Welcome to the CatsIllustrated Stupid Underdog Pick Contest. Each week the odds are gathered from the Vegas Odds web page (usually on Monday) and posted in a thread on CatsIllustrated (which we will hopefully get pinned for convenience). This contest runs for the entire football season (the bowls are treated as one really long week).
There are several ways to win: there are weekly winners, the person with the highest cumulative point total after the season is over is the overall winner but we recognize the contestants that have the most correct picks also.
How do you get points? Select the underdog (second team listed in each game) and have that team pull the upset. The bigger the dog, the bigger the reward but the longer the odds.
Some rules that we need to keep things running smoothly:
1) You must make your pick before any game has started or after the last game of the day has kicked off on the day you make your pick. Your pick will be invalidated otherwise. I can't know that you didn't delete a pick that didn't win and then post a pick from a later game in hopes of getting a winner with the new Rivals format. If you want to change your pick before the first game has started, make a new post and indicate that you want to change your pick or simply delete your first pick before the first kickoff.
2) If you make your pick after the first game kicks off that day, it is invalidated. I might post that you can make picks a bit later in that day, but don't count on it.
3) If you pick the favored team instead of the underdog, we all laugh at you. Ok, we don't but you can't expect to get points in SUP for that.
4) You can appeal an invalidation by posting in that week's thread, include what you think is wrong.
5) Don't edit your picks after the first game of the week has kicked off.
Understand that a perl script is scoring this, if you make the spelling of the teams intentionally obtuse or you are just really bad at spelling, your pick might be missed. If you want to tell us all about the underdogs you thought you might choose and then tell us about the one you finally did pick, you might be surprised which one the script finds.
So your post should look something like:
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Purdue
*** Everyone hates the Irish right?
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Don't put any other team name in your post with your SUP pick without putting an '***' in front of it. Everything after the '***' will be ignored. My program may find the wrong name if you don't. Once you post your pick, you can post in the thread any comment you like. Your first post is your pick (if I can find your pick).
Because the scoring is done by a script and not by hand, if you feel a mistake was made in scoring your SUP, post that on that Week's thread. We'll try to get it resolved quickly. The scripts are far from perfect and VegasOdds also changes the HTML for the odds page quite often so report any errors you see there as soon as you see them.
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Stupid Underdog Picks - Week 1:
Saturday, Aug. 27
Nevada 12½ NEW MEXICO ST
Nebraska 13 NORTHWESTERN
UTAH STATE 28 Connecticut
ILLINOIS 10 Wyoming
FAU 7 Charlotte
Vanderbilt 6½ HAWAII
Thursday, Sep. 1
PITTSBURGH 6½ West Virginia
OKLAHOMA STATE 20½ C Michigan
TENNESSEE 31½ Ball State
Penn State 3½ PURDUE
MISSOURI 20½ Louisiana Tech
Friday, Sep. 2
MICHIGAN STATE 18 W Michigan
Virginia Tech 8 OLD DOMINION
DUKE 8 Temple
Texas Christian 7½ COLORADO
Saturday, Sep. 3
MARYLAND 22 Buffalo
MICHIGAN 27½ Colorado State
BOSTON COLLEGE 7½ Rutgers
N Carolina 3 APP STATE
NC State 10 EAST CAROLINA
UCLA 25½ Bowling Green
ARKANSAS 7 Cincinnati
Houston 4½ UT-SAN ANTONIO
SAN DIEGO STATE 5 Arizona
OKLAHOMA 32 UTEP
GEORGIA 17½ Oregon
BYU 12 SOUTH FLORIDA
MISSISSIPPI 24 Troy
NEVADA 8½ Texas State
FAU 2½ OHIO
JAMES MADISON 7 Middle Tennessee
USC 35 Rice
TULANE 29½ Massachusetts
Utah 2 FLORIDA
KENTUCKY 20½ Miami (Ohio)
COASTAL CAROLINA 3½ Army
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Overall Stupid Underdog Picks Winners
2000: this is when Mtcatfan thinks the game started, but winner is not known
2001: did not keep record of who won
2002: did not keep record of who won
2003: SixToeJoe - most correct picks winners not tracked
2004: ThreeHogNight - most correct picks winners not tracked
2005: Hang_Time_2 with 53.5 points - 5 tied for most correct picks at 6, Hang_Time_2 was one of them
2006: JBnTN with 57 points- JBnTN had 8 correct picks which was most correct picks
2007: TaylorsvilleMike with 71.5 points - 5 tied for most correct picks at 7, TaylorsvilleMike was one of them
2008: bigbluemist with 67 points - bigbluemist & CatinSA tied for most correct picks at 9
2009: buckster1 with 95.5 points - buckster1 with 8 correct picks
2010: Hang_Time_2 won with 64 points and also won with 7 correct picks
2011: jrburt won with 70.5 points - Blue Strype had the most correct picks with 10
2012: Brother Cat with 61.5 - Brother Cat had the most correct picks with 8
2013: docholiday51 with 61.5 - adolph...ngover and number8please had the most correct picks with 8
2014: jrburt with 74 points - AsianPICat had the most correct picks with 10
2015: kyfan606 with 50.5 points - SWVA WildcatFan had the most correct picks with 7
2016: Maxwell41 with 73.5 points - maysvilleky and On_track_4_8 had 9 correct picks
2017: jsyeag with 61.5 points - *CatinIL* and jsyeag had 9 correct picks
2018: Big_Blue_1018 with 70.0 points - mash 2.4 had 10 correct picks
2019: maysvilleky with 64.5 points - maysvilleky and no_neutrality had 8 correct picks
2020: RocknRollCats with 79 points - AsianPICat had 10 correct picks
2021: CGblue with 79 points - AsianPICat had 11 correct picks
*** I took out three games that had duplicate SUP's because I really don't think I could have changed my program to handle that in time for the start of the season. Sorry about that. Might have to get a better CatsIllustrated contest master. I just eliminated Illinois at Indiana so I don't have to figure out how to have a team be both a winner and a loser since they play this week. No one had picked it yet.
