I wasn’t sure which category to put this under, and since it is what the CFL is offering called the GameZone, I figured I would ask it here, as I’ve looked everywhere else and could find anything and the chat option to get answers, if I may say, sucks (as all it does is do a search and gives you what it can find in the Terms, or Rules and give you the link to that).
This is probably a question more for whoever wrote the code for the new 2023 Pick ‘Em from the CFL Organization (if they even read these?), but any of you fellow CFL fans have some thoughts on how the new Pick ‘Em works or any other thoughts on this new format, please feel free to respond.
Here is the problem: Ever since the CFL had offered the Pick’Em, years back, I had created a League where family and friends had a friendly competition to decide who would win our private “Bleeding Green in Alberta” trophy. It was easy to determine who won up to 2022, and not one of us disagreed that the format was great, where you pick the winning team for the game for 100 points and your confidence level up to another 100 points. Finally, the points total of that game (which gave you more points the closer you were to the actual score). We never had to worry about a tie as there were so many variables. We could also see every game looking back, so we could have fun chirping each other on our picks. It made it fun and caused us to watch nearly every game and text back and forth as we were in three different provinces.
Now, with the new Pick ‘Em in 2023, you pick the winning team and get a point if you pick right. What is frustrating is that the League option will only give you the total points for the week you are looking at or a total score for all weeks. This has involved me writing an Excel VBA code that takes the copied points after each game and puts it into a weekly format to send to everyone in my league. If I miss doing that, then I must guess what teams a player would have picked in that game as it will now not show it to me as it only totals points. This is something that needs to be corrected for next year if this stays the format.
This finally brings me to why I’m writing this topic, it’s the question of tiebreakers. I currently have three players tied at the top of my league. I did read the FAQs, and supposedly, tiebreakers are supposed to be handled by “The Margin of Victory,” which asks you to predict the amount of points your pick for the last game will win by. This is used as a tiebreaker in the case of a tie with other users. This is not happening, though; what I am seeing is if Person A moves up into a tie with Person B, Person A moves ahead and never leaves that position, until someone else like Person C, ties with them. I’ve checked with them to see what they have picked for the margin of victory, and it’s not changing their positions. So, how are tiebreakers being decided? It would be ideal if Pick’Em would provide two more columns in Leagues, with the final score of the last game of the week and what that player picked. If I have that, I can sort who’s in first myself.
I understand the CFL is trying to get more fans to get involved, and the GameZone with the six options, is a good idea. What the CFL needs to make sure of, is they don’t lose those that they already have, if I don’t see any changes to Pick’Em for next year, I’m not going through this process again and possibly the loss of interest in a few fans that at least my small league had.
Cheers,
AlwaysNextYear
