How to Play Super Bowl Squares 2026: Patriots vs Seahawks Edition

The 2026 Super Bowl is almost here, and whether you’re cheering for the Seattle Seahawks, the New England Patriots, or just tuning in for the commercials and halftime show, adding a Super Bowl Squares game is one of the easiest ways to boost the excitement at your watch party. This updated guide explains exactly how to play Super Bowl Squares for 2026, plus tips for using spreadsheets to manage your pool effortlessly.

2024 College Football Bowl Pick'em and Playoff Bracket

It's the most wonderful time of the year - college football bowl season! The college football conference championships were played this past weekend which means the 2024 NCAA college football bowl season is here again. 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 is being able to talk trash to your relatives about their terrible bowl picks.

This year has the added bonus of the new, expanded college football playoff - growing from four to twelve teams. As such, I've included a college football playoff bracket within this Excel file. There is the option to play just the bowls, just the playoff bracket, or both! If you've used my Super Bowl Squares template, you'll be familiar with how it works - there is a setup screen where you pick your options then click a button and the spreadsheet adjusts to how you want to play.

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!

There are multiple ways to play college football bowl pick'em. What I call "regular" is every game is worth 1 point. The other way I call Confidence Picks: each player "bet" points 1 to 35 on each game based on how confident they are their choice is correct. Player with the most points wins                 Example: player bets 35 points and gets it correct = 35 points. Bets 25 points on another game, gets it wrong = 0 points awarded.

For the college football playoff bracket, the pool manager can decide if each game is worth the same amount (1 point) or if each round the points increase: round 1 = 1 point, round 2 = 2 points, etc.

Download the 2024 CFP Bowl Prediction Pool Manager.xlsm file here

2024 College Football Bowl TRIVIA

• First year of 12 team playoff bracket
• 35 bowl games with 70 teams
• No teams with a losing record
• Best record: Oregon 13-0
• There are only 2 teams left in the Pac-12
• The Alamo Bowl features two teams from the same conference (Big 12 vs Big 12)
• 18 teams with 6-6 record (21 teams last year)
• 21 teams with double digit wins (23 in 2023,  16 in 2022, 23 in 2021, in 2020 there were 5, 22 in 2019)
• One loss teams: Army, Indiana, Notre Dame, Boise State
• Lopsided matchups (in terms of records): Memphis 10-2 vs WMU 6-6, UNLV 10-3 vs Cal (6-6)

Download the CFP Pool Manager and Single Entry Form here

Have fun! As always, I welcome any feedback or ideas for improvement.

Excel Sports Bet Tracking Spreadsheet Updated

I've updated the Sports Bet Tracking spreadsheet template with some of the features you've been requesting! The upgrades include:

American or Decimal Odds

Choose between American or Decimal odds by using a drop down list on the first sheet. All bets need to use the same odds type and you shouldn't change it once set. 

What's the difference between American and Decimal odds?

Decimal odds (European odds) represent the potential return of a bet, including the original stake, as a multiple of the stake. The odds are presented as a single number, usually with two decimal places. Example: 2.5

American odds, also known as moneyline odds, are a popular format for expressing the likelihood of a particular outcome in sports betting, especially in the United States. American odds can be positive or negative numbers and indicate how much profit a bettor would make on a $100 wager if the bet is successful. They provide a straightforward way for bettors to understand the potential profit or risk associated with a particular bet. Example: -205, +155

Change to Macro Enabled Worksheet

The format of the bet tracking spreadsheet has been changed from .xlsx to .xlsm as I've added a few simple macros.

Click the "Add New Bet" button to input a new bet. Previously you had to scroll to the bottom of the Bet Tracker sheet to add a new bet and potentially drag down all formulas to track the stats. Now the newest bet will always be at the top and you won't have to manually manipulate any formulas.

If you want to clear all your bets there is a button that will do that but be careful - the action cannot be undone.

I don't think macros will work on MAC/iOS/APPLE devices, so you might have to manually drag down the formulas.

Cash Out and Voided Bets can now be tracked

The ability to Cash Out has also been added as well as void or push bets can now be tracked. If you cash out, enter the value you cashed out for in column K, otherwise leave column K blank. If you want to track void or cancelled bets you can select Void from the drop down then delete your wager amount and leave it blank since you get that money back.

