Blog posts from administrators and members covering prediction contests, college sports and anything else that's on our minds.
News and announcements from CFBPredictions
During the first year that CFBPredictions.com was online, we gave out about a dozen t-shirts to winners of the contests. That was a while ago but, at last, t-shirts are back. This time, you can spend CFBPoints to get one and pick from several different colors.
A new series of season contests have launched for the 2012-2013 college sports season. Contestants will be able to predict conference standings for the six major athletic conferences for the college football (CFB), college basketball (CBK) and college baseball (CBL) seasons.
There are a few major changes to the site heading into the 2012-2013 season but most of these are only structural. The basic functionality of contests and predictions coverage will remain the same as it was last year.
At the time of this writing, many of the new features are still under construction and not yet published. Most of these will be rolled out over the next month. We hope to have most of them ready for use and viewing by next month. The only feature that will not be ready for a while is our online store which will be rolled out in January 2013.
The biggest change to the site going forward is the new membership structure. CFBPredictions is now offering Club level memberships which will add some features and enhance others. Before you sound the alarm about having to pay to access areas of the site, please understand that very very little will change how the previous contests operate or how they can be tracked.
You will be able to play all of the previous contests and view your ranking exactly as you did before. The only small change is that all of the contests have a small points fee. Since points are pretty easy to come by and will be even more so this season, this small change won't really affect any member who uses the site on a regular basis. As you will see in our membership plans, all of the features that were free in the past are still free.
Features that have a caret symbol next to it is not quite ready for live use. We will remove these carets as we roll out each feature over the next month. The reason why we opened the site and memberships before all of the features are ready to use is because we want to give contestants an early opportunity to make season and Week 1 predictions. Further, if you upgrade your membership before all features are rolled out, your membership closing date will be extended as if you purchased your membership at the time all features for your particular plan are published.
If you are planning to upgrade your membership at any time this season, it would be wise to do so now before you enter any contests so you are not charged any points fees. Until all features are published for your plan the lifespan of your plan will not begin!
Click here to view the new membership structure and plans
With the advent of our new membership structure we have decided to change the way the Top 25 Club (formally Top 25 Pool) admits contestants and awards prizes. How you play will remain identical to the Top 25 and NCAA Challenges. You must have a Club level membership to access the Top 25 Club. ProphetPro and ProphetMax members will not be charged anything to enter aside from their membership fee. Predictors Club members will only be charged a small fee of 750 CFBPoints per entry.
The primary reason why we are changing the way this contest is set up is behind an effort to steer our site away from gambling and betting. The way the entry criteria is set up now eliminates putting money down each and every week as you would when you place a bet. Instead, cash prizes will be mostly used from advertising revenue generated from the site. The cash prize payouts are less but you will also be spending much less to enter the contest each week.
Unlike the Top 25 Pool, the Top 25 Club will place emphasis on CFBPoints. The Top 25 Club will award CFBPoints to the top ten finishers similar to how the Top 25 Challenge does each and every week. Depending on the number of contestants, a certain number of points will be dispersed to each top ten finisher. In addition, the ranking of contestants throughout the season will be dependent on the number and quality of placings throughout the season.
View the Top 25 Club contest group page here
The last major change for 2012-2013 is that contest pages that contestants will interact with have moved to tFanbase in order to utilize some of the community features.
For instance, most contests have their own group page where news bulletins or updates concerning each individual contest can be viewed and commented on while earning points at the same time. Contestants who join the group will receive notifications about them on the site or in their email or both depending on their set preferences. For example, if there is a weather cancellation of a game or an upcoming lock-time that is different from the normal schedule, you'll receive an instant update instead of having to rely on the weekly newsletter which isn't always timely.
Another cool feature being utilized is that each contest, including all weekly contests is an event which displays an easy to read chronological schedule so you will no longer have to wonder when the next contest is. All you have to do is go to the events contest category to see start and end dates for each contest, all in chronological order. Further, the event system tracks how many contestants are currently entered, labeled as attendees, so you'll know the live count of those currently entered in each contest and who they are.
Those were major changes on the site. We'll cover more features in some upcoming shorter blog posts which will announce and highlight the forums (to be opened next week), CFBPoints changes (for the better), our new blog (useable to all Club level members) and rankings/results pages.
Until the forums are opened, please post all inquiries at the CFBPredictions.com group page. It is also a good idea to join that group.
Happy predicting in 2012-13!
A few changes, new features and several improvements to CFBPredictions will help kick-off the new decade of college sports.
The most obvious change/enhancement is the new look but mostly the same layout which should allow us to be a little more versatile in displaying content to members.
The other obvious enhancement is that the forums are now integrated with the main part of the website so that members will have easier navigation to and from all areas of the site.
There are some new features and small changes you will find around the site for this year. Most of them are minor to help some of the operations go a little smoother and some are what we'd like to think are enhancements. Below is a list of some of the changes for the 2009-10 season.
