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The college bowl season is upon us, and I've taken the liberty of starting a group for ESPN's game "College Bowl Mania."

The game is fairly simple. There are 34 college bowl games that will play between Saturday, Dec 19th (this Saturday) and Jan 7th. You simply go down the line and pick the team that you think will win each bowl game. Once you have picked all the winners, then you "adjust for confidence." What that means is that you can rank the games based on how confident you are in each pick. If you are absolutely positive that South Florida will destroy Northern Illinois in the International Bowl, then you can "drag and drop" that one to the #33 or #34 spot. If you feel that Penn State-LSU in the Capital One Bowl is too close to call, you can drag and drop that one down to the #1 or #2 position.

When each bowl game is played, if you pick that game correctly, then you get the number of points listed for the confidence.

Game front page:  http://games.espn.go.com/bowlmania/en/frontpage (http://games.espn.go.com/bowlmania/en/frontpage)
Group: TDMMC Bowl Mania 2009
Password:  TDMMC

Remember to select the "confidence" option when setting up your entry initially, or else it won't let you join the TDMMC group.  If you have any issues getting in or setting up your entry, just let me know and I'll be glad to help.

Game on, folks...now show me your college knowledge!!

I'm in

I'm in and so are my picks.  Looks like fun.

My picks are in.

Remember, the group password is case-sensitive.  (All CAPS)

When I think of this site, Dave, it's upper case all the way. ;)

LAST CHANCE... BOWL GAMES START TOMORROW.

Please make sure you have your picks set. So far, it looks like a pretty small group...

I am in

My picks are in.   I did not do my homework so I hope I don't embarrass myself.

Prepare to call me "Nostradamusfish"

Stinkstradamus?

Nostrastinkus?

Crap. I just did one with the point spreads, now I have to change my thinking.

Get on in there, D_B...just think of spread as "confidence rating"

Denver will give us 7...and that is decent-enough size (for now) for a fringe fantasy game.


I did a little bit of "homework" for my picks... I had to, as this game goes toward my overall ranking on ESPN...and I'm "this close" to cracking the top-25 overall. I also watched a humongous amount of college pigskin this year, due to my playing college fantasy football for the first time.

Basically, I made my bowl picks by pulling up team stats for both teams in the matchup, spent about 5 minutes looking at their strengths and weaknesses for rush/pass, offense/defense, compared difficulty of schedule and weighted it toward the team that finished the regular season stronger. For confidence, I went "totally gut" and arranged them by how strongly I felt on the pick.

I am in !

Do you think the investigation into the USC rb will affect the bowl game at all?

I haven't heard that it will, so I didn't really factor it into my pick of that game.

Interesting start to the Bowl season: Wyoming makes a 4th qtr comeback to tie their game with Fresno State and send it to OT. This is a good omen, imo...

Its just typical of these college bowls. You get one team who cares about even showing up (Wyoming), and another one that is going through the motions, (Fresno State), that can't wait until the season is over.

A nice 0-2 start to the bowl season is always good.

Especially if both have high point values...

You had a high and a mid drop yesterday, which will definitely make it tough, but I've seen worse starts turn into nice finishes in this game, so you just have to knock on wood for the other 32 games.

So I take it, everyone picked Fresno State, lol.

Oh yeah...and not just in the TDMMC group, but all 34 entries in the ESPN Top 50 group had the Bulldogs as well. Wyoming pulled off a shocker for sure. I just wish I hadn't rated that game so high on the confidence... ;)

Yeah I dug a big hole yesterday too with UCF

It's been upset-mania early on, as 2 of the first 3 favorites have gone down.  I don't have any problems with upsets though...I just wish the upsets would wait until the games where I actually have the upset picked. ;D

Did i pick Middle Tennessee St.? I can't view it at work.  I think I had them.

You did have MTSU last night...bumped you up to 1-2 and tied for the group lead. Even Dave, at 0-3, is within a single game of the top early on.

Finally got one

MAACO Las Vegas Bowl tonight...Oregon State vs BYU. Only two of us have BYU in this one, Dave and me...everyone else is on Oregon State.

Game is on ESPN at 8 PM ET

I didn't know who to pick in the Vegas Bowl, so my confidence level was only a 3 on the Oregon State pick.  Should be a close game.

Poinsettia (its a flower) Bowl tonight... Utah vs Cal. Another Mountain West vs Pac-10 battle like last night, and again I went against my heart and picked the Pac-10 to lose. I did go low confidence (5) on it, showing that I fully expect this could go either way. No Jahvid Best for Cal was ultimately the reason I went with Utah. Group is split down the middle...or as close to the middle as you can get with 7 players (4-3), with confidence ratings between 5 and 33.

A few players who could be drafted into the NFL in April from this game:

Utah OLB Stevenson Sylvester (3rd round area) (does he have two first names or two last names? Hard to tell)
Cal CB Syd'Quan Thompson (4th round area)
Cal DT Tyson Alualu (4th rd area)
Utah OT Zane Beadles (4th-5th rd area)
Cal OT Mike Tepper (4th-5th round area)
Cal WR Verran Tucker (late round)
Utah DE Koa Misi (late round)
Utah FS Robert Johnson (late round)

I really thought OSU would have a better showing last night after coming so close to winning the Pac 10

LMFAO! Gotta love college bowl season. Nevada is shitting the bed as a 12-13 pt favorite, down 17-0 in the first quarter.