How to Transfer Information From Old Versions

In the Bet Tracker sheet, I think columns A through K should be the same so you can copy and paste those, then drag down the formulas in row 2 for columns M-Y.

Download the Sports Bet Tracking spreadsheet for FREE here.

Let me know what you think about the improvements to the Sports Bet Tracking Spreadsheet in the comments below! And as always, I valuable your feedback if you have ideas for even more improvements. 

2024 March Madness Brackets and Basketball Squares

If you're looking for 2024 March Madness Brackets, no, I won't be posting any here or making my own. Once again, I will be using the best March Madness brackets in Excel, created by David Tyler (and I will continue to use his until he decides to no longer update them). They’re very polished and easy to use. There are only 68 teams in the field but the spreadsheet is already setup to handle up to 128 teams, if they expand in the future. There are two sheets: the bracket and the pool manager. Instructions are included but its very intuitive. Take a look:

 

As I’ve said countless times before, you can learn a lot by looking at Excel templates made by others. Here are 5 things I do when examining a new spreadsheet using David's March Madness brackets as example.

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 you can use it for March Madness Squares!

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

Here's a quick demo of how to use squares for basketball:



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!

Will you be playing 2024 March Madness Brackets, March Madness Squares, or both? Let me know in the comments below.

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 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!

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

2022 Super Bowl Squares Spreadsheet - one size fits all

I’ve been creating Super Bowl Squares spreadsheets for over ten years now but this is just the second year of using my new and improved one-size fits all generator sheet. When you first open my free grid game template, you’re met with a simple setup screen where the user will decide how to play the game:

• How do you want to assign names to the boxes: manually pick and choose or automatic randomized?
• Do you want to use the same numbers of the Super Bowl score, rotate by quarter or by each half?
• Do you want to earn points per quarter, per minute, or every time the score changes?

No matter what you choose, after you click the “Generate Squares” button the sheet automatically updates the Super Bowl boxes and the leaderboard to reflect only the version of the game you want to play. There 54 different ways to play, all contained within this one template. 

After the Super Bowl, you can keep using this sheet for regular season NFL games. Simply use the drop down lists in the Squares sheet to select the team from the list (broken up by AFC and NFC) and their helmets will update automatically! Or make a few modifications and use this template for other sports. The possibilities are endless!

Watch me demo the new Super Bowl board in the video below. Also be sure to subscribe to my email list and YouTube channel as I'll be showing off all the tricks and tips I used to make this spreadsheet work.


As you can see, the new sheet allows more ways to play than a fixed style but is simple and easy to setup and is automated as much as possible.

Get the Super Bowl pool template here.

Even if you’re not into football, you can still use the template to learn how to do all of these cool Excel tricks:

• Lookup pictures based on cell values
• Generate random numbers
• Use the NameManager
• Create drop down lists
• Use index and match formulas

If you dissect the macros in the spreadsheet you’ll learn how to:

• Hide rows and columns
• Hide or unhide sheets
• Generate random numbers between 0 and 9 with no duplicates
• How to hide command buttons by VBA
• How to change cell fill color
• How to send an email from Excel
• How to attach an image to an email using VBA

New Features for 2022

A new feature I added for 2022 is the ability for Outlook users to easily share the Super Bowl squares via email. Enter all the player’s emails in Column A on the Send Scoreboard sheet. Just click the button and an email will automatically be composed from Excel complete with an image of the grid. I explained how to insert images into emails from a spreadsheet in a previous article.

Another way to share, copy and paste the board into a Google doc. This sheet won’t work in Google due to the macros but once you’ve got the grid filled in and the score numbers have been randomly generated, you could share it with your colleagues by copying and pasting as an image into a Google sheet. The manager would still keep score in the template but that way everyone can see what numbers they have. Let me know if you use this feature or if it isn't useful for you.

Get the Super Bowl squares spreadsheet here (enter a 0 into the price box then input an email address):

https://gumroad.com/l/superbowlsquares

*Intended for PC/Microsoft Office/Excel. I don't think it will work in Mac Numbers or Google sheets as macros are not supported*

Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear from you. Is this version as much of an upgrade and easy to use as I think it is? I welcome any and all questions, comments, suggestions, cuss words, and compliments. Let me know using the comments below or via email. Enjoy playing Super Bowl Squares!

