Playoff Prediction Contest

RSN Alberta is pleased to announce that we are  running a contest to predict who will win each of the playoff series. Like most of these types of contests, you will need to predict the winners of all the Series before the first one starts.  So an early upset might ruin your entire ballot.  Conversely, if you pick an under dog to win it all, and they do, there is a good chance you will be the grand prize winner.  Here’s a hint – Don’t pick the Red Sox.  No really.  I know they have the best team on paper, and only injuries prevented them from winning 100 games again (like they have the past 3 seasons - on paper), but this year MLB has decided to actually play the games on the field, and only the real wins and losses are being counted, so Boston will not have a team in the playoffs. I know – I also think it’s highly unfair, since we are obviously one of the top teams in the majors, but Mr. Selig has made his decision, and it doesn’t sound like we can change his mind. 

The contest is free and easy to enter.

Here are the rules:

1. Your entry is due before the first pitch of the first playoff game.    The wildcard games are scheduled for Friday October 5^th.  I expect the earliest game would start no earlier than 1 PM EST but this has not yet been confirmed by MLB.  Anyhow, I will accept any entry dated prior to the official time of first pitch of this first game – whenever that is.  

2. You may only have one official entry per person and/or e-mail address.  That is, you can’t enter twice under two email addresses, and you can’t have two entries, one for yourself and one for someone else on the same e-mail.  You may, however, update your entry up to the deadline specified in rule 1.  You can enter today, and if one of the teams you picked ends up not making the playoffs, you can change your entry.

3. Leave your entry either in the comments section of this post, or send me an e-mail if you don’t want everybody else seeing your picks and copying them.  After the deadline I will post all the entries online. (Probably on a shared Google Docs spreadsheet, but I reserve the right to use another method.  Maybe I’ll just write them all down on a piece of paper and take a picture, and post that).
EDIT: See everyone's entry at this link

4. Your entry should include the following:

• Winner of AL wildcard game
• Winner of NL wildcard game
• 2 teams playing in ALCS (i.e. winners of both AL division series)
• 2 teams playing in NLCS (i.e winners of NLDS)
• 2 teams playing in World Series (i.e, winners of ALCS and NLCS)
• World Series Champion
• Tiebreaker question #1: # of games to win the World Series
• Tiebreaker question #2: World Series MVP
• Tiebreaker question #3: Total runs scored by winner in all their playoff games  (note: the winning team will play anywhere from 11 to 20 games in the playoffs.

5. Your entry also needs some way for me to contact you.  If you leave a comment here, please make sure you include an e-mail address or twitter handle so I can contact you.  I really don't want to have to try to track down "anonymous".

6. Determination of winner:

The winner will be the person with the most points.  Points will be awarded as follows:

• 1 point for each correct wildcard game winner
• 2 points for each correct division series winner
• 4 points for each correct LCS winner
• 8 points for correct World Series winner

A perfect ballot will get you 26 points and my unending admiration

7.  Finally… This contest is open to all residents of the continental United States and Canada except for the Province of Quebec.  Why? I have no idea, but all contests exclude Quebeckers, so there must be some law I don’t know about that I don’t want to run afoul of.  Sorry to all you Expos fan out there.

Prizes: The winners will get a sports keychain of their choice from WholesaleKeychain.com similar to the ones I reviewed here.  There will be one prize for the winner, and another random prize drawing.  Everyone will get an entry for the random draw by submitting a contest entry.  You can get additional entries for doing each of the following:

Follow me on twitter @rsn_alberta

Follow my sister accounts on twitter: @baseball_in_ab @scoringrules

 Follow this blog on networked blogs

 Follow this blog through Google Friend Connect on right.

That's up to 5 additional entries you can get.

I will assign a number (or numbers) to each contestant and use a random number generator to select the winner.

A sample (but really, really bad) entry form will look something like this:

AL wildcard winner: Seattle

NL wildcard winner: Mets

ALDS winners: Blue Jays and Twins

NLDS winners: Cubs and Astros

World Series: Astros over Twins

Tiebreakers: 7 games, Jed Lowrie and 75

Email: awful@contests.com

OR

Twiiter:@Ireallysuck

Good luck to all.  The winner will be announced at the end of the World Series.