It's brutal...and not even a potential upset that I considered. I watched Nevada a couple of time this year because of Kaepernick, and if you'd have told me they'd be down 31-0 to "anyone," I'd have laughed at ya. Their offense is usually insanely good.

45-3? You gotta be kidding me......

Taking notes: Next year take every underdog as an outright winner.

How to win College Bowl Mania : pick opposite of me. :)

Please forward your picks to me next year prior to the first bowl's kickoff... ;)

Today's trio of games should determine whether I am running from the r=front for a while, or if I'm going to be playing catch-up. I am the only one in the group to have North Carolina picked to beat Pitt, and I have it at a 17 confidence.

Should be some good football today for sure...

Went 2 out of 3, not too bad

Uh oh, Denverdamus is heating up...LOL

Translation from Denverese:

"Holy shit, one of the darts I threw while blindfolded actually hit the fucking wall!"

;)

HAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!

Do think the suspension of the Texas Tech coach will kill their chances in the bowl?

nah, Michigan State sucks this year.

On a side note i'd like to thank Texas A&M for killing my win streak. I had a chance to make a good move with them and they got smoked.

Dam Canes are ruining my little streak

I've completely given up on this college bowl farce. Congrats to whoever wins.

Dam I got raped today by upsets.

-- Addendum, Character File: Denver_Bronco (*D_B)
-- File updated: 1/1/2010

After appealing to D_B to "put up or shut up" in regards to sports prognostication for a very long time, D_B finally joins a TDMMC pick'em game, the College Bowl Mania contest. After hitting a stretch of 5 straight missed picks, D_B posts the following comment:

 

Oh crap...did this post publicly? Shoot, let me erase it and add it to the private file.

;)

I never claimed to be a college football guru. I have barely watched college football for the last 3-4 years.

Dam stroke you have a two game lead on me. I do not think I can overcome that now.

I was just fucking with ya, since I finally get to fuck with ya within the framework of game-smack. ;)

All 3 of my entries (I have a confidence and a straight pick entry for ESPN TOP 50) are doing fairly well. The other two are both currently at 99%, but my entry in the TDMMC still has a higher max score remaining. I'm hoping one of the two TOP 50 entries holds the 99% score, as it would flush a 90% game score out of the bottom of my cat B score and add about 45 points to my overall ESPN ranking for 2009. I'm knocking on the door of overall top-25 status (currently #35), so any last minute scoring bumps I can get my hands on are good things. The playoff gridiron challenge game that we are doing is another opportunity for that as well. ;D

The Pac 10 fully blows this year in bowls

Wha' Happened to Stinky?

LOL...you were bit by the upset snake...repeatedly. ;)

Best I can do now is tie you Stroke if the games break my way.

I went high confidence (24) on the USF Bulls today. I've watched Northern Illinois a couple of times this season, and I think they haven't seen "anything" like the pair of edge rushers that USF has in Selvie and Pierre-Paul (local Deerfield Beach kid). I think they shut down the only real weapon that NIU has (Chad Spann) and win a lopsided matchup.

Sure hope I'm not wrong...I could use those 24 points. ;)  Both of my other entries have USF as well.

I do not understand how the whole point thing works. I am just happy to have a winning record with all these upsets

woo hoo I crawled up to .500 today

Crap!  I thought I picked Oklahoma.  :-[

Thanks to all for playing the TDMMC College Bowl Mania game this year. My humble apologies for wrapping things up so early...I just got mad lucky on some of my upset picks this year.

NFL Gridiron Playoff Challenge is next (see separate thread). If you aren't in there...you probably should. It'll be a blast, and you know you're going to be watching the NFL playoffs anyway.

;D

I let you win Sunstroke............. ;)

One final thought on Bowl Mania... If I could point to one thing, as a fantasy gamer, that I was happy with in my (soon to be) 99.9% entry, it would be my "minority calls." I picked 7 teams this year that had the majority of entries picking against them. I was 7-0 in those games, for 109 points in confidence. I've played this game "a few times" in the past, and that's definitely the best I've ever done on the minority calls. I'll come back down to earth next season and finish middle of the pack, just watch... ;)

I like how I have the worst record, yet I'm still in the middle of the pack :P.

^^^ It's all about the confidence rating... I've seen entries that won the overall game title that had 7 or 8 bad picks, but they were all low confidence ratings, so they were able to pack in the points in the games they got right. It was a brutally tough year for most in this game...so many upsets that it was almost like a crapshoot out there.

Well, the Bowl Mania game finally posted, and I got lucky and bumped up to #25 on the ESPN overall fantasy rankings for all sports. That was my goal for my first year of "all games" competition, so I'm happy to have made it...barely. ;D

http://games.espn.go.com/uber/leaderboard (http://games.espn.go.com/uber/leaderboard)

We can probably unsticky this thread now...the postscript is complete.