2021 College Football Bowl Prediction Pool

The college football conference championships were played this past weekend which means the 2021 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 eighth year of a four team playoff to determine the national champion.

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 the 2017 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

I'm working on a new version where you could do confidence points that you can test out now and give me feedback.

Download the 2021 CFP Bowl Prediction Pool Manager.xlsm file here

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, find any bugs, or have any suggestions for improvement. I love that people are using this Bowl Prediction Game to help raise money for charity, that's so awesome to hear! What team are you rooting for?

Excel Tips from the Best 2021 March Madness Brackets

After a year hiatus it’s finally here, the college basketball March Madness brackets are back! Last year, I made a NFL Draft Game spreadsheet for the first time to try to compensate for the loss of the basketball brackets but it just wasn’t the same (but I did still update it for 2021). This year, the 2021 NCAA men's basketball tournament will be unlike any March Madness that has come before. All games will be played in Indiana, with most in Indianapolis. The schedule has also been change. The First Four would typically be played on Tuesday and Wednesday night with the first round being played on Thursday and Friday. 

Here's the 2021 March Madness schedule:

• First Four — 4 p.m. start on Thursday, March 18
• First round — 12 p.m. start on Friday, March 19, and Saturday, March 20
• Second round — 12 p.m. start on Sunday, March 21, and Monday, March 22
• Sweet 16 — 2 p.m. start on Saturday, March 27, and 1 p.m. start on Sunday, March 28
• Elite Eight — 7 p.m. start on Monday, March 29, and 6 p.m. start on Tuesday, March 30
• Final Four — 5 p.m. start on Saturday, April 3
• NCAA championship game — 9 p.m. Monday, April 5

Once again, I will be using the best March Madness brackets in Excel, created by David Tyler (and I will continue to use his until he decides to no longer update them). They’re very polished and easy to use. There are only 68 teams in the field but the spreadsheet is already setup to handle up to 128 teams, if they expand in the future. There are two sheets: the bracket and the pool manager. Instructions are included but its very intuitive. 

The First 5 Things I Do When Examining Someone Else's Spreadsheet

As I’ve said countless times before, you can learn a lot by looking at templates made by others. Here are 5 things I do when examining a new spreadsheet:

1. Unhide hidden sheets, columns, and rows: When you make a template others are going to be using, you want to make it look nice and clean and hide anything that could cause confusion to a first time user, which leads to hiding rows, columns, or even entire sheets in a workbook. So, the first thing I do when examining someone else’s template is look for the hidden data. Right click on the sheets tab and click “unhide”. I unhide all the hidden sheets if there are any to see what data is present. Look for any hidden columns or rows as well by seeing if any letters or numbers are skipped.

2. Understand the NamedRanges: Go To Formulas > Name Manager and examine what the named ranges are, what sheets and cells they refer to. Hopefully they're all named well, like in David's brackets.

3. Look at conditional formatting rules: On the Home tab, go to Conditional Formatting, click Manage Rules, then Show formatting rules for This Worksheet to view them all.

4. Look through the formulas: On the Formulas tab, click “show Formulas” to show if they were manually typed in or if there is a formula calculating the values

5. Look through the macros: Hopefully, the person writing the code left lots of good comments so it’s easier to follow along with what each piece of code does

Watch me quickly walk through David's 2021 March Madness brackets going through the five points listed above:

2021 NFL Draft Game Spreadsheet Template

It’s been one year since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Last year, since March Madness and other sports at the time were cancelled, I started thinking about what other things I could do to fill in the void of not having any March Madness brackets to fill out. The answer came in a suggestion from a reader to create an NFL Draft game spreadsheet. I’ve updated the template for this year.

Inside this template I've listed the top 100 draft prospects according to ESPN. Each draft game player (and the template is currently setup to handle ten players) are randomly assigned ten future NFL players by using a randomize macro. The earlier your players get drafter the better, as the draft position counts for points and the lowest number of points wins!

