How the contest works
Everything you need to make your picks and follow the race. Making your picks takes about ten minutes. Checking the standings takes about ten seconds a day.
Pick a winner in every bowl
Every bowl game on the slate gets one pick: the team you think wins. No spread, no score to predict, just the winner. Each correct pick is worth one point, and the most points at the end of the season takes it.
When your picks lock
Two deadlines, whichever comes first. Each game locks the moment it kicks off, and the entire field locks when the first Playoff game kicks off, including bowls that aren't played until days later. The Playoff starts before most of the bowls, so in practice that first Playoff kickoff is the real deadline for everything: make all of your picks by then. Until a game locks you can change that pick as often as you like, and your picks save automatically as you tap. There's no submit button and nothing is lost if you close the page. A game you never picked earns nothing, so a blank is a guaranteed miss.
The Playoff is one bracket
The twelve-team Playoff is picked as a bracket, before anyone knows the matchups: choose your winner in each round from the seeded field, all the way to a national champion. Change an early-round pick and any later pick it invalidates clears itself, so you'll need to re-pick that slot. The whole bracket locks together when the first Playoff game kicks off, rather than round by round, and as above that same kickoff closes every bowl you have left.
Nobody sees your picks until the game locks
Other contestants' picks stay hidden until a game locks, so nobody can copy off the family. Once it locks it all opens up: who took which team, how the family split, and who called the ones nobody else saw coming.
Picking for your kids
Making picks for children or anyone else? Add them under Manage Family on the Picks page. Each person gets their own entry and their own line in the standings, and you switch between entries with the picker at the top of the page. Glance at whose name is in that banner before you start tapping.
Reading the standings
Points is what decides it. Correct is how many of your graded picks were right, and Win % is that as a percentage, so somebody who picked only a handful of games can post a shiny percentage on very few points. The small line under your name is your ceiling: the most points you can still finish with, given the games you’ve actually picked. Contestants on the same points share a rank. Last place takes home the troll doll.
Emails and reminders
We'll nudge you when a game is about to lock and you still have picks to make. Turn that off any time under Account settings → Notifications. Mail comes from the goetzbowlmadness.com domain, so allow that in your mail app to keep it out of spam. Nobody reads replies to it, so send any questions to whoever runs your contest.
Got a signup link? Set up your account and go.