by Craig Maltby for Club LT
The holidays are approaching, and that means college football bowl season is almost upon us.
I’m sure your significant other would love for you to watch even more football than you usually watch.
I can help you do that.
You’ll not only be glued to the Rose Bowl and the Orange Bowl as you likely would be, you’ll have clenched white knuckles watching the Larry’s Dry Wall Bowl or the Acme Roto Tiller Bowl.
How to do this? Create a bowl pool where you work, at your church, with your pick-up basketball league, your card night cronies, wherever your crowd gathers.
There are several ways to build a pool:
- You can simply create your own spreadsheet where you list the teams, assign pool participant names to their picked winners, track the winners, and see which participant picked the most winners. In preparation for a possible tie in the number of winners, you can have your “poolers” guess ahead of time the total points scored in one of the games you designate. Do this while collecting their picks. For example, if pooler predicts the score of the Michigan/Arizona State game will be 27-14, he/she then predicts the total points will be 41. Whoever guessed 41 or got closest to that number, regardless of which team won, wins the tie break and the pool. And to deal with a tie in the tie-break, have a second game designated ahead of time as the back-up tie breaker.
- Have everyone fill in their picks on a copy of the spreadsheet that you email to them or print out and give them. Set a deadline when picks must be returned to you (obviously before the first bowl game is played). Be aware: If your pool is collecting money from participants to award the winner, some states prohibit betting for money, even with lows-stakes, homemade pools. Enforcement of this law might be light or even non-existent, but just know that.
- Use one of several online bowl-pool services. Many of these require a one-time fee for the “administrator.” But the ease of tracking and registration of your poolers might be worth it. Here’s one that looks fairly easy to use.
- Make a couple social events out of the bowl pool. Invite folks to an after-hours get-together where they fill out the pool sheet manually. Have them take a phone-cam picture of their sheet before they turn it in to you. Then, have another event after the holidays where the pool winner is recognized, even awarded some goofy prize. You might even have a 2nd and 3rd place recognition.
You can structure bowl pools in a number of ways. Simply picking a winner is the most fundamental. But you can also add some extras. You can focus just on one game if you want, with not only picking the winner, but also guessing total points AND the point spread, quarter-by-quarter total points, total rushing yards, total passing yards, total first downs, and on and on.
And keep yourself in game-day shape for your bowl parties with Lucky Tiger grooming products. A face toned up with Lucky Tiger Face Wash and Lucky Tiger After Shave and Face Tonic goes great with the guacamole.
Your whole body treatment with Lucky Tiger Head to Tail Shampoo and Body Wash and Lucky Tiger Head to Tail Deodorant and Body Spray is a must for consuming that yuletide snack of gingerbread cookies and craft beer in style.
