2013 FCS Playoff Challenge-(NOT AGS)

[Lyric]

Hi Everyone,


I whipped up my second-annual playoff challenge this weekend, titled the 2013 FCS Playoff Challenge. Just like last year, I've created an interactive web bracket for you to fill out and submit. The entire process is very fast, and there is no account-creation or anything like that required. Unlike last year, you can also name your own bracket (no more confirmation codes).


All are welcome to participate, whether you have an AGS account or not. Given how easy it is to submit a bracket, I hope that all who read this will participate. Last year we had over 60 entrants, which was considerably more than I had expected. Although that number could be hard to match, I hope to surpass that mark this year. If you have any family members or friends who would be interested in participating, please share the website with them, too.


To pick winners for each match, simply click directly on your selected team and the bracket will update itself on the fly. The bracket is also responsive to all of the touch screens I've tested on android products and the iPad. The bracket has worked when I tested it in Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. However, I don't own every device under the sun. If you encounter any major errors or problems, I apologize in advance and will do my best to fix them as quickly as I can. I would like to have added a few more features, but I was somewhat time-constrained this weekend and I needed to have it ready for this week.


I will be working on the leaderboard later this week, and I'll release it once the playoffs begin (bracket submissions will close at that time).


Thanks again for your interest. I hope you will participate and create a second successful year for this challenge. JMUHarpoo, the reigning 2012 FCS Playoff Challenge champ, will hopefully also put his title on the line :-) .


Link: http://fcs-playoff-challenge.comeze.com/ (same as last year. The leaderboard will air at this same location once the playoffs begin.)


Please note that this challenge is *not* meant to be a rival for the one that regularly runs on this forum. Please participate in both challenges. If for some reason you will only participate in one, then please participate in the other one (found here: http://www.anygivensaturday.com/showthread.php?148420-2013-AGS-Bracket-Challenge).


Thanks,
Lyric

[ursus arctos horribilis]

lyric, just so you know, as a new guy with less that 10 post it's gonna be a bit before these threads will be approved. Check in with me if you have anything else like this with links etc. Checked out your links and seemed safe and legit to me but new guys are in a pretty "locked down" state.

I also changed the title of your thread to clearly discern the two different challenges.

[Lyric]

lyric, just so you know, as a new guy with less that 10 post it's gonna be a bit before these threads will be approved. Check in with me if you have anything else like this with links etc. Checked out your links and seemed safe and legit to me but new guys are in a pretty "locked down" state.

I also changed the title of your thread to clearly discern the two different challenges.

I completely understand. Thanks for letting me know, and I'll check in with you in the future if I plan on posting any additional challenges like this on the forum.

[ursus arctos horribilis]

I completely understand. Thanks for letting me know, and I'll check in with you in the future if I plan on posting any additional challenges like this on the forum.

Glad to have em' so please do.

[Lyric]

Already up to 22 people! Thank you to everyone who has already submitted a bracket! I'd love to have even more people participate.

[caribbeanhen]

That was too easy, I'm suspicious now

[Lyric]

That was too easy, I'm suspicious now

Glad to hear your experience was a positive one. I worked hard to make the interface user-friendly.

[Drblankstare]

Wow that was easy. Great job on the interface

[Lyric]

Wow that was easy. Great job on the interface

Thank you! I appreciate it a lot.

[ElCid]

That was a nice interface.

[NoDak 4 Ever]

Very slick. Good job!

[Lyric]

Thanks everyone! The interest is really pouring in faster than I had hoped. We're already up to 40 brackets! I'm so glad to hear that the picking has gone smoothly for everyone so far.

Once the first round kicks off, I'll make:

1) A self-scoring/updating scoreboard/leaderboard to track how everyone is doing in real time.
2) The option to see everyone's brackets
3) A team vs team matrix that aggregates all individual match data to show the percentages of how the participants collectively picked each hypothetical matchup.

[caribbeanhen]

Thanks everyone! The interest is really pouring in faster than I had hoped. We're already up to 40 brackets! I'm so glad to hear that the picking has gone smoothly for everyone so far.

Once the first round kicks off, I'll make:

1) A self-scoring/updating scoreboard/leaderboard to track how everyone is doing in real time.
2) The option to see everyone's brackets
3) A team vs team matrix that aggregates all individual match data to show the percentages of how the participants collectively picked each hypothetical matchup.

clenz should try this out

[Lyric]

We've already reached 47 brackets after only one day. Still plenty of time to submit a bracket. Think we can have 60 total by tonight?

[Lyric]

We're up to 63 brackets now! Thanks again to everyone who has signed up! For those who haven't, there's still plenty of time.


