Welcome to the NFL Bragging Rights Pool, Year XIV (2011)

Rule #1. Pick Every Game
The ultimate rule in this pool is that you must pick a winner for every game, regular season and post-season. No point spread, just straight up winners.

• Send all picks to scdiller42@yahoo.com & scdiller42@gmail.com (please send to both addreses, as there have been occasional e-mail troubles in the past)
• Picks for all Sunday & Monday night games should be made by Saturday night.
• When there are Thursday or Saturday games, those specific games need to be picked by kickoff. The rest of the week can come later.
• The full slate of games for the following week will usually be up on the website by Tuesday or Wednesday night for reference.
• We usually try to entertain each other by sending comments with our picks, so feel free to be creative, as long as it is clear and obvious who you're picking.
• All picks will be posted (with your comments if you supply them) sometime Sunday morning. If everyone has their picks in early, I can post them Saturday. But please don't wait until Sunday to send picks. I like to watch pre-game shows.
• Backup Picks - Each player can, at any time during the season, declare a specific rule for determining Backup Picks, should you miss any or all games for the week. For example:
  • Ben wants the favorite as determined by bodog.com. If there are any "pick-ems" or "no line" games (very rare), he gets the team with the better W-L record. If the W-L is the same, go to the home team.
  • Dave & Scott want the home teams, unless it creates a bold pick for him, or negates someone else's. In those cases, take the away team.
  • Anyone can copy any of these methods as their backups, or use any other method, so long as it's clearly stated and easy to determine the picks.
• Consensus Pick - If a single game for a week is missed/forgotten and you do not have Backup Picks in place, you will receive the "consensus" pick, meaning the same pick as the majority of the players who did pick the game. This way, no one misses a Thursday night game and the team they likely would've picked.
• If an entire slate of games are missed (entire week, 1PM games, etc.) and you do not have Backup Picks in place, you will receive either a .500 record for those games (one game below if odd number of games), or tie for the lowest record for that time period, whichever value is lower.

"Pick every game" is the number one rule for this reason: We don't want people dropping out if they feel they've fallen too far behind. Just like in the NFL, there's always next year, and not sending picks is a good way to not be invited back into the pool next year.

Rule #2. Tie-breakers
At the end of the season, if two players are still tied after Total W-L are tallied, we'll go to:

1. Total # of Weeks Won: "Sharing" a win with one or more players in any week equals one half of a week won by yourself. Example: Someone who won two weeks by themselves is still tied with someone who shared the lead for four weeks.
2. Total points scored in the Playoff Predictions side pool (see below)
3. Total Bold Pick Percentage: Picking a team that no one else picked for that game qualifies as a "Bold Pick". Bold Picks will be denoted... in bold. Example: Someone who is 3-1 (.750) for the season will beat someone who is 6-17 (.261). If one of the tied players has NO Bold Picks (0-0), we will proceed to the next tie-breaker.
4. Total playoff record (Those 11 really important games at the end of the season that are usually tougher to pick)
5. Coin flip

Side Pool: Playoff Predictions

***All playoff predictions are due before the first game, Thu., Sept. 8, 2011***

The Basics
List your top 12 teams. It's as simple as that.

Don't worry about picking division winners versus wild cards, because this will come into play in the scoring (see below). Basically, you put the team you think will win it all at #1, your predicted Super Bowl loser or your second-most-likely team to win the big one at #2, probably your Conference Championship runners-up at #3 & 4, and so on.

The beauty (hopefully) of the scoring system is that you don’t necessarily have to follow the usual method of picking six teams from each conference and at least one team from each division. You could instead stack your list of 12 with mostly AFC teams, or you could even have your top 3 or 4 picks all be AFC teams, or ignore the NFC West altogether! All of these options limit your maximum points potential (since one team from the NFC West will, in fact, make the playoffs), but could give you better coverage overall in a tougher conference or division.

Scoring
Based on where you seed them, each point value for final standings and playoff wins (see further down) will be multiplied by the base values below, just like we do with the NCAA hoops tourney, for those who are familiar with that.

Base value for teams you place at #:
1. x20
2. x17
3. x14
4. x12
5. x10
6. x8
7. x6
8. x5
9. x4
10. x3
11. x2
12. x1

Multipliers based on Final Standings & Playoff Progression:

Playoff seed based on final standings:
#6 seed = x1
#5 seed = x2
#4 seed = x3
#3 seed = x4
#2 seed = x5
#1 seed = x6

Playoffs:
Wins Wild Card playoff game or receives bye = x3
Wins Divisional playoff game = x5
Wins Conference Championship = x10
Wins Super Bowl = x20

So playoff seedings matter, but not as much, on the whole, as winning playoff games. Giving points for a bye week makes sense, since those teams can’t win a wild card game and would otherwise unfairly reward a #3-6 seed for having to play that one extra game.

Examples (Caution! math ahead!):
If you placed the 2010 Packers at the #1 spot (x20), you would get x1 for a #6 seed (20), then x3 for Wild Card Game win (60), x5 for Divisional game win (100), x10 for a Conference title (200), & x20 for the Super Bowl Championship (400) ... 20 + 60 + 100 + 200 + 400 = 780

However, if you placed the 2010 Packers at the #2 spot (x17), you would get all the same multipliers, but they would be worth 17 points each instead of 20 ... 17 + 51 + 85 + 170 + 340 = 663

Similarly, if you placed the 2010 Steelers at the #1 spot (x20), you would get a x5 for their #2 seed (100), then x3 for their bye week (60), x5 for the Divisional playoff win (100), & x10 for their Conference Championship (200) … 100 + 60 + 100 + 200 = 460

However, if you placed the 2010 Steelers at the #2 spot (x17), you would get ... 85 + 51 + 85 + 170 = 391

If you were foolish and placed the Packers & Steelers at #5 & 6 respectively, you would’ve only scored a combined 580 points or so instead of around 1200. Therein lies the challenge.

The most any one team could score at the #1 slot would be 880 (120 for #1 seed + 60 for bye + 100 for Divisional playoff win + 200 for Conference title + 400 for Super Bowl win)

Does your brain hurt yet? Mine asploded a few paragraphs back.

***All playoff predictions are due before the first game, Thu., Sept. 8, 2011***