2023 College Football Bowl Prediction Pool

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.

2023 NFL Helmet Schedule Spreadsheet

The 2023 NFL schedule was released yesterday and since I used my Excel skills to automate the creation of this spreadsheet I was able to create the NFL Helmet Schedule in less than a minute! All 32 teams, all 18 weeks of the season (now 17 games plus one bye week), all in one spreadsheet:

A job that used to take hour by moving helmets manually is now so easy to do. Yes, that's why I love the power of macros and automation. I wrote the macro myself but nowadays you could probably just ask ChatGPT to write the macro for you.

On previous versions of the sheet I divided out the two conferences on separate sheets: NFC and AFC. This year, I’ve put all the teams into one sheet. However, there is a new filter option where you can filter by NFC or AFC or even by division: AFC North, AFC South, etc.

Download the 2023 NFL Helmet Schedule Spreadsheet here


Watch the video below to see how the filter works. I also so a tip in Excel how to select multiple objects at once with the mouse. And I walk through the populate helmets macro code as well. Lots of good stuff here!

As you can see, the NFL helmet schedule is printable too. You can save the spreadsheet as a PDF file or print it out and pin it up in your cubicle at work. If you do, please email or tweet me a picture of it hanging up - I'd love to see it!

Please note, an email is required to download it. I do this so you will be automatically updated you if changes or additions are made and will update you when the next year’s schedule is ready. I do not use your email for anything else.

As always, I welcome any comments or suggestions about how to fix or improve the sheet! How can I improve this football spreadsheet into something you’ll use all the time during pro-football season? What future features would you like to see?

2023 March Madness Squares

When I created my new Super Bowl Squares Unlimited spreadsheet for last month's football game, I had the goal in mind to be able to use the same sheet for other sports, like basketball.  I tweaked my template a little and now here it is for the first time - March Madness Squares!

Super Bowl squares are a popular game often played during the Super Bowl where participants select squares on a grid, with each square assigned a specific combination of numbers. The goal is to correctly predict the final score of the game based on the last digit of each team's score.

While Super Bowl squares are typically played during the Super Bowl, the concept can also be applied to March Madness. To play this game, you can create a grid with 100 squares, just like in the Super Bowl squares game. Instead of using the final score of the game, the grid will be based on the final score of each March Madness game.

Each square in the grid represents a combination of the final score of the two teams playing in the game. For example, if the final score of a game is 85-76, the winner would be the square where the "5" intersects with the "6" on the grid. You can assign a prize to each square, and participants can buy as many squares as they want.

There's multiple ways you could go about playing March Madness Squares:

1. Everyone keeps the same random numbers for every game

2. The random numbers change for every round

3. The random numbers change for every game

You can play either way with my spreadsheet. I designed it to be very versatile. Payout percentage can change per round as well. Update the settings how you want them then you click Generate Scoreboard once for every game, so 32 times in the first round. There are a lot of other options built in that can be ignored - it's all up to you!

Download March Madness Squares here.

Usually, when it comes to March Madness I use David Tyler's incredible brackets in Excel. I'll still be using them this year but in addition I plan on trying March Madness Squares for the first time. Have you ever played before?

Try it and let me know what you think!

Super Bowl Squares 2023 - Unlimited Ways to Play

Since 54 ways to play still wasn't enough, I've created a new version of my Super Bowl Squares template that should allow nearly limitless ways to play. I'm going to show you how to use it and what make it awesome. But first, let's take a quick look back at the evolution of my football grid game template.

I’ve been making Super Bowl Squares templates available for you to download for over 10 years now. The first version in 2012 was very plain and simple and was basically just meant to be printed.

I started adding more features and automation in 2014, beginning with a button you would click that runs a macro to generate the random numbers. 

The problem I soon discovered is there are countless ways to play Super Bowl Squares. Initially, I tried to account for different ways to play by having multiple sheets within the workbook. But this got very messy very quickly. A new user would open the template and could be very confused by all the sheets. I wanted a better solution.