This would be a good time to explain the scoring, which is the same as the challenge I hosted last year and produced an undisputed winner with a pool roughly this size. Correctly picking a match is scored differently by round:


1st Round matches: 0.5 points each
2nd Round matches: 1 point each
Quarterfinal matches: 2 points each
Semifinal matches: 4 points each
National Championship: 8 points


Thus, a perfect bracket is worth 36 points.

[MDUNHfan]

Thanks, this was very easy to fill out.

[Lyric]

Thanks, this was very easy to fill out.

My pleasure. Thanks for participating!

[Lyric]

Up to 84 brackets! We could actually break 100. Thank you all again for participating!

[Lyric]

So when I was crunching the aggregate data from the brackets, the numbers weren't adding up. Upon further analysis, I discovered that all participants who included the " ' " character in their bracket name did not have their brackets saved. I'm 95% sure this is related to the sanitizer I was using to protect the database.

Thankfully, this only affected about 5 brackets. If you used an " ' ' in your bracket name, please resubmit your bracket under a new name. I'm very sorry about the inconvenience. This leaves the current bracket count back down to 89, which is still a great number! For everyone else, there's still time to submit one!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

[veinup]

done.

[Lyric]

Up to 116 brackets! Just a reminder, submissions close at noon tomorrow when then first game kicks off.

[Lyric]

Due to some travel plans that came up, I had to shut down the bracket selection 20 minutes early. We now stand at 149 brackets. I'm extremely pleased with the interest, and I want to thank you all so much once again for participating!

I have now uploaded the main website that will allow everyone to view all brackets, see the autoscoring leaderboard, and view aggregate projection statistics of each team's survival percentages by round and by potential matchup. The website is the same URL and can be found here: http://fcs-playoff-challenge.comeze.com/

Note that the server was experiencing some heavy traffic earlier today. It seems to be running fine again at the time of this posting.

Enjoy!

[MSUBobcat]

Due to some travel plans that came up, I had to shut down the bracket selection 20 minutes early. We now stand at 149 brackets. I'm extremely pleased with the interest, and I want to thank you all so much once again for participating!

I have now uploaded the main website that will allow everyone to view all brackets, see the autoscoring leaderboard, and view aggregate projection statistics of each team's survival percentages by round and by potential matchup. The website is the same URL and can be found here: http://fcs-playoff-challenge.comeze.com/

Note that the server was experiencing some heavy traffic earlier today. It seems to be running fine again at the time of this posting.

Enjoy!

Pretty cool and congrats on the amount of participation. The ease of the website, as others have said, likely contributed to the high amount of entries. xthumbsupx

[Lyric]

Pretty cool and congrats on the amount of participation. The ease of the website, as others have said, likely contributed to the high amount of entries. xthumbsupx

Thank you!

[Lyric]

I updated the website so that the leaderboard properly recognizes brackets that are tied in the rankings.

[caribbeanhen]

I updated the website so that the leaderboard properly recognizes brackets that are tied in the rankings.

would like to be able to see it but keep getting an error - Page cannot be displayed....

[Lyric]

would like to be able to see it but keep getting an error - Page cannot be displayed....

Yeah, the server was cutting in and out today, unfortunately. The website is hosted on a free server, which occasionally has performance issues. Sorry about that. It seems to be working at the moment, though.

[Lyric]

All scores have been updated. Looks like we have an undisputed front runner for the moment. (website: http://fcs-playoff-challenge.comeze.com/)

[robsnotes4u]

All scores have been updated. Looks like we have an undisputed front runner for the moment. (website: http://fcs-playoff-challenge.comeze.com/)

Don't know that I can stay there. Have SELA defeating NDSU and EIU defeating SELA. Did miss a couple today, Maine/UNH and JSU/Mcneese. JSU looked good.

[Lyric]

All scores have been updated. Been a little shuffling because of the upsets.

[R3TRO]

Holy crap, i'm #2. I think I did this one night when I was drunk.

[Lyric]

Better bottle that drink and sell it :)

[Lyric]

The scores have all been updated (http://fcs-playoff-challenge.comeze.com/main_page.php?show=leaderboard).

[UIWWildthing]

Finished 2nd here too to UNHFan. Nice company to keep it seems

[Lyric]

Congrats to UNHFAN@RWU for winning the 2013 FCS Playoff Challenge! UNHFAN@RWU finished with a score of 33.5 (out of 36 possible points) and correctly picked an impressive 86.96% of all playoff games correctly, which was also tops among all submissions! UNHFAN@RWU joins JMUHarpoo as the first two winners of the FCS Playoff Challenge series.

How did you do? Check here to find out: http://fcs-playoff-challenge.comeze.com/main_page.php?show=leaderboard

[centennial]

Placed 16th here. Not bad out of 150ish people, not as good as 7th on the other.

[Mattymc727]

Hey guys I won.

I AM THE BEST!