You've all been waiting very patiently for me to update my annual college football bowl pool spreadsheets, and here they are!
There were all sorts of changes this year. Five all new bowl games, one discontinued bowl game, and a few renames. Plus, we're in our first year of the College Football Playoff era! That's right, we've got one game in the list for which we won't even know the teams playing until later on.
Here's the new bowl games:
- The Camellia Bowl. This one will be played in Montgomery, Alabama between a Sun Belt Conference and Mid-American Conference teams. The bowl is owned by ESPN Regional Television.
- The Miami Beach Bowl. This one will be played in Miami in Marlins Park. We always need more Florida bowl games, right?
- The Boca Raton Bowl. This one will be played at Florida Atlantic University stadium in Boca Raton. It's also owned by ESPN Events, and features Mid-American conference teams until 2019.
- The Popeyes Bowl. Officially the Popeye's Bahamas Bowl for its sponsor Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen, this one will be played in Nassau Bahamas and features Mid-American conference teams through 2016. This will be the first game played outside the U.S. since 2010 International Bowl in Toronto.
- The Quick Lane Bowl. This bowl will be replacing the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. This isn't merely a renaming, though. It's a whole new bowl organization. The Little Caesars Bowl is no more (for now).
- The former Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl is now called the Foster Farms Bowl.
- The former Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl is now called the Cactus Bowl.
- The former BBVA Compass Bowl is now called the Birmingham Bowl.
- The BCS National Championship is now called the College Football Playoff (CFP) National Championship, as we enter the CFP era. Bye bye, BCS.
For those unfamiliar with the two-file system, the idea is that pool managers can distribute the Entry Form version to those in their pool to make their picks and assign confidence points. The participants them email back that file, and the manager can simply copy -- paste special... values those picks and points into the Summary file, which is where they manage everything.
Note: Since I wasn't sure how you folks would be dealing with the fact that we don't currently know which teams will be playing in the CFP Championship, I've made it so that you can easily edit those teams later. Some of you may prefer to have everyone pick a winner for that game upfront, filling in the teams playing with their two picks for the initial two playoff games. Some of you may opt to have folks send in their picks for that game later, once the teams are known. It's up to you, I guess.
Another note: I don't have the final record for the Navy team, since they play in the annual Army-Navy game this weekend. I've also left that cell unprotected so you can easily update the record for the Midshipmen.
Finally, I don't yet have my personal picks completed, but will add them, as well as those for my wife (MRS. EXCEL_GEEK) and son (EXCEL_GEEK, JR.) and update the files once we're ready. Some of you have voiced a preference to have those picks included, to give you a benchmark for your own picks (and to see me lose each year to my wife.)
Enjoy, everyone!