In 2021, I released a new version that featured 54 different ways to play Super Bowl Squares all contained within one easy to use spreadsheet. When you first open the sheet, it has a nice clean look with only one sheet visible. You select the options for how you want to play, click Generate Squares, and it sets up the sheet exactly for the version you want to play.

The way it works is all the scoring systems are already built into the sheet. If you go to the Squares or the Manager sheet you will find many hidden rows or columns. The Generate Squares macro simply hides or unhides the data based on the user’s selections.

54 ways to play is a lot – but it is still not enough. Over the years I continued to receive countless requests for different ways to play. I don’t have time to make very specific sheets for each individual request – I needed a solution to account for unlimited ways to play. 

That’s when I had the idea for Super Bowl Squares Unlimited. The main difference in how it works is there are no pre-built scoring systems. Instead, they are built on the fly by macros. 

If you’re using iOS or cannot enable macros you will not be able to use this sheet, sorry. The is a simple printable PDF in the download and here is a Google sheet.

The first thing you’ll want to do is go to the Manager sheet and complete columns B and C by inputting all the player names and using the drop down to select how many squares for each. You can type the names manually into each square but you would also have to list the names on the Manager sheet and make sure they match (no typos). 

Back to the Squares sheet, the buttons in the Grid Tools box are pretty self explanatory. On the squares sheet, click the Random Names button to populate the grid with the player names in random positions. Click Randomize Numbers to generate the list of random numbers. Similar to previous sheet.

The main difference that gives this sheet more flexibility is the score boards are not built in, they are generated when the user clicks the Generate Scoreboard button every time there is a scoring event. Meaning, the settings can be changed. Let’s look at some examples.

Download 2023 Super Bowl Squares here

So that’s how you use the Super Bowl Squares Unlimited spreadsheet template. I’m excited to hear your thoughts. Is it better than the previous sheet? This is brand new and hasn’t been tested too much so there could be some bugs. But I’d love to know your thoughts on which sheet you will use and why so leave me a comment or email. Thanks for watching and have fun playing Super Bowl Squares!

Elevate Your Sports Betting Game with Our Free Excel Tracking Tool

Sports gambling just became legal here in Ohio and we've been flooded with sign-up offers. Since just about every sportsbook will give you free bonus bets (around $200) for a small ($5 or $10) deposit, I decided to dabble a little bit into sports betting to see what all the fuss is about. I signed up for three different sportsbook sites and quickly realized I needed a way to organize and track all my bets.

Naturally, I decided to make an Excel template to track which bets I'd made, track my earnings, and make sure I was still making a profit. First, I created a Lists sheet for all my drop down lists including which sportsbook, which sport, result, and so on. Personally, so far I've only stuck to football because that's what I follow the most and already have some interest and knowledge in it.

The Bet Tracker sheet is used to track every individual bet including the odds, wager amount, and formulas to determine the potential winnings and the actual result.

When you bet with your own money, if you win the bet you get the winnings plus your original bet back. But when you use Bonus money to place your bet, that "fake" money is not added to the winnings. I had to account for this in my Potential Winnings column formula.

If your own money then: Winnings = ((Odds/100)*Wager)+Original Wager

If bonus money then: Winnings = (Odds/100)*Wager)

=IF(E2="My$",((G2/100)*F2)+F2,((G2/100)*F2))

If you get lucky and win a bet, you'll be able to withdraw the money into your own bank or Paypal account. There's a summary sheet to track exactly how much money you've put in versus what has come out. The most important stat to me is my running total, and making sure it is well in the positive otherwise it's time to quit. 

How have I done? In the past two weeks, I placed 33 bets and won 8 of them. I've only had to input $27 of my own dollars, while I've gotten to bet $650 bonus bucks. I'm not huge into taking risks, so instead of betting on crazy parleys with larger payouts, I've bet on safer, more likely outcomes but with smaller rewards. What do I plan to do with my winnings? Probably invest in an AI company since they're changing the game.

In all my years of making sports related Excel spreadsheet templates, I've never really gambled on sports. I'm not sure I'll keep gambling once my free funds run out, but it is a fun experiment while it lasts. Like playing fantasy football or Super Bowl Squares, it gives you an extra incentive for watching the game. Hey, speaking of Super Bowl Squares, I've got a new version coming out this weekend and I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it...