The random number macro is pretty simple:

'define range of cells for random numbers

Dim Player1 As Range

Set Player1 = Range("AN2:AN101")

Player1.ClearContents

For Each a In Player1

Do

a.Value = (Int((100 * Rnd + 1)))

Loop Until WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Player1, a.Value) < 2

Next

Based on some good user feedback I added the option where each player can now try to predict which team will select their players for additional bonus points. Well, negative bonus points that is, as it subtracts points from your total score (remember, lowest score wins).

See how the Draft Game spreadsheet works in the video below:

Even if you have no interest in the NFL, football, or drafts, you can still learn a bit about Excel by examining the random number generator macro, or the vlookup and sumif formulas used. The scoreboard uses a “rank without ties” formula:

 =(IF(D3<>"",(RANK(D3,$D$3:$D$52)+COUNTIF(D$3:D3,D3)-1),""))

For now, the spreadsheet is setup to handle ten players. To add more, the formulas and macro will need to be modified. If enough people are interested in using this sheet, I will work on making it scalable so it can automatically adjust to the exact number of players.

2021 NFL Draft Game Spreadsheet Template.xlsm 

Let me know if you like this game or if you have any suggestions or questions.

2018 March Madness Excel Brackets

Spoiler Alert: This post is going to mostly be a re-hash of my same March Madness Excel bracket posts from the past eight years.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! March Madness 2018 is here and the first of the four “play-in” games will begin on Tuesday, March 13th . Once again, I’ll be using David Tyler’s NCAA Excel brackets, the same ones I’ve been using since at least 2010, as they're still the best as far as I’m concerned. I'd like to give a special thanks to David for continuing to update, tweak, and post his excellent brackets each and every March and giving us something to look forward to as we crawl out of the final few weeks of winter (snowing again here in Ohio, I hoped we were done with winter).

I’m a firm believer that a great way to increase your Excel knowledge is to reverse engineer Excel spreadsheet templates, like these office pool March Madness brackets. Previously, I’ve shared 11 things you can learn from the best Excel brackets and they all still apply for this year’s version. David doesn't lock or hide anything behind password protection so you can examine all the formulas to see how they work and make any modifications you desire.

A change this year: I made it so you can pick either team in the 'First four' games to advance past the Round of 64. That seemed to be the preferred method among pool managers based on the feedback I received.

— B. David Tyler (@DrBDT) March 12, 2018

There are two files: the bracket manager and the individual bracket file, that can be downloaded by following the link below. Download the files and start picking them apart!
http://www.whistleblows.com/p/bracket.html

If you’re worried you might not be able to use the March Madness Excel brackets have no fear. They are easy to use and you can watch this short video I made to show you just how easy it is to use David's brackets. Simply click on each team to advance them (don't forget to enable macros).

• A No. 16 seed has never beaten a No. 1. Like ever.
• A No. 12 seed usually beats a No. 5 seed.
• Odds of picking a perfect bracket: 1 in 9.2 quintrillion.
• Odds of picking a perfect bracket using historical data and basketball knowledge: 1 in 128 billion.

I know some readers of this blog skip over the templates I post, especially if they're sports related. but there really are many lessons that can be learned by examining them that you can apply to your own spreadsheets to improve them. What new lessons about Excel have you learned by breaking down a template?

2017 College Football Bowl Prediction Pool Manager with CFB Playoff Bracket

The college football conference championships were played yesterday which means the 2017 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 gathering around the TV and rooting for your Alma mater or hometown football team. This year has the added bonus of not just single bowl games but the fourth year of a four team playoff to determine the national champion.

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 by a 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 (Go Big Ten! Go MAC!)
• The bowl prediction sheets include the football helmet designs for every team (taken from the 2017 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!
• If you click on one of the helmets it should take you to that team's ESPN page so you can learn more about them and see which teams they won or lost to.
• Download the CFP Pool Manager and Single Entry Form here.

There are now three ways to add participant’s data:

1. Manual entry using the drop down lists
2. Copy and paste from the selection sheet to the bowl manager
3. Use the import macro to automatically import a player’s data into the pool manager by way of a macro

Here's an older video to show you what the sheet looks like 
Below is my newly recorded video of how to use the bowl pool manager spreadsheet.

The beauty of this football bowl manager is you will not have to change or modify any formulas yourself (unless you want to of course). Instructions are included within the Excel file and shows you exactly how to add more players (either manually or by using the button that is linked to a macro). If you enjoy using this sheet football pool manager I would really appreciate it if you would share it with friends, family, and coworkers.

