UPDATE 12-06-2016: A few of you have reported that there's a bug in the way you set picks for the National Championship game. I hadn't moved the data validation from last year's semi-final games to this year's. That issue is now fixed in both files. I apologize for the sloppiness.
UPDATE 12-28-2016: I've fixed a couple more issues in the Summary file. The first dealt with the way in which the was with the Bowl Rankings and Average Wagers are calculated in the GAME CHARTS sheet. I had missed one of the games, and it cause the rest of them to be referencing the wrong data. The second was on the CRITICAL GAMES tab. I had the National Championship game referencing the wrong possible teams, since the playoff games change each year. This same issue was impacting how the ODDS OF WINNING scenarios were being ran in the hidden scenario data tab. Basically, it was only picking from Nebraska, Tennessee, South Alabama, and Air Force as the possible teams in the championship game instead of from Washington or Alabama in the Peach Bowl or Ohio State or Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl. That is now fixed, as well. Thank you, Matt, for helping identify some of these issues.
Ok, everybody! This season's college football bowl pool files are now ready! Many of you have been patiently (and not so patiently) nudging me to get these ready. I'm like, "Hey, can't we at least let the Army-Navy game happen first, so we know what their regular season records are, at least?" and you all are saying, "Nope." Fine. Here you go.
Some noteworthy items:
- Since we don't know Army and Navy's final records, I've left those two cells in both the Summary and Entry sheets unlocked, so that they can be easily edited to specify their respective final records. Note that if you make picks, copy-paste picks in from Entry Forms, etc., before making that edit, your picks will no longer match with the team names/records and scoring will not work for those games.
- The bowl line-up is exactly the same as last year, with the exception that the GoDaddy Bowl has become the Dollar General Bowl.
- There aren't currently betting lines set on all of the games, so I just added the spreads for those already available -- check Vegas Insider or similar sites. I did, though, use the first team as the "favorite" for all other games, so that I could do some testing with the "Odds of Winning" functionality, which doesn't work unless favorites are set. This is interesting to know, so that if you find a game has no favorite, at least pick one of the teams and either leave the Spread blank or set it to zero.
- My wife, son, and I haven't had a chance to make our picks yet, so for those of you who like to use our picks as benchmarks of sorts, you'll have to wait until I update that later.
- I did choose to keep the FCS-level Celebration Bowl as part of the line-up. Feel free to have your participants make picks for that game or not, as you like. I think that's likely to be a great game, btw.
For those unfamiliar with the two-file system, the idea is that pool managers can distribute the simple, single person 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.
As always, the file is protected, but not with a password, so feel free to unprotect the workbook and then unhide some of the sheets running this stuff behind the scenes to see how it works. And if you add some cool hacks/additions, pass them along, so we can all enjoy them.
Final, as also always happens each year, several folks, as they were pinging, pestering, checking-in with me offered to pay me or donate to me for the sheets. This, like the NFL pick 'em sheet I do, I do for free as a labor of love. That said, if you are so compelled, feel free to PayPal me whatever you like:
$5.00 $10.00 $25.00 $50.00
Really you just have to change that dollar amount in the URL -- https://paypal.me/excelgeek/50.
Enjoy, everyone!
