schlaufuchs
Break My Heart
Whoo-ee am I late on getting it up this year, or what? Well whatever. LET'S DO THIS...FOR MADDEN
Hello everybody and welcome to the 4th annual CFC Pick'em Funtimes League! Because I've been procrastinating so much on getting this thread out, I figure I'm just going to mine my OP from last year and post that as good. I figure I'll make a few topical changes, adjust some word order, and it'll be good. Just like in college! So let's see what I opened with last year?
Oh. Wow. I literally don't have to change anything about that paragraph. Yeah...I'm going to just...move...on ohgodwhydidIchoosetheseteamskillmenow
So...er...moving right along. What did I say next?
Man, crapping all over my teams that were really good 5 years ago and are kinda dumpster-firey now is just the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it? Between that and Azale straight up flaking again like I threatened him not to last year, we're a solid 3-for-3 on the passage of time being an illusion and this whole life being one big groundhog day event to punish me for being a smug bay area stan. Anyway, let's take a moment to remind me that this isn't a glitchy horrifying matrix and instead revisit something joyous that happened to me last year:
2016-2017 CFC Pick'em Funtimes Results
Yeah, that's right, I won my own competition, that I moderate! Whatchu going to do about it? Not play? NO WAIT PLEASE THAT WAS A TOOTHLESS THREAT
...
The Rules
So how does this work? It's very easy! On Tuesday of each week I will post all of the games to be played in the upcoming week, alongside the game's spread in bold. Each game will look like this:
So what this means is that Tampa Bay, the away team, is favored to win the game by 2.5 points, i.e. by at least a field goal (as half-points do not exist in football). Now if this were an ordinary ATS pick'em league you would be asked to decide between one of two choices on this game. Either you say Tampa Bay covers, which means you think Tampa Bay will win the game by 3 points or more, or you say Tampa Bay does not cover, which means you think Tampa Bay will not win by 3 points or more, whether that means Tampa Bay wins, but only by 1 or 2 points, or whether that means Miami wins outright, is irrelevant to this style of league.
Now we here at CFC do things slightly differently than would be done in a standard ATS-league. We run more of a hybrid system in which you are picking both straight up (which team wins), as well as picking against the spread. What this translates to in practice is that, rather than 2 options, you have 3 for any game.
You can say:
Tampa Bay covers, which means you think Tampa will win the game by at least eight points
Tampa Bay does not cover, which means you think Tampa will win, but by fewer than 3 points
Miami wins outright, which means Miami, the underdog, wins by any margin.
"But Owen!", you might say, "What about pushes, you didn't think of that, did you?" Well, you precocious strawman you, not so fast. Pushes, for those not in the know, deal with cases where, for example, a team favored by 4 points wins by exactly 4. Here at Pick'em funtimes we consider a team favored by 4 winning by exactly 4 (i.e. a push) to be a cover.
So that covers the basics of picking. You do that for every team (or as many as you want, honestly) and I'll keep track of them and do the tallies at the end of the week. Picking is as lengthy or as simple as you want it to be. It can take as little as 5 minutes per week, which really is no time at all. There are a couple caveats to picking etiquette that I'd like to get through before we get on to scoring. So:
1) You can frame your picks however you want. Use abbreviations, use joke names, use +/- notation, include your thoughts on why you made the picks you make, whatever. Just keep in mind all I'm looking for when recording the picks is Team and cover/not cover/outright, so please try to make those immediately apparent, preferably putting your actual pick in boldface lettering so I can pick it out of your wall of text easily and accurately.
2) As we had a problem with this last year, this is just a helpful reminder that THIS IS NOT A STRAIGHT ATS NOR A STRAIGHT PICK'EM LEAGUE. YOUR PICK NEEDS TO BE BOTH AGAINST THE SPREAD AND YOU NEED TO PICK AN OUTRIGHT WINNER. If you do pick as straight pick'em, I'll give you fair warning and let you correct your picks, but if no correction comes, I will take any straight pick'em as a dog-cover pick. That is to say, if you say, e.g. TB dnc, I will take that to mean Tampa wins, but by fewer than 3, and you will receive no points for a dog winning outright. If you say TB win or just "TB", I will take that as "TB covers" and you will not receive the extra point if TB wins but does not cover.
2) You are free to make your picks any time during the week, and change them as many times as you want. There are many participants who choose to post their pick for the Thursday Night Football game on Tuesday or Wednesday, and then withhold their Sunday and Monday picks for the weekend. That is perfectly fine. The only rule regarding pick timing is that your pick is placed before kickoff of the game in question. Once kickoff occurs all picks are final as written. No changes. No late picks. No exceptions.
3) If, for whatever reason (banned, on vacation, etc) you are unable to submit your picks in time, you are free to PM me, or hit me up on #fiftychat with your picks. I'll post them in-thread, and as long as they're delivered to me before kick-off of the game in question I will consider them valid.
4) If you are unable to do #4 for whatever reason, or if I'm being flakey on posting spreads, you can also post your picks as conditionals. "I'll take Baltimore to cover unless they're favored by 5 or more points" is fine. If you post that I'll consider it valid and sort out the mechanics of it. Try not to do this unless you absolutely have to though.
5) If you wish to change your picks, as noted above, that is fine, however, when you do change them, please indicate, either in-thread or via PM that you have done so. Sometime I write your picks down as they come up, and if you make minor changes to individual games I may not notice them.
6) Sometimes the spread will change over the course of the week. The spread that's listed in-thread is the spread that matters, and generally that one will go up on Tuesday. Sometimes a spread is not available on Tuesday, or more specifically, covers.com, the site I use, hasn't come to a consensus cover yet. If this is the case, I will note it in-thread and update the post as the spread becomes available. Usually this happens on Wednesday or Thursday, but regardless I will always try to give you guys at least 2 days to make your picks. It doesn't always happen in practice, but that's what I'm aiming for.
Ok so now that that's out of the way, let's move on to the scoring. For any given game during a week, you have the opportunity to earn up to 2 points. You get 1 point for picking the winner correctly, and one point for getting the spread correctly. I'll keep track of your picks and post the weekly results and standings in the thread on the following Tuesday. Just like last year I'll be keeping track of some extra statistics and post those at the end of the season. Maybe even mid-season, who knows!
Expect the first week spreads to follow very shortly
Cheers guys!
Hello everybody and welcome to the 4th annual CFC Pick'em Funtimes League! Because I've been procrastinating so much on getting this thread out, I figure I'm just going to mine my OP from last year and post that as good. I figure I'll make a few topical changes, adjust some word order, and it'll be good. Just like in college! So let's see what I opened with last year?
Oh. Wow. I literally don't have to change anything about that paragraph. Yeah...I'm going to just...move...on ohgodwhydidIchoosetheseteamskillmenow
So...er...moving right along. What did I say next?
Man, crapping all over my teams that were really good 5 years ago and are kinda dumpster-firey now is just the gift that keeps on giving, isn't it? Between that and Azale straight up flaking again like I threatened him not to last year, we're a solid 3-for-3 on the passage of time being an illusion and this whole life being one big groundhog day event to punish me for being a smug bay area stan. Anyway, let's take a moment to remind me that this isn't a glitchy horrifying matrix and instead revisit something joyous that happened to me last year:
2016-2017 CFC Pick'em Funtimes Results
Yeah, that's right, I won my own competition, that I moderate! Whatchu going to do about it? Not play? NO WAIT PLEASE THAT WAS A TOOTHLESS THREAT
...
The Rules
So how does this work? It's very easy! On Tuesday of each week I will post all of the games to be played in the upcoming week, alongside the game's spread in bold. Each game will look like this:
So what this means is that Tampa Bay, the away team, is favored to win the game by 2.5 points, i.e. by at least a field goal (as half-points do not exist in football). Now if this were an ordinary ATS pick'em league you would be asked to decide between one of two choices on this game. Either you say Tampa Bay covers, which means you think Tampa Bay will win the game by 3 points or more, or you say Tampa Bay does not cover, which means you think Tampa Bay will not win by 3 points or more, whether that means Tampa Bay wins, but only by 1 or 2 points, or whether that means Miami wins outright, is irrelevant to this style of league.
Now we here at CFC do things slightly differently than would be done in a standard ATS-league. We run more of a hybrid system in which you are picking both straight up (which team wins), as well as picking against the spread. What this translates to in practice is that, rather than 2 options, you have 3 for any game.
You can say:
Tampa Bay covers, which means you think Tampa will win the game by at least eight points
Tampa Bay does not cover, which means you think Tampa will win, but by fewer than 3 points
Miami wins outright, which means Miami, the underdog, wins by any margin.
"But Owen!", you might say, "What about pushes, you didn't think of that, did you?" Well, you precocious strawman you, not so fast. Pushes, for those not in the know, deal with cases where, for example, a team favored by 4 points wins by exactly 4. Here at Pick'em funtimes we consider a team favored by 4 winning by exactly 4 (i.e. a push) to be a cover.
So that covers the basics of picking. You do that for every team (or as many as you want, honestly) and I'll keep track of them and do the tallies at the end of the week. Picking is as lengthy or as simple as you want it to be. It can take as little as 5 minutes per week, which really is no time at all. There are a couple caveats to picking etiquette that I'd like to get through before we get on to scoring. So:
1) You can frame your picks however you want. Use abbreviations, use joke names, use +/- notation, include your thoughts on why you made the picks you make, whatever. Just keep in mind all I'm looking for when recording the picks is Team and cover/not cover/outright, so please try to make those immediately apparent, preferably putting your actual pick in boldface lettering so I can pick it out of your wall of text easily and accurately.
2) As we had a problem with this last year, this is just a helpful reminder that THIS IS NOT A STRAIGHT ATS NOR A STRAIGHT PICK'EM LEAGUE. YOUR PICK NEEDS TO BE BOTH AGAINST THE SPREAD AND YOU NEED TO PICK AN OUTRIGHT WINNER. If you do pick as straight pick'em, I'll give you fair warning and let you correct your picks, but if no correction comes, I will take any straight pick'em as a dog-cover pick. That is to say, if you say, e.g. TB dnc, I will take that to mean Tampa wins, but by fewer than 3, and you will receive no points for a dog winning outright. If you say TB win or just "TB", I will take that as "TB covers" and you will not receive the extra point if TB wins but does not cover.
2) You are free to make your picks any time during the week, and change them as many times as you want. There are many participants who choose to post their pick for the Thursday Night Football game on Tuesday or Wednesday, and then withhold their Sunday and Monday picks for the weekend. That is perfectly fine. The only rule regarding pick timing is that your pick is placed before kickoff of the game in question. Once kickoff occurs all picks are final as written. No changes. No late picks. No exceptions.
3) If, for whatever reason (banned, on vacation, etc) you are unable to submit your picks in time, you are free to PM me, or hit me up on #fiftychat with your picks. I'll post them in-thread, and as long as they're delivered to me before kick-off of the game in question I will consider them valid.
4) If you are unable to do #4 for whatever reason, or if I'm being flakey on posting spreads, you can also post your picks as conditionals. "I'll take Baltimore to cover unless they're favored by 5 or more points" is fine. If you post that I'll consider it valid and sort out the mechanics of it. Try not to do this unless you absolutely have to though.
5) If you wish to change your picks, as noted above, that is fine, however, when you do change them, please indicate, either in-thread or via PM that you have done so. Sometime I write your picks down as they come up, and if you make minor changes to individual games I may not notice them.
6) Sometimes the spread will change over the course of the week. The spread that's listed in-thread is the spread that matters, and generally that one will go up on Tuesday. Sometimes a spread is not available on Tuesday, or more specifically, covers.com, the site I use, hasn't come to a consensus cover yet. If this is the case, I will note it in-thread and update the post as the spread becomes available. Usually this happens on Wednesday or Thursday, but regardless I will always try to give you guys at least 2 days to make your picks. It doesn't always happen in practice, but that's what I'm aiming for.
Ok so now that that's out of the way, let's move on to the scoring. For any given game during a week, you have the opportunity to earn up to 2 points. You get 1 point for picking the winner correctly, and one point for getting the spread correctly. I'll keep track of your picks and post the weekly results and standings in the thread on the following Tuesday. Just like last year I'll be keeping track of some extra statistics and post those at the end of the season. Maybe even mid-season, who knows!
Expect the first week spreads to follow very shortly
Cheers guys!
