Join The UtterlyBoring.com/CentralOregonAthlete.com NCAA Tournament Pick ’em

Selection Sunday is coming up on March 13 here and then it’s time for offices all over the country to create office pools for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship (and for workplace productivity to grind to a halt). And it’s time for the readers of this site to compete for bragging rights (and some great prizes) in the sixth-annual UtterlyBoring.com Tournament Pick ‘Em. Last years contest info was here with final scoring here. babbage is looking to defend his title.

This year we’ve partnered up with Central Oregon Athlete to bring more exposure to the whole thing and to try and gather up some more prizes. I’ve known Josh at COA for well over a decade, and he knows his sports better than anybody around here, so I figured this would be a perfect partnership.

It’s free to play, and doesn’t require you to know anything about college basketball. So read on for the sign up information, prizes, and more!

Sign Up Info: Click here to get signed up in the group and start making your picks. If that link doesn’t work, go here, click on the “Join Group” link and use the following info:

Group ID#: 2310

Password: utterlyboring20

(When you sign up, make sure you check “Yes” on the box that says “Allow others in group to see my email address?” as well as making sure you set your preferred e-mail address you want to be contacted at, should you win a prize.)

The group’s page is here, which you can only see if you sign up and are signed into Yahoo. Daily results/graphs will be posted here.

Prizes: First off, here are the prizes we have so far, and I know Josh at COA has more in the pipe (and if any local business or individual wants to throw a prize into the pot — for first or last or anywhere in between — contact me and you’ll receive a 125×125 pixel ad and a link here, if you’d like). This list will be updated as we get them:

• First Place: A handmade Bend mug from Mug Revolution (shipping provided if you live in the lower 48) Plus a license key for SUPERAntiSpyware Professional (you’ll have to download the software, but you’ll get a registration key) with Lifetime updates (valid for two computers per user/license for all of these) Plus Two Doctor Who DVDs (The Next Doctor and Planet of the Dead) (Thanks Tyler!) Plus a $25 Amazon Gift card (provided by my parents, who run Home Improvement Services)
• Second Place: 3 Mini Trailblazer Basketballs with Steve Smith, Brian Grant & Damon Staudamire’s number, name and signature printed on them (thanks Tyler!) Plus meal (breakfast, lunch, or dinner) for two at Jake’s Diner Plus a lifetime updates license for SUPERAntiSpyware Professional Plus a Knob Creek 9 Baseball Cap (thanks Kina!) along with a Paizano’s Pizza Canvas bag and stickers
• Third Place: A lifetime updates license SUPERAntiSpyware Professional
• Second-to-Last Place: A license for SUPERAntiSpyware Professional Plus a Fimo Bulb painted light bulb (Thanks, Kina and Baker City’s Best Pizza!)
• Last Place: You get a t-shirt from the UtterlyBoring.com shop that you can show off to all your friends your inability to pick winners. Wear it with pride (like The Dren — twice or like Kyle in Tibet). Plus the aforementioned SUPERAntiSpyware Professional license.

Rules:

• Only one bracket per-person. While there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 ways a bracket could be broken down, since we have a dead-last prizes, it wouldn’t be fair to allow more than a bracket-per-person.
• The entire bracket must be filled out if you want to be eligible for the last-place prize.
• Prizes: Unless otherwise stated (I will ship smaller prizes), prizes must be picked up from prize providers in person, and prize providers are not eligible to win the prizes they provide (and I’m taking myself out of the running for any and all of the prizes, if I win/lose). Prizes may be added anytime during the tournament, so be sure to sign up.
• Scoring: I agree with Scott: Yahoo! puts far too many points into the final rounds. So we’re customizing the default scoring a bit, using some of the numbers from the Fibonacci Sequence (because we’re geeks here, after all). So here’s how the scoring for correct picks goes:
  • Round 1: 1 pt
  • Round 2: 2 pts
  • Round 3: 3 pts
  • Round 4: 5 pts
  • Round 5: 8 pts
  • Championship: 13 pts

  That generally makes for a tighter race.

• Tiebreakers: If there is a tie for any of the prizes, we’ll follow this tie-breaker formula (and this doesn’t break it, it goes to a coin-toss or some other equally random decision-maker):
  • Tie-breaker #1 – Number of points scored in Round 6
  • Tie-breaker #2 – Number of points scored in Round 5
  • Tie-breaker #3 – Number of points scored in Round 4
  • Tie-breaker #4 – Number of points scored in Round 3
  • Tie-breaker #5 – Number of points scored in Round 2
  • Tie-breaker #6 – Number of points scored in Round 1
  • Tie-breaker #7 – Number of points scored in the four Play-in Games (if Yahoo! scores those or allows you to pick ’em — still waiting to see how that’s going to work)
• At the end of the tournament, the winner will have two weeks to claim his prize before it moves down the list to the next-place person (as I don’t need more stuff collecting at my house). He or she can do so by e-mailing utterlyboring [at] gmail [dot] com from their Yahoo! account (as all Yahoo! accounts have an email address with username@yahoo.com) or from their public Yahoo! profile address. I can not and will not be held responsible if the e-mail never gets to me because of spam filters, internet problems, or other acts beyond my control. If I don’t get the email, you don’t get the prize(s) — Period. You reserve NO right to come back and gripe at me later and threaten legal action. I will also contact the winner via email if they have their e-mail address on the tournament page on Yahoo!’s site (either in their profile or posted in the tournament message board). If winner is unable to be reached 14-days after last day or tournament, the prizes will be awarded to next-highest scorer, repeating the process until somebody can be contacted. We will provide shipping of items, unless otherwise stated above, if you live in the United States — international winners will have to foot the bill themselves.
• These rules are subject to change at any time. Jake Ortman has the final say on rules and prizes. UtterlyBoring.com, Jake Ortman, any prize-providers, or participants cannot and will not be held liable for anything in this contest, nor can Yahoo! Sports, prize providers, my family, pets or anybody else. Do not taunt happy fun ball. Batteries not included. Not for off-road use. You agree to these terms when you sign up! That being said, this is casual fun, so let’s keep it that way.

That’s all for now, be sure to bookmark http://utterlyboring.com/pickem for updates.

Go get yourself signed up and good luck!