Postseason Pick’em Contest: Conference Championship Round

The playoffs are where legends are born. Forge your own legend in the Water Cooler Sports Postseason Pick’em Contest!

Clarity

In any well-designed tournament, the best teams usually rise to the top. Sure, you get your occasional Cinderella stories, those teams that come out of nowhere and catch everyone off-guard. You get those high seeds who feasted on inferior competition in the regular season and then are exposed as frauds in the postseason. You get those teams who went through the gauntlet and whose records don’t reflect their talent.

But overall, the cream should and does rise to the top. We see it in the NFC right now, where the top-seeded Atlanta Falcons will be squaring off against the No. 2 seed San Francisco 49ers for the right to go to the Super Bowl.  Over in the AFC, the situation is a little different. The No. 1 seed Denver Broncos, who had one of the easiest schedules of the past two decades, are out, as are the No. 3 seed Houston Texans, who faded down the stretch, leaving the No. 2 seed New England Patriots to host the No. 4 seed Baltimore Ravens. None of the wildcard teams have made it to the conference round. All is as it should be.

This week is your opportunity to high-step your way to victory.

In our tournament, by contrast, there is much more spread. We started out with 24 contestants, and our remaining seeds range from No. 1 (dalaislama) to No. 21 (Big Cheese). This might be partly attributable to our somewhat unconventional pairing system. In most tournaments, the top seed would take on the lowest seed, second highest seed the second lowest seed, etc.; but that isn’t what we see.

As the bracket below shows, this week features dalaislama (1) against automated algorithm nonstopdrivel1 (9), BearsSaveLives (13) vs. upstart Big Cheese (21), Paul Rubino (18) vs. jwoude13 (7), and Preparation_A (3) vs. Childerz (11). This format ensures that higher-seed players will be eliminated in our Conference Championship round than might normally be the case. It will be interesting to see if this format favors the higher or lower seeds.

Higher stakes

In any case, we have only two games on the card this week, so there is less room for error. To keep the scoring potential constant, point values will double. Games will be scored as follows:

• 2 points for every correctly predicted winner
• 2 points for every correctly predicted score
• 10 points for every perfectly picked game
• Example: jwoude23 predicts New England Patriots 31, Baltimore Ravens 20; actual score is 17-21; he scores no points.
• Example: BearsSaveLives predicts Atlanta Falcons 27, San Francisco 49ers 21; actual score is 24-21, so he scores four points.

All other rules remain the same. If you have any questions about these rules, be sure to write me at the address listed below.

Conference Championship bracket

Slate

Here are the two games we’ll be picking this week:

Point your toes toward glory.

• San Francisco 49ers at Atlanta Falcons (2:00 p.m. CT)
• Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots (5:30 p.m. CT)
• Tiebreaker: total points scored in NFC Championship Game

Submit your entry — including your screen name, score predictions, and tiebreaker —  to pickem@watercoolersports.net (yes, it works again) by 9:00 a.m. CT Friday if you want your picks to be published. Be sure to have your picks in before kickoff of the NFC Championship Game to ensure your slot isn’t given to one of our eager waiting-list members.

Good luck to everyone. Things are getting real now!