Contest Time! College Bowl Pick 'Em #9

Pick the bowl games and win some baseball cards. It's back on a new platform for Year 9! 

First off -- two big announcements here:

1. Yahoo killed off their College Bowl Pick 'Em, so I had to move things over to ESPN. If that means you have to create another stupid website account, you have my deepest apologies.
2. I stupidly deleted an entire folder of archived email, which means I lost about 90% of your email addresses and won't be able to auto-invite the majority of past participants. I expect that this will reduce the number of participants this year, so that's all the more reason to sign up! You have a better chance of winning something!

And now, on to the usual boilerplate information.

For the ninth straight 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), Royal Dan (2013), The Prowling Cat (2014), Jeff from One Man's Junk (Wax) (2015), Matt of Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits (2016) and last year's winner MrHaverkamp

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-ESPN people, but you don't care about that because you've already tuned this out and started paying attention to the latest episode of Floribama Shore.

If you've participated in the past, this should work more or less the same as previous years, but it will be hosted over on ESPN.com. I will be sending out invitations via ESPN's automated system if I happen to have your email address (which as mentioned previously, may not be the case.) 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 should be similar to past years:

• First place will receive: a 2018 Topps Series 1 blaster OR suitable equivalent (subject to availability)... 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)
• The Rhubarb_Runner Trophy (formerly known as Worst Place) winner will receive: whatever I feel like sending you. Be very afraid to finish last. I don't advise it. You say how the enemy of your enemy is your friend? Well, I'm none of those. 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 previous years):

• Participants must sign up through the official ESPN link. Unfortunately, this means that you must have an ESPN account. I know this is a deal breaker for some, but I am not fancy enough to figure out a good system on my own that wouldn't require more time than I allot to this project.
• 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. Send some tweets! Tweet some sends! Put a subliminal message on your blog post. Make an animated gif. Send a mass email with a questionable file attachment. Write a BuzzFeed style article complete with slideshow (number 6 will shock you!). Casually tell your co-workers in the break room while discussing Eli Manning's disappointing fantasy numbers.
• 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. The higher you rank those games, the more points you'll get when they win and prove that you're totally right and deserve all the I-told-you-so's in the world.
• Email me your contest information after you sign up. You can't assume that I will automatically recognize your clever contest name, nor will I necessarily disbelieve your "friend" who claims your prize after everything is said and done because he swears he's NoleFan4Lyfe and is "stoked" about his "sick pickz".
• 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. This is what ESPN calls a "rolling lock" time.
• "No tanking" rules are in effect. You must make a pick for every game to be eligible for the "worst place" prize. 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.

Click here to sign up, and click on the 'Play Now For Free' link! It's free! First timers are very welcome.

Group ID: 179527

Password: quackquackquack

DEADLINE: There's a deadline of Saturday, December 16th at 9:00 AM PST to at least get your first pick in. 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 ESPN, there's a bonus contest:

Leave a comment here predicting the final score and winning team of the BELK BOWL before the Belking officially begins (the game is on the 29th) and win a retail jumbo pack of 2018 Topps Series 1. Whoever is closest gets it. Belk on, Belkers!