.Download Sports Bet Tracker.xlsx file here

Using OpenAI's ChatGPT to Update My Year in Pixels Excel Template

I've been seeing more and more videos on TikTok about this mysterious new artificial intelligence program called ChatGPT. People are saying it will eventually replace Google search. But what really got my attention was a demonstration of ChatGPT writing VBA macros for Microsoft Excel. Now I knew I had to try it for myself. 

I made a Year in Pixels Excel template to track my daily mood back in 2018 but haven't updated it lately. Since it's the start of a new year, I recently received some new comments and questions about how to use and modify the spreadsheet so I figured now would be a great time to update it and add a few new features. Then I had an idea - why don't I use this opportunity to update my mood tracking Excel template to try out ChatGPT? Let's give it a go!

How to have cell fill color conditional formatting change based on the color of another cell?

The request from a user that got me thinking was "how to easily change the colors in my year in pixels sheet?" An experienced Excel user could probably ascertain the colors are applied by conditional formatting formula rules. However, for users who are not Excel savvy, it's not very obvious and there should be an easier way to change the colors. As far as I know, there is none, or at least no easy way in my current version of Excel, to have the fill color in the conditional formatting reference another cell's color. So instead, I will have a macro update the conditional formatting rules at the click of a button. Let's jump over to ChatGPT.

How does ChatGPT work?

Here's the answer after asking it directly: 

GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a type of language model developed by OpenAI that uses a transformer neural network architecture to generate text. GPT is trained on a large dataset of text and uses this training to generate new text that is similar in style and content to the training data.

ChatGPT is a variant of GPT that has been fine-tuned on a specific task, such as having conversations with humans. To fine-tune GPT for this task, ChatGPT is trained on a large dataset of conversation data and learns to predict the next word in a conversation based on the words that came before it.

When you input a message to ChatGPT, it processes the message and uses its knowledge of language and conversation patterns to generate a response. It does this by predicting the next word in the conversation based on the input it has received and the context of the conversation so far. The output of ChatGPT is then a response that is generated based on this prediction.

One thing to keep in mind right off the bat: ChatGPT is not always right. It says it right there on the main page under limitations: may occasionally generate incorrect information; may occasionally produce harmful instructions.

For example, I asked "list the ten tallest roller coasters in the world" which should be fairly easy and instead it produces a list that is incorrect and doesn't even make sense.

Not a great start but let's see how it does creating a macro from scratch.

Creating Custom VBA Macros Automatically with ChatGPT

I wasn't sure how specific I needed to be so I decided to err on the side of caution, plus I thought the more detailed I am the less modification I'll probably need to do later. Now I ask ChatGPT: "create a vba macro to make a new conditional formatting rule where range is C4 to N34, if cell value = 5 then change the fill color to the same color as in cell P12." Then it began typing and my jaw dropped.

I copied and pasted the code into Excel VBA editor and it worked! One thing I forgot is this macro will just add new rules applied to the same range. I need to delete all the existing formatting rules before adding new ones, so I ask ChapGPT:

I added the above code to the earlier response and linked it to a newly added button on my sheet. Now a user can change the fill color of a cell, click the button, and the fill colors update automatically to match.

If you want to see all this play out in real time, watch the video I recorded below:

Thoughts on the Future of ChatGPT

It's awesome that it doesn't just spit out the code, but it also suggests how you might need to modify it AND tells you how to run the macro as well. Even though I've only asked it to make simple macros, I already see how this program could save a lot of time.

I'm not done experimenting but so far ChatGPT seems like a much better option over Recoding macros or Google searches that might take you a few tries to find exactly what you're looking for. Especially when you can get custom code on the fly. On one hand, I feel a little obsolete, but on the other I also don't think ChatGPT will completely be replacing programmers just yet as you can see I still had to understand the code and modify it to fit my exact needs.

Download my Year in Pixels template for free here and try it for yourself. Open the macro editor to view the final codes written by ChatGPT.