It's time once again for the greatest minds in college football to get together and rank the top schools in FBS. While there may be many different organizations that vote on rankings and even a tournament played at the end of the season, I remind everyone that this is the one true official poll that will determine the best teams in FBS each week and decide the true national champions. Polls may be done by humans or computers and may use any criteria you see fit, like I said, we make the rules and the decisions.
Poll Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc8NFsNvzr51rjxe5WE_WRWbrhkAMrX6pWjex1dacaiplQSsQ/viewform?usp=header
Also a huge shoutout to @WVbrU@lemmy.world for putting together a slightly more robust backend to the super official google forms poll database.
This year I am also planning on running a competition to help with engagement. Last year we tried a bracket prediction contest and while that was fun, it had no incentive for participation for a large portion of the season. As such, this year I am planning on switching to a weekly pick 'em contest. Each week participants will be able to pick a selection of games and score points that will accumulate throughout the season. I'll let this post double as a forum to discuss the format of the pick 'em contest.
Some really good thoughts here. My initial thought was indeed the biggest games of the week, but you are right in that Oregon, tOSU, UTex would get overwhelming representation. This makes me think 5 games a week (P4 + a G5 + OOC) or 10 games (1 per conference + OOC) (side note how are we counting 2Pac?) are good ideas. And I think traditional rivalry games take priority where possible. I also like the idea of a weekly champion as opposed to a season thing, maybe we can do a separate thing for whoever wins the most weeks? Sounds like your advice here may be 10 games/week with a weekly champion?
Ten sounds like a lot. As I think about it more, I think 6 or 7 sounds like a good amount. One game from SEC, Big 10, BigXII, and Acc. One G5/6 game guarantee. Then a wild card or two.
Wild card would provide the flexibility we would want with how big these conferences are. There may be a time where we want 2 SEC games in a week. I wouldn't want it be just the second best SEC game, but I would hope we could get marquee FCS games in there. Or a sicko game if two 0-7 teams meet. These could even be for the games with the smallest spread (a true toss up). We could even use it for independent games so we get Uconn in there. Or we scould say GameDay/Big Noon's location is one of the wild card slots
I did a quick look, and these are what I think week 1 would look like, if we did this strategy. P4 LSU @ Clemson Georgia Tech @ Colorado Texas @ Ohio State Syracuse @ Tennessee
Potential G5/6 UTEP @ Utah State (close spread)
Potential Wild Card Idaho @ Washington State (The Battle of the Palouse rivalry game) Sacrament State @ South Dakota State (Preseason FCS #14 @ #3)
I ignored all week 0 games. For conference affiliation, I just went with the home team. There are other notable games, but I tried to have a balance (Sorry Notre Dame @ Miami). If you did want ten, you can add these 3.
Appalachian State @Charlotte (close spread) Georgia Southern @ Fresno State (close spread) Notre Dame @ Miami
Anyway, I hope that visually gives you some idea of what it would look like. I am fine with any number between 5-10. I am favoring 7, just because I think that gives a good variety without being too much (and if you get all 7, you can call it a touchdown or something).
Lmao, touchdown, that's fucking terrible. I'm sold.
I'm traveling today, but I'll try and get the poll and pick em up during my layover here in a few hours.