March 2008 Contest!
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EDIT 4: The first games have started, so entry to the contest is now closed. Good luck, everybody!
EDIT 3: I’ve removed the password requirement and added help info in the comments for anybody who might need it in signing up.
EDIT 2: In order to join the group, you need to have a free Yahoo account. Signing up for one is as easy as signing up for a freebie, just put a bunch of random info in. 
I picked Yahoo over ESPN, Facebook, etc. because it’s really user friendly, especially to people who don’t know anything about college basketball!
EDIT: It’s 3:00 and only three people have signed up? Man, somebody has some good odds to win the cash prize 
It’s been a while since we’ve had contest here at HIF and the one I’m currently working on won’t be ready for a week or two at the least. But I really want to have one now (I sound like a whiny kid, haha), so I thought why not have a March Madness contest?! I’ve created a group on Yahoo that any Hiffer can join and the winner will get $25! It’s not a lot of money, but I promise you your odds of winning are great since none of us know what the heck we’re doing when it comes to correctly picking college basketball games
Entry is obviously free and if you’ve never followed the NCAA tournament before, this could be your perfect excuse to watch and follow along this year! If you’re interested, click the link below and use the password to join the group, then just click the teams until you’ve filed out your whole bracket, and you’re all set!
Group: http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/group/157337/
As far as scoring, it’s super easy. You get points for making correct picks, incorrect picks don’t penalize you, and the person with the most points at end wins.
First Round 1 point
Second Round 2 points
Third Round 4 points
Fourth Round 8 points
Semis 16 points
Championship 32 points
Don’t be shy, people! Join our group, have a little fun with fellow Hiffers who have no idea what they’re doing, and follow along in the conversation over on the forums! You have until around noon tomorrow to sign up and play.
I’m trying to sign up but I don’t have a yahoo account and so I have no user name there. Do I need to do that in order to sign up. I tried just putting in the password with my name to no effect. I’m trying to link my readers to this, but can’t of course if it doesn’t work.
Sorry, when you hit the link, it says “error, you are not a member of this group”
Sherry, good question, I’ll add another edit to the post above.
Exactly how do we sign up again??
Trying to sign up but can’t find group. What school is group associated with? That’s the only way you can find a group in the directory.
EDIT BY GOOB: Nope, that’s not my group! The number in the post above is correct, but I’ve removed the password requirement so everybody should be able to see it and join easier now.
Hey, I found the group.
The number was wrong.
I’ve now set the group to be public, so people don’t need a password to join anymore.
If you’re having trouble signing up, try the following. Log into your free Yahoo account (or create a free yahoo account first, then log into it.) Then come back here to HIF and click this link to go directly to the group page. Join the group, fill out your bracket, and you’re set.
I’ve also associated the group with “South Carolina” since that’s my alumni!
For the record, the name of the group is “HITF B-Ball Tourney” without the quotes. Maybe that will help people find it.
My bad!
I pointed people to the wrong group. Goop fixed things so you just click the link above now.
Wooooo March Madness!!!
I signed up. I enjoy doing these fantasy sports leagues, even though I don’t really know what the heck I’m doing!
Cool, welcome to the tourney. It’ll be interesting to see if any of us know what the heck we’re doing!
This is the second time that links from your site haven’t worked. I signed up for the Yahoo as you required and still couldn’t make it work, couldn’ find groups or brackets. You need to be more careful. I’m about to remove you from my feeds. My readers don’t need these worthless links and I don’t have the time to double check your sloppy work.
A little more thought and less trying to jerry rig your site to another full blown fantasy game would be appreciated in the future. You could have set this whole thing up on your own site with a little foresight.
Sherry, I’m sorry you had trouble with the links. I checked the links on Safari, Firefox, and IE and they worked fine, especially after I removed the password. Plenty of other people were able to join as well without much problem. Like I said in the post, I picked Yahoo because compared to all the other similar sites on the net, it’s by far the most user friendly.
I looked in advance for a plug-in to go with the forums, but there isn’t a single tournament style mod out there. I found a script that I could install on the site here and run it, but it was clunky and required manual updating for scores, rankings, etc. Plus it looked like crap. I found 7 or 8 scripts as well that didn’t deliver what they promised, so I had to dismiss them. In the end, I decided to go with Yahoo because I had spent over 6 hours trying to set up a tournament here on the site to no avail and I was tired.
I didn’t start this contest for my own benefit. I thought some of the reader here would enjoy it - running this contest and giving away $25 out of my own pocket isn’t bringing me anything. I knew setting this up was a little last minute, but I gave people 24 hours to join and figured people would appreciate the opportunity, no matter how short, to play this year instead of me waiting until 2009 to do this.
I’ll hold another fantasy tournament next year and will certainly take into account everything that happened this year. Again, I’m sorry you had a bad experience, but I run this site as a side hobby to my already hectic life. I’ve always tried my best and will continue to do so in the future.
HOoray for me I’m in fourth and i know nothing of baketerball, um no wait, tater-ball, BASEBALL,no wait….basketnet? oh yeah basketball!