered by my religious or political views.
I have no problem telling all of them I am a christian (or a convervative for that matter), but the last thing I want in a job where I have to meet with clients often and obtain new clients, whose views are different than mine, is for them to be bothered if they happened to do a search and found my blog.
If it’s a big deal, I’ll post my real name, otherwise, I like the anonymity.
Rob: I’m still disappointed in Illinois…but I picked UNC to go higher in your pool.
Felone: Not a big deal since I know you (and link to your blog from here). I just don’t want a bunch of genuine John Does signing up.
ok I did 2. go heels.
Bob: Got your entries and they’re uploaded (as well everyone else’s except for Aunt Mary).
Everyone: I wanted to provide some details in case you don’t see your name right away on the pool home page drop down list of received entries. The software basically does all the magic on my PC, but then I post it to the web. When you complete the online form it gets processed by Leapy Dog and then emailed to me for importing into the tool. I could have set up some elaborate CGI scripts to handle it all on my server, but it was not recommended. Also, the deadline is contingent on when you complete the online form, not when I import the picks.
For people who know nothing about college basketball, might I suggest the RANDOM button? For my second bracket I clicked the button a few times until the champion looked feasible (though if Bradley wins it all then I should have stuck with my first option). So, when you look at my picks once the’re available for everyone to see, the one with a #2 beside it are the random picks (w/ Syracuse winning it all).
I just uploaded the women’s brackets and tested the form with random picks. The first one that came up was Chattanooga as the winner. I’m keeping it, but it’ll probably be the last place bracket.
Okay, Scott, I did two, a “hand-picked” and a “random” one (but not the one that had Bucknell in the championship game losing to Boston College), just for fun. There is always the debate — do you put your team to win it all, out of loyalty to them or do you pick the team that you really think has a legitimate chance of winning it all? Being a Duke fan, that was not as difficult a choice as in years past, although I think there is not an easy favorite this year. Well, let my favorite time of year begin… spring, with the warmer weather and the Big Dance.
Greg: I think you’re on to something. Good picks require dispassionate analysis…and even then there are going to be unpredictable upsets. I read somewhere, maybe over on ESPN, that the national average of people’s gambling picks makes for the most accurate bracket (like 90%).
Okay, I guess I should have kept Bradley…they beat Kansas?!?
[...] the second year in a row I am hosting an online college basketball pool. Last year’s pool was a lot of fun and I was also able to rid my library of several duplicate books and DVD’s. [...]