SDMB NFL Pick 'em and Survival leagues

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We did this last year.

In NFL Pick 'em leagues, each player predicts the outcome of every NFL game. There are three different types, and we run all three. You can join any or all of them.

Straight up: You simply pick the winner of each game, and get a point.

Spread: A spread is determined for a game (like with sports betting), where one team has a certain amount of points given to them, and you have to pick the game with that adjustment taken into account.

Confidence: The most complex one, but in my view also the most fun. There are no spreads, so you pick the winner straight up. But you get a confidence value you can assign to every game, 1 through the number of games being played that weekend, and can only use each number once. So if there are 16 games that weekend, you’ll assign the confidence number 16 to the game where the outcome seems most clear to you, 15 for the next one, all the way down to 1 for the one you’re least sure of. If you pick correctly, the confidence value of your pick is added to your weekly score.

And survival football: Each player picks one team that has to win each week. If your picked team fails to win, you’re out for the season. You can only use each team once.

These leagues can hold up to 50 players each, so we’re not really at risk for filling up, and you’re competing against the whole league, not one other team per week like fantasy football, so it’s not a big deal if you end up dropping out. I’d like for everyone to play all the way through the season, but it’s not a big deal if you don’t, so feel free to sign up if you’re only a little interested.

To Join to go fantasysports.yahoo.com, go to NFL pick 'em (and/or survival) and join the following groups:

Straight up: League #18853
Confidence: #18855
Spread: #18856
Survival: #667

The password for all leagues is “cecil”

2

Thanks for setting it up this year. I’m in.

Is anyone interested in doing a SDMB College Football Pick’em?

3

Yeah feel free to set up a college league - I don’t know enough about it to be any good.

I wanted to mention that I would suggest either signing up under a name that makes your SDMB name clear, or just post here what your name is when you do sign up. Either is fine, it’s just good to know who’s who.

4

I’ve set up a college pick’em group too. It’s a spread league because that’s the standard for college games. Depending on the level of interest we could make it a spread and confidence group.

ID#:12916
pw:cecil

5

I’m in, x4!

6

Is there any way to get a final score list of previous pick 'em leagues? I was going to list last year’s final score on this thread, but yahoo doesn’t seem to have a record of it. I can only see I was 2nd of 21 (confidence) 2nd of 13 (spread) 2nd of 20 (straight up).

7

I know at least one year I saved the results here for posterity. I’m going to go grab a sandwich, and then see if I can track 'em down.

8

Huh…or not. I just ran a bunch of exhaustive searches, but no dice. Ah well…have to make a point to save them this season.

9

In the thread last year I posted the top 3 overall scores in each league every week, so I remember who tended to be at the top. Strange that I never posted a final score at the end of the season though.

10

im so in… and at the risk of setting myself up for the fall… I will crush all of you!!

:slight_smile:

11

I’m in. I will lose and like it.

12

Im in as No Use For a Name.

13

I’ll be in, but someone needs to bump this thread in about two weeks when I return from vacation.

14

I’m in for at least 3. The confidence sounds confusing.

15

Don’t worry about that… I tend to remind people who haven’t made picks before the week starts. It’s probably a little annoying, but a few times people have said “oh crap, thanks”.

It’s more complicated to explain than to actually play. It’s pretty easy.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say you have 3 games in a week. Team A plays team B, C plays D, E plays F.

You think A is going to crush B, you’re very confident. So you put a confidence value of 3 with A to win. You think C will beat D, but don’t feel that strongly about it, so you pick C to win with a confidence value of 2. The other game is really close, and you lean towards E winning, but you’re not sure at all - so you assign your lowest confidence (1) value for E to win.

Now let’s say teams A, D, and E win. You picked A with a confidence value of 3, so you get 3 points. You picked C, but D won, so no points. You picked E correctly with a confidence value of 1 point. 3+1 = you win 4 points that week.

Obviously you have more decisions to make in a 14 or 16 game week rather than our example with 3, but it’s the same principle. It takes a little while to fill out, and takes some thought, but it’s also in my opinion the most rewarding type of game. There’s a lot more room to seperate yourself from the competition and reward your football knowledge. It was our biggest league last year and I definitely recommend it.

You can save a little time when you then copy over your settings (yahoo provides a function for this) over to the straight up league, since you’d be picking the same winners for each league, just with fewer steps for straight up game.

16

Gotcha. Anyway, I can’t find the signup pages for the confidence or spread games. Can someone post a direct link?

17

The different types of games are just in-game options rather than seperate types of leagues, so you should be able to join any of them from the NFL pick 'em page at fantasysports.yahoo.com, the same way you’d sign up for the straight up leagues. Just try entering the number and password.

18

I’m in.

Last year was a bit of a drought after my stomping in 2005. I was pretty close in survival, but forgot to post two weeks in confidence and never recovered. I’m back to my 2005 form and ready to rule again.

19

I did turn on “drop lowest week” from the start this year. I’m not a huge fan of that setting - it’ll be weird especially early on in the season when we might have 2 or 3 weeks under our belt with the worst one being dropped - but overall it seems to be good for the health of the league. People forget sometimes… and without a dropped week, people tend to quit if they get behind because they forgot a week. I’d prefer to keep playing, personally, even if I did - because even though you’re behind overall, you can still win individual weeks - but in any case dropping a week seems to be the popular thing to do.

20

I created an SDMB salary cap fantasy football league that you guys might be interested in. It’s more like pick 'em and survival leagues than normal fantasy football in some ways - see that thread for details.

I meant to originally create that league at the same time as I created these ones. But when I was signing up, there was no option to create a private group. So I thought you couldn’t. But it turns out yahoo does salary cap differently from everything else - you create a team, and then that team can join multiple leagues - rather than joining the league and then creating a team, hence my initial confusion.