2012 Rule Changes

Thanks to all of you who replied with your thoughts on what changes should happen for FC2012. I tried to take them all into consideration when coming up with the proposed rule changes for this year. One thing I won't list is the new payouts, which we'll decide once we figure out how many members we'll have for this upcoming season.

Here's what has already been decided:

-Still pick 15 games (at least 5 NFL and 5 NCAA when possible) and we will pick 15 games EVERY week, even when it's NFL only. Most of the ties last year occurred in the 10 game weeks where it was NFL only, so we will move to picking basically every NFL game over the final weeks of the year (15 of 16).

- I will use actual Tuesday lines, so we will be accounting for the early line movements and you will no longer be able to get the obvious bad numbers that came with posting the opening lines for our use. This should sharpen the lines up and make the choices less obvious and likely decrease our records a bit from last year.

- Wins will be worth 2 points and ties will be worth 1 point...this eliminates the always controversial tie = loss rule that has been in play for a couple of years. This way, it will be a points based competition and make it more fair and hopefully eliminate some of the ties.

Tiebreaker
So this is the one that has had the most debate amongst the players of FC and just internally for me as well. In the weeks where we had 15 games to pick we only had 4 weeks with a tie (28%), which is up slightly from FC 2010 where we had 21% of the 15 game weeks end in a tie. I think this trend will continue to go up as we add more members, which appears very likely to happen again this year. We will counteract it in part by going to a point system and not counting a tie as a loss...this will cause a little more separation among the players. But I'm assuming we end up with about 4-5 weeks that end in a tie this year, which leads me to think we need to develop some kind of system to break these ties. Some have had the idea of splitting it if it's only 2 people and do a carry-over if it's more than 2...I kind of like this plan. Only 2 of our 7 ties last year involved more than 2 people, so a carry-over would truly be a rare thing. Another consideration I have is adding more drama to the end of the week (MNF) and making that game meaningful each and every week. With all those in mind - here is my plan for tiebreakers/carry-overs in FC 2012 (still looking for a new name BTW)

- When turning in your 15 games for the week, you will be asked to also submit a MNF pick as a tiebreaker. This will give us another layer to try and help break the tie and have a true winner every week. You can still pick this game as one of your 15 for the week, but please submit a pick in this game as a tiebreak as well (doesn't necessarily have to be the same). If we still have a tie of more than 2 people we will carry the $50 forward to the next week. If it is only between 2, we'll do a split.

So in summary here are the steps we're taking to limit ties this year:
1) Sharper lines = worse records (I think this will lead to fewer ties, but who knows)
2) Points system with wins worth 2 and ties worth 1 (not penalized for a tie as a loss any more)
3) Tiebreak pick with MNF game every week
4) Only a carry over if we have more than 2 guys in a tie...if it's just 2 we'll split it $25 each

I feel like these are some minor tweaks that won't change the overall feel but will increase our probability of having a true winner each week. I guess we'll see in about 4 months!

Enjoy the golf season - football is right around the corner, Phil Steele's bible comes out on June 7th so you really only have 1 more month of off-season before it's time to start studying!!

Baseball 13 Run Pool - Tuesday Update

So I was hoping for 15 and we're now at 17 after a bunch of entires came in this morning. So now we'll each be getting only 1 team, but the good news is we have room for 13 more guys!!

So any of you who haven't entered yet...you probably should. $20/guy at 17 guys...the pot is already at $340, we might as well get it up to $600. If we don't hit 30 by the end of the day, I'll throw out the invite for anyone to buy a 2nd team in the pool until we get to 30.

Shoot me a note if you want in or if you're already in try and rope a buddy or 2 or 3 to come along for the ride.

Thanks.