I am working a version where you can add confidence picks by ranking the bowls in order of how confidence you are with your picks.
Here are some of my Bowl Game Observations that may interest only me...

• Unlike last year, when there were four teams with losing records, there are none this year, though there are a ton of 6-6 teams (yawn).
• There are no undefeated teams in the four playoff spots, though UCF is 12-0.
• Biggest gap of match-up between number of wins is 12 win UCF vs 8 win Auburn.
• There are 5 teams with 12 wins, but only three of them made the playoffs. Can you name the other two?
• There are four teams with 11 wins, can you name the others besides Alabama?

Download the 2017 CFP Bowl Prediction Pool Manager.xlsm file here

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, find any bugs, or have any suggestions for improvement. I love that people are using this Bowl Prediction Game to help raise money for charity, that's so awesome to hear! What team are you rooting for?

2017 March Madness Excel Brackets

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! March Madness 2017 edition is here and the first of the four “play-in” games will begin on Tuesday, March 14th (which we’re not counting off any points for in my office pool). Once again, I’ll be using David Tyler’s NCAA Excel brackets, the same ones I’ve been using since at least 2010, as they're still the best as far as I’m concerned. I'd like to give a special thanks to David for continuing to update and post his excellent brackets each and every March and giving us something to look forward to as we crawl out of the final few weeks of winter (70 degrees a few weeks ago here in Ohio, now it’s snowing!).

I’m a firm believer that a great way to increase your Excel knowledge is to reverse engineer Excel spreadsheet templates, like these office pool March Madness brackets. Previously, I’ve shared 11 things you can learn from the best Excel brackets and they all still apply for this year’s version. David doesn't lock or hide anything behind password protection so you can examine all the formulas to see how they work and make any modifications you desire. There are two files: the bracket manager and the individual bracket file, that can be downloaded by following the link below. Download the files and start picking them apart!

http://www.whistleblows.com/

 If you’re worried you might not be able to use the March Madness Excel brackets have no fear. They are easy to use and you can watch this short video I made to show you just how easy it is to use David's brackets. Simply click on each team to advance them (don't forget to enable macros).

 

 As far as actually filling in the bracket, here are some interesting stats about March Madness and a few tips that might help you choose your teams.
 

Source: WalletHub

• A No. 16 seed has never beaten a No. 1. Like ever.
• A No. 12 seed usually beats a No. 5 seed.
• Odds of picking a perfect bracket: 1 in 9.2 quintrillion.
• Odds of picking a perfect bracket using historical data and basketball knowledge: 1 in 128 billion.

I know some readers of this blog skip over the templates I post, especially if they're sports related. but there really are many lessons that can be learned by examining them that you can apply to your own spreadsheets to improve them. What new lessons about Excel have you learned by breaking down a template?

2016 College Football Bowl Prediction Pool Manager with CFB Playoff Bracket

The conference championships were played yesterday which means the 2016 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 gathering around the TV and rooting for your Alma mater or hometown football team. This year has the added bonus of not just single bowl games but the third year of a four team playoff to determine the national champion.

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 by a 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 (Go Big Ten!)
• The bowl prediction sheets include the football helmet designs for every team (taken from the 2016 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.

There are now three ways to add participant’s data:

1. Manual entry using the drop down lists
2. Copy and paste from the selection sheet to the bowl manager
3. Use the import macro to automatically import a player’s data into the pool manager by way of a macro 

The beauty of this football bowl manager is you will not have to change or modify any formulas yourself (unless you want to of course). Instructions are included within the Excel file and shows you exactly how to add more players (either manually or by using the button that is linked to a macro). If you enjoy using this sheet football pool manager I would really appreciate it if you would share it with friends, family, and coworkers.

Tweet: I'm using @NTWProductions pool manager in #Excel to predict #cfplayoff & #bowlgames. Get yours here: http://ctt.ec/8EBeO+


Here are some of my Bowl Game Observations that may interest only me...

