Monday, December 09, 2019

2019-20 College Bowl Pool Files Are Ready!

Ok, everybody! This season's college football bowl pool files are now ready! I'm sorry I didn't get it out last night per usual, but I was feeling a touch under the weather.

Some noteworthy items:

  • Navy has made a bowl game again, and I'm again not waiting until after the (now traditional, "final week") Army-Navy game, so I don't know Army's final record, so I've simply listed them as "[23] Army (10-2 or 9-3)". I've found this to be simpler than leaving that cell unprotected, allowing you all to edit it, and then dealing with the possibility that you do that AFTER picks are entered and thereby cause the picks for those game to no longer match.
  • The bowl line-up is essentially the same as last year -- no new bowls and no eliminated bowls.
  • We do have one or two sponsor/name changes: The Dollar General Bowl is now the LendingTree Bowl, and the bowl I had listed as the Taxslayer Bowl, which I guess was actually officially called the Taxslayer Gator Bowl starting last year, I've now just listed as the Gator Bowl, matching how I shorten most other sponsor-name-included bowl game names -- at least those bowl games whose names don't ONLY include a sponsor name.
  • Like I started doing last year, in addition to including the teams' records, I've included their rankings (for those in the top 25).
  • I've updated the sheets with opening betting lines for your convenience, but you should probably update these as we get closer to the games, as the lines are constantly being updated until game time. I use the "VI Consensus" lines from Vegas Insider.
  • Finally, 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.
Without further ado...the files:
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.

Finally, 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, and I'll put these donations towards website hosting fees:

$5.00     $10.00     $25.00     $50.00

Really you just have to change that dollar amount in the URL -- https://paypal.me/excelgeek/5.

Enjoy, everyone!