The college football conference championships were played this past weekend which means the 2023 NCAA college football bowl season is here again! Therefore, it’s time to make your picks and predictions about who you think will win each bowl game. One of the best times of the holiday season (other than giving and receiving gifts) is being able to talk trash to your relatives about their terrible bowl picks.
This year has the added bonus of not just single bowl games but the tenth and final year of a four team playoff to determine the national champion. Starting in 2024 the college football playoff will expand to twelve teams (couldn't have been one year earlier, could it). Can't wait to see how that plays out!
But let's not get ahead of ourselves and just enjoy that fact that the SEC was ALMOST left out of the playoff for the first time. It's good to see at least one new team make the CFB playoff. Here's the full breakdown of bowl teams per conference:
There are multiple ways to play Bowl pick'em. Features for this year's bowl prediction pool over the previous college football bowl pool manager spreadsheets include the following:
Easy method to make each bowl game worth a different point value, so the national championship game and semi-finals can be worth more points, or however you want to customize it.
Updated leaderboard tab with new stats
Separate entry sheet to pass out to participants or co-workers that can be imported automatically by a built-in macro
Complete NCAA college football bowl schedule with game times and TV stations
New stat sheet to track each conference's record during bowl season. Graph shows total conference teams and total conference wins
The bowl prediction sheets include the football helmet designs for every team (taken from my college football helmet schedule spreadsheet), their win-loss record, and the logo for all bowl games. I added the helmets so those players who aren't big college football fans can pick a winner based on their favorite helmet design!
Download the CFP Pool Manager and Single Entry Form here
Bowl Pick'em Game For Google Sheets
Unlike many of my other spreadsheets, macros are not critical for the Bowl prediction pool. If you have a Google drive account you should be able to upload the pool manager and use it inside Google sheets. Participants can make their picks directly in the sheet using the drop down lists and everyone can see the scoreboard update in real time. All the formulas should work. Insert new columns where it says in order to add more players. The macro to import single player picks won't work but it is not needed. Try it if you want to play that way and let me know if you find any issues in Google sheets.
College Football Bowl Pick'em with Confidence Points
If you watch the video above you can see how this works. Each player can select confidence picks where they rank each game according to how confident they are in their pick. If you're super confident Georgia is going to roll over Ohio State you would rank that game 42 from the drop down list and would receive 42 points if you're correct. If you're not so sure Michigan will beat TCU you might only rank that game 1 or 2 points.
Download the 2023 CFP Bowl Prediction Pool Manager.xlsm file here
Have fun! As always, I welcome any feedback or ideas for improvement.