This year, four teams have made bowl games with losing records:

1. Mississippi State (5-7)
2. North Texas (5-7)
3. Hawaii (6-7)
4. Central Michigan (6-6 but should be 5-7 because of the fluke win at Oklahoma State)

This could get ugly: Motel 6 Cactus Bowl you have Baylor (6-6) vs. Boise State (10-2) or Birmingham Bowl South Florida (10-2) vs. South Carolina (6-6)

Strangely Intriguing: Popeyes Bahamas Bowl featuring Eastern Michigan (7-5) vs. Old Dominion (9-3). This is EMU’s first bowl berth since 1987 and Old Dominion, playing just their third year at the FBS level, going to its first-ever bowl.

If the MAC’s Western Michigan beats Wisconsin, it will have more Big Ten wins than four teams had in the conference in 2016.

Download the 2016 CFP Bowl Prediction Pool Manager.xlsm file here

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, find any bugs, or have any suggestions for improvement. I love that people are using this Bowl Prediction Game to help raise money for charity, that's so awesome to hear! What team are you rooting for?

2016 College Football Helmet Schedule Spreadsheet

The 2016 college football season is a little over a month away! I still can’t believe my Buckeyes blew it at home against Michigan State and cost themselves a shot at repeating as Big Ten and National Champions. I have no idea what to expect this season. Looking at the schedule in the Excel file, I’m really worried about that away game against Oklahoma early in the season. At least if they lose, they could have time to recover to get back in the playoff hunt.

It’s fun looking at the 2016 college football helmet schedule and try to predict which games you think your favorite team will win or lose. This spreadsheet of the college football schedules includes every team from all conferences plus independents. Every game is listed as either home, away, or neutral site (noted at the bottom of each sheet).  A college football helmet schedule spreadsheet may be available on other websites but, to my knowledge, this is the only downloadable Excel version and, unlike some of the others, is 100% FREE!

2016 College Football Playoff Prediction Game

A new feature this year is the edition of the 2016 College Football Playoff Predictor! Week by week, you can pick the four teams who you think will make the playoff at the end of the year. You can see how your prediction changes throughout the year and if it is correct at the end. Crazy that out of 127 teams, only four make the playoff, a measly 3.1 %.  Compare that to the NFL where 12 of 32 makes the playoffs, or 37.5%.

Download the football schedule today using the link below:

2016 College Football Helmet Schedule Spreadsheet.xls download

Suggestions to Improve the College Football Schedule Spreadsheet

I was thinking about other options I could add to make this template more fun, like how much fun the Bowl Prediction Pool is every year. One idea was predicting the top 25 teams compared to the AP Poll every week. What do you think? Do you play any office or fantasy games in regards to college football?

This spreadsheet does take some time to update due to the massive amount of helmets that need to be moved around. In the future I think I plan to make the spreadsheet easier to update and more maintainable. At least maybe figure out how to make the football helmets automatically populate, possibly using drop down lists. Maybe there is also a way to import the schedules from ESPN's website. Any ideas how to make the yearly update go quicker?

Tags: 2016 NCAA Excel Helmet Schedule

March Madness 2016 Excel Brackets

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! March Madness 2016 edition is here and the first of the four “play-in” games have already begun (which we’re not counting off any points for in my office pool). Once again, I’ll be using David Tyler’s NCAA Excel brackets, the same ones I’ve been using since at least 2010, as they're still the best as far as I’m concerned. David doesn't lock or hide anything behind password protection so you can examine all the formulas to see how they work and make any modifications you desire. There are two files: the bracket manager and the individual bracket file, that can be downloaded by following the link below.

http://www.whistleblows.com/p/bracket.html

A great way to increase your Excel knowledge is to reverse engineer templates, like these office pool March Madness brackets. Last year, I shared 11 things you can learn from the best Excel brackets and they all still apply for this year’s version.

I'd like to give a special thanks to David Tyler for continuing to update and post his excellent brackets each and every March and giving us something to look forward to as we crawl out of the final few weeks of winter.

I also created a short screen capture video to show you just how easy it is to use David's brackets. Simply click on each team to advance them (don't forget to enable macros).

Pictured below is my bracket. You should probably just go ahead and treat it like the Bible, Koran, and Torah all rolled into one. It’s as good as truth.

Good luck in your office pools!

Nickstradomus


*just a special note to my email subscribers: I will hopefully have an option soon where you can opt out of notifications about sports templates, that is if you only want to read about my general Excel tips and tricks.