Reader's Enhancement to 2008-2009 College Football Bowl Spreadsheet

This is what I love most about the Internet: collaboration with complete strangers.

A couple days ago I got an email from one of my readers, Jonathan Sickinger. Jonathan said that he searched on Google for bowl spreadsheets and found the one I did. (BTW, I saw that I'm the number one hit for a great variety of college bowl pool spreadsheet-related queries...wow!) Jonathan said that after playing around with the spreadsheet for a few days he decided to make some edits and customizations. Great! He made some cosmetic changes to match an entry form that he sends out to his pool participants. I like the look better than what I had done, personally. Next he added space for up to 40 participants (over my 35).

Then Jonathan said that he had an epiphany: In addition to the individual tracking charts, wouldn't it be great if we also had a chart for each bowl? These charts allow participants to see the pick dispersion for each game, giving them a sense of how important that game is to their overall chances. For example, if everyone in the pool weights the same game as one of their most confident picks then the relative importance of that game drops significantly. Follow? Jonathan also threw in some data on each game to show where the bowl ranks in average points wagered and the distribution of who picked which team. Very cool.

I thought it'd be nice to share with everyone this new and improved version and it's accompanying entry form, so here you go:

0809_College_Bowl_Pool_worksheet_Sickinger_mod.xls
0809_College_Bowl_Pool_Sickinger_entry_form.xls

Note: the file's a bit heftier now at >2,500 KB vs. the roughly 1,200 KB it was before, but I think the new features are worth the added weight.

Next up? Jonathan and I are thinking about collaborating on a VBA-based enhancement to make it so that once a pool organizer gets everyone's entry forms back, he or she can simply click a button to pull everyone's picks into the master workbook. That'll be sweet, no?

Later,

Excel_Geek