5th Annual Rock M Nation Bowl Pick 'Em Contest

[Bumped back to the top of the page. You've got until Saturday at noon!]

That's right ladies and gentlemen. The longest standing tradition on Rock M Nation is back. The sweet smell of mediocrity has returned in the 5th annual installment of the Rock M Nation Bowl Pick 'Em Contest. For those of you who are new to these parts since last year, the contest is simple. I have lined out all 35 bowl games with the spread and the over/under. This year, thanks to Google and their "forms" (whatever those really are), all you need to do is select (by clicking a bubble) your choices and submit them via the form.

I will be honest that our staggering growth as a community has me a little nervous about the turn-out, but I really do want everyone to throw down, and not just RMN folks. All our friends from around SBN are welcome to join as well. As I find predictions from national pundits (usually in the form of a prediction with a score), I will go ahead and submit them as well, just so you can see how you stacked up. I am new to google forms, but I will do my best to keep everyone up to date on standings as we go along. The contest will be open until next Saturday (the 17th) at noon, as the first game is at 1pm central time.

Instructions and other fun stuff after the jump.

After typing in your RMN handle (and let me know if you have switched names and have entered previous years as another handle) you will see that the point spread is used as part of your selecting the "winner". For those of you who are not familiar with the point spreads, the first game is the New Mexico, where we find the line reading as Temple -7 vs. Wyoming. If you select Temple, it means you not only believe Temple will win, but they will win by more than 7 points. A Wyoming selection means you either believe Wyoming will win the game outright, or will be within 7 points if they lose. The second selection is the over/under. For this game, the O/U is 47. If you believe the teams will combine to score more than 47 points, you go with the over. If you believe they will combine to score less than 47 points, you go with the under. If you believe they are going to score 47 exactly, well...you should do well here. And because there is no real money involved, and we need all the help we can get, ties are wins for everyone :-)

As we last left off, Bill C. is our all-time leader in wins with 146 (MU 1839 is at 143). M7Tiger leads the way of the three-year participants with 115 wins and also has the highest all-time winning percentage for anyone participating in more than one contest (57%). More on the history of this contest can be found by clicking on the completely updated history document, but know this: RMN, as a community, NEEDS to have a another big year to pull up their all-time mark. After three years, we currently sit at 8424-8592, a winning percentage of only 49.5%. We had a big year last year to improve our winning percentage by 2 percentage points, but we need to get over .500 and it needs to happen this year.

In terms of prizes...I am sure we will come up with something worthwhile'ish to serve as a price. Lines are courtesy of VegasInsider.com simply because they were the first I could find with both a line and the O/U. These lines (for the purposes of this contest) are locked, so if it moves later because of suspensions or whatever, it is what it is. You will not be able to change your picks once the contest closes, so keep that in mind. Thanks to Bill C. for putting the form together (though you can blame him for the fact it says "2010" again...you get what you pay for I suppose)

{Edit 10:50am - THE OVER/UNDER ON THE FSU/ND GAME (CHAMPS BOWL) IS ACTUALLY 48. WE ARE LOOKING AT WHETHER WE WANT TO HAVE PEOPLE RESUBMIT OR WHAT OTHER OPTIONS WE HAVE. IF YOU HAVE MADE A PICK AND WANT ME TO CHANGE IT, LET ME KNOW AND I CAN CHANGE IT IN THE DATA FILE}