Contest Time! College Bowl Pick 'em Is Back

Win baseball cards for being right at something for once in your life.

Back by no demand whatsoever, for the fifth consecutive year I am giving away free cards to the best prognosticators of (mostly) meaningless college football games. Past winners include Adam from Thoughts on Sox (2009-10), Mark from Stats on the Back (2010-11), AJ from The Lost Collector (2011-12) and last year's winner, Royal Dan.

If you want to skip all the blah blah blah and just get to the free stuff, go to the bottom of the post for the sign-up link and make sure you submit picks for every game. There's even a separate contest for non-Yahoo people, but you don't care about that because you've already started staring out the window at the squirrels chasing each other.

If you've participated in the past, you know the drill. Go on ahead to Yahoo and sign up. I have sent out invitations through Yahoo's automated system. If you don't get an email invite, follow the manual procedure at the bottom of this post (and if all else fails, send me an email and I will try to help you out.) For the rest of you, here are the rules and prize details, which will be similar to past years:

• First place will receive: a 2014 Topps Series 1 blaster OR suitable equivalent (subject to availability at Target)... as well as a small plastic pouch of cards from your favorite team/player(s)/etc.
• Second place will receive: a Priority Mail padded envelope full of cards from your favorite team/player(s)/etc. (this usually ends up being around 8 bags/pouches or so)
• Worst place will receive: whatever I feel like sending you. I've been spending a considerable amount of time cleaning up and sorting through stuff lately I have a bunch of junk on my desk that I don't know what to do with, so please be very afraid to finish last this time around. Of course, as past "winners" of this prize can tell you, you will still receive some cards targeted toward your favorite team/player(s).

Because there's no such thing as a free lunch, at least without a copious amount of rules and guilt, here they are (basically copied from last year):

• Participants must sign up through the official Yahoo link. Unfortunately, this means that you must have a Yahoo account. I know this is a deal breaker for some, but I can't figure out another way to accept manual entries and try to math them up according to Yahoo's point system.
• Promote this contest! No, that doesn't mean you need to "follow" my blog, nor does it mean that you'll gain any competitive advantage by posting about this contest. I just want to see a lot of people participate, and will be willing to award more prizes if there are more participants. 16 23 31 people joined the Yahoo group last year - let's increase that total! Put a subliminal message on your blog post. Send a mass email. Casually tell your co-workers in the break room while discussing Brett Favre's latest injury Tim Tebow's latest game winning prayer Mark Sanchez's buttfumble hahahaha Mark Sanchez's buttfumble is still really funny... okay fine... Eli Manning's incredible interception rate. The possibilities are endless!
• Points are scored according to the Confidence System. This basically means that while you are predicting which team wins which bowl game, you will also be responsible for ranking how confident you are in each pick. For example, if you are insane enough to think that Washington will beat Nebraska Baylor Boise State BYU (actually not that far fetched) and are willing to bet your street cred on it, you will want to assign that matchup a higher confidence rating (30, perhaps) than you would with your misguided "TCU will totally stomp Michigan State because I ate at a Buffalo Wild Wings last night Ball State will rule them all!" pick.
• Email me your contest information after you sign up. You can't assume that I will automatically recognize your clever Yahoo Pick Set name, nor will I necessarily disbelieve your "friend" who claims your prize after everything is said and done because he swears he's CowboysFan4Ever and is the "most right" about his "sweet picks".
• You can change your picks at any time, so long as your pick is made before the official start time (usually the TV broadcast time) of each game.
• You must make a pick for every game to be eligible for the "worst place" prize. Also, once again this year... please... no tanking it on purpose! The prizes aren't that great, folks. I'd much rather award the prize to someone who failed in spectacular fashion than someone who intentionally went with picks that are doomed to fail like Wisconsin over Stanford UCF over Baylor.

Click here to sign up! It's free! First timers are very welcome.

Group ID: 22319

Password: quackquackquack

DEADLINE: There's a hard deadline of Saturday, December 21st at 11:00 AM PST. That's the start time of the first bowl game.

But wait... there's more! Available to all entrants as well as non-entrants who don't want to use Yahoo, there's a bonus contest:

Leave a comment here predicting the final score of the BELK BOWL before the Belking officially begins (the game is on the 28th) and win a retail jumbo pack of 2014 Topps Series 1. Whoever is closest gets it. Belk on, Belkers!