The First Annual Buy/Sell College Football Pool

Since this site gets only a few contributors to contests like this, I’ve decided to add a little twist of my own. A draft to select the teams each person gets. For the most part, I, Willy, and KP are the only ones to compete in these types of things, so instead of just having us end up with very similar selections, I’ll conduct a draft. I’ll come up with a way to determine the order (let me know if you have any ideas) and we’ll do a snake draft to pick the teams. When it is your turn to select, you can make any selection not previously made (so if someone already picked to buy Florida, you can pick Florida, but you’d have to pick to sell them). The draft will be conducted over email on Wednesday and Thursday (before the first game begins). Depending on how many people enter (Curtis and Sammy, if you’re out there, feel free to jump in), I’ll probably limit it to five selections per person.

Here are the rules:

Buying and Selling: Each player buys or sells teams at their preseason AP Poll rankings and scores points based on how many ranking slots those teams make or lose between the preseason poll and the final poll. For example: Georgia Tech is #15 in the preseason AP Poll. If you buy GT and they finish #10, you gain 5 points. If you buy GT and they finish #20, you lose 5 points. Conversely, if you sell GT from #15 you lose 5 points if they finish #10 and make 5 points if they finish #20. Sound easy enough?

Scoring for Unranked Teams: All teams not in the top 35 (yes, you read that right, top 35) in the preseason poll will count as #40. So if you choose to buy Auburn and they finished #20, you would gain 20 points since you bought them at #40. Conversely, any team you buy that is part of the preseason top 35 but finishes outside of it with be scored as if they finished at #40. There is one important part of this rule to keep in mind though: if you buy a team that is not in the top 35 in the preseason poll and they finish unranked, they will be scored as if they finished at #45, meaning you would lose 5 points. Basically so you can’t sit back and not take risks by picking teams that have no chance of finishing ranked and then hope the other participants made poor choices that would lose them points.

Scoring Bonuses for Top 5 Teams: Top 5 teams receive bonus points based on the final AP Poll. Players win bonus points if they buy a team that ends in the top 5 or lose bonus points if they short a team that ends in the top 5. However, bonus points are only earned or lost for teams that rise in the rankings. You don’t earn or lose points for teams that drop. The bonus points are: #1 – 10, #2 – 7, #3 – 5, #4 – 3, #5 – 1. For example, if you buy Ohio State at #6 in the preseason poll and they finish #1, you would earn 5 points for their climb to #1 and another 10 points as a bonus for them finishing the season in the top spot. Conversely, if you sold the Buckeyes at #6 and they finished #1, you would lose 15 total points. This rule improves the game by creating an incentive to buy high-ranked teams and not sell them. Without the bonus points, everyone would end up selling the top teams without much to lose. And on the other hand, without bonus point, no one would buy the #1 team because there would be nothing to gain.

Please Note: The rules might be altered slightly depending on how many participants I get. I’ll finalize the details next week. The draft details, for instance.

I’ll start the draft first thing Wednesday morning, so let me know if you want to participate by Tuesday, September 1st. Email me to enter.