Heading into the final game of college football season — the BCS title game between Florida and Alabama tomorrow night — David K. and Doug Mataconis are tied for the lead in the 5th annual Living Room Times Bowl Pick ’em Contest with 21-12 prediction records, and six contestants — Esteban Coca, Jon Schuman, Neil Waechter, Charles Fenwick, Brandon Allen, and T. Delli Santi — are tied 1 point back at 20-13. All eight are still mathematically alive to win; everyone else is eliminated.
In order to stay alive once tomorrow’s game begins, the six 20-13 contestants must hope that both 21-12 contestants, David and Doug, make the same prediction for who will win the title game, and that the David/Doug pick is the opposite pick from their own.
(FWIW, Doug has publicly tweeted “Roll Tide,” seemingly implying he picked Alabama — but contestants can change their picks up until shortly before kickoff, and their predictions are not visible to other contestants until the change period ends and the picks are “locked.”)
If two or more contestants finish with the same prediction record, the relevant tiebreakers are as follows:
Tiebreaker #1 – The Entrant who correctly predicted the winner of the BCS Title Game is considered the winning entry.
Tiebreaker #2 – An Entrant’s predicted BCS Title Game score is compared to the actual BCS Title Game. The differences between the predicted scores and actual scores for each team are added (positive numbers only). The entry with the smallest total difference is considered the winning entry.
Tiebreaker #3 – The Entrant whose predicted score for the winning team in the BCS Title Game is closest to the actual score of the winning team without being over the total is considered the winning entry. …
In all cases, an entry that does not win a tiebreaker is eliminated from consideration.