Sports Betting - College Bowl Game Office Pools
The NCAA Final Four may have a monopoly on college office pools, but there are plenty of different pools dedicated to the college football bowl games, as well. For the bigger bowl games, such as the BCS Championship Game, the box pools are extremely popular, but many people prefer not to limit the fun to just one or two games, and instead create pools that take all of the bowl games into consideration.
The most common form of this type of pool involves trying to pick the winner, either straight up or against the point spread. There are several variations of the straight up winners pool, and many times a tie-breaker will be asked for. This usually calls for predicting the total number of points in the BCS Championship contest.
Picking the Straight Up Winners
This type of pool will just give a list of all the different bowl games and participants are asked to pick the team they believe will win each game. When the final bowl game of the year is completed, whoever has chosen the most bowl games correctly is the winner. It's as simple as that.
Since the number of bowl games is relatively small, there is a possibility that two, or more, players in the pool will finish with the same number of bowl games chosen correctly, which is why a tie-breaker is almost always used. The most common method of breaking ties is to ask participants in the pool to choose the total number of combined points scored by both teams in the final bowl game of the year, which should be the BCS Championship Game. If two pool players are tied for the most wins after the final game, the tie-breaker is then used to determine who wins the pool.
Using the Weighted Method For a Pool
Another popular method for bowl game pools involves picking the straight up winner of each game, but assigning points in order of preference to each game.
There are 32 bowl games for the 2007-08 football season, so in this method players will assign 32 points to the team they believe has the best chance of winning, 31 points to the team they believe has the next best chance of winning, 30 points to the next team, all the way down to one point for the team they believe has the least likely chance to win. At the end of the bowl season, the points are tallied up and whoever has the most number of points is deemed the winner. Once again, a tie-breaker will usually be asked for, although there is less likelihood of two players finishing with the same number of points than there are two players selecting the same number of games correctly.
Using the Point Spread
This method is virtually identical to the first method, but instead of picking just the winner of the game, pool players are asked to pick the winners against the point spread. Again, a tie-breaker will probably be asked for, as there exists the potential for two, or more, players to finish with the same number of wins.
Tips For Winning Your Pool
One of the first things pool players should do is look at the point spreads for each game, especially since many people involved in the pool will not know much about some of the teams playing. If you are in a pool where you just select the straight up winner of each game, selecting all point spread favorites of seven or more points will probably be enough to give you an edge over your fellow pool players. If you are playing in a weighted pool, consider giving your highest point totals to those teams favored by seven or more points.
If you are in a pool that selects games against the point spread, don't hesitate to select the underdog, especially if you don't have any strong opinion about the games. In theory, all of the 64 bowl teams are good teams and any time two good teams play, the underdogs should be given extra consideration.
College bowl pools are fun and give players rooting interest in all 32 games for minimal cost. Plus, there's always the chance that you could be the one that walks away the